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New Zealand is a country of many cultures and ethnicities. With a growing Asian community, cultural capability of the mental health workforce is essential to ensure that Asians have equity in access to appropriate and high quality services. Literature indicates a growing need to develop resources and enhance knowledge on cultural competence to assist health service providers to address the needs of people from diverse backgrounds. Yet, at what stage of training and/or practice are health professionals gaining access to this knowledge?Consultation with local health services and tertiary education institutions revealed a gap in the knowledge of Asian mental health being taught in the curriculum of students undertaking training to become health professionals. Further research indicated a need and desire from tertiary institutions to have access to Asian mental health material for both enhancing students' learning, and promoting the concept of continuing education following graduation. As a result, an interactive, self‐administrative CD‐rom comprising three modules: self‐reflection; Asian philosophies; and clinical issues was compiled.Early feedback indicates that the CD‐rom has tremendous potential in terms of applicability to enhancing current curriculum and for teaching students skills such as accessing articles and web based resources, valuable for the purposes of continuing education. Continuing education with regards to cultural competence is not just for qualified health professionals but needs to be integrated as part of students training as health practitioners, in order to ensure health care providers are able to provide effective and culturally responsive services.

Aims to examine within the theoretical construct of absorptive capacity several forms of host country national (HCN) learning, leading to improved productivity in the foreign operation, and ultimately yielding more effective knowledge generation and flow throughout the multinational corporation (MNC).

Used open‐ended exploratory field interviews with 51 host country human resource and middle managers in 49 different MNC foreign subsidiaries with headquarters in six different countries. Learning needs in three major employee levels of operative, supervisory/middle management, and upper management were examined. Notes from the interviews were recorded by hand and combined and analyzed for evidence of potentially beneficial forms of HCN learning using procedures of domain and theme analysis in taxonomy development.

A total of 12 categories of potentially beneficial forms of HCN learning were identified and discussed relative to their contributions to increased absorptive capacity. These forms of learning included such areas as new employee orientation and entry job skills, MNC predominant language, MNC home country cross‐cultural awareness, supervision and technical operations management skills, expatriate coaching and liaison skills, and MNC strategy and culture.

Provides helpful insights on absorptive capacity to promote further theory development, as well as practical guidance for future HCN training to enhance the effective transfer of management knowledge and practice.

Past research in international management has had a predominant focus on expatriates, failing to identify important contributions that can be made by host country nationals to promote the effective transfer of knowledge throughout the multinational organization.

Management games arose on the scene in the late 1950s and were derived from World War II simulations. Since then, they have grown in use and can be found in most major companies and in most colleges or universities. They provide an experiential framework for learning and applying concepts learned, add interest and even excitement to the classroom and provide a risk free environment for learning.

This study aims to contribute to the enrichment of the literature by examining the impact of cross-cultural training on expatriates’ adjustment of Nigerian bankers on expatriate assignments in other African countries.

Data on cross-cultural adjustment from expatriate employees in five banks that collectively accounted for over 80 per cent of Nigerian banks with subsidiaries in other African were systematically selected for the investigation. This data was collected quantitatively via a survey instrument. Independent sample t-test, analysis of variance (ANOVA) and regression analysis were deployed in analyzing the data.

The study found that cross-cultural adjustment varied significantly across the different categories of gender, age, marital status, previous expatriate training, previous expatriate experience, and duration of expatriation. The study concludes that in order to attain higher levels of adjustment African banks and other organizations should provide a more comprehensive cross-cultural training program that mirrors the needs of employees following a detailed needs analysis. Also, the training must be sequential and not a one-off approach.

The literature though still nascent is largely focused on expatriate preparation and adjustment for expatriates moving from Western-to-western contexts and very little exists in the literature on how multinationals from Non-Western contexts like Africa prepare their staff for expatriation and its consequent impact on their adjustment. This study aims to enrich the literature by examining the impact of cross-cultural training on expatriates’ adjustment of Nigerian bankers on expatriate assignments in other African countries.

Retailers have demonstrated mixed results during international expansions. However, home market saturation and the economic climate are forcing more and more retailers to look beyond their borders for revenue. A critical participant in the internationalizing effort is the expatriate manager. Unfortunately the literature is unclear and at times conflicted over how to select and prepare expatriate management for their leadership role. Therefore, this study was designed with the purpose of uncovering various factors which may lead to expatriate retail management success.

Based on the lack of unanimity in the literature this study adopted a qualitative research methodology in order to develop some consensus regarding successful expatriate leadership attributes. Grounded theory was employed utilizing extensive in-depth interviews as the primary data gathering and analysis tools.

A multi-dimensional construct emerged from the data requiring all dimensions to be utilized for a successful retail expatriate assignment. The construct of “Universal Leadership”, is proposed as formative, comprised of reflective sub-dimensions; Ability, Adaptability, Ambassadorship, and Awareness (Self), which we refer to as the Four A's, for successful expatriate management assignments. Several propositions are put forward as suggestions for future research in the use of the universal leadership model for both selection and training of retail expatriate managers.

The study develops a theoretical platform for expatriate leadership success allowing for cultural and business variation. Awareness is introduced as a critical attribute in achieving success as an expatriate success. The universal leadership model proposes attributes beneficial for training and also selection which is critically under examined in the literature.

The relationship between cultural novelty and cross-cultural adjustment of expatriates is often assumed to be negative and linear, while the empirical results for the relationship has been demonstrated by researchers as either negative, positive or absent.

The current research challenges the negative and linear assumption conceptually and empirically and tests a curvilinear relation between cultural novelty and general adjustment. The authors specifically propose and test a theoretical model whereby emotional stability moderates the curvilinear cultural novelty–general adjustment relationship such that the negative effect of cultural novelty on general adjustment is mitigated by emotional stability. Survey data are collected from expatriates recruited from two different host countries, India (N = 151) and China (N = 157).

The findings provide support for the curvilinear relationship between cultural novelty and general adjustment and the moderating effect of expatriates' emotional stability on this relationship.

This present study makes unique contributions to the expatriate management literature in at least two major ways: first, this study consolidates the otherwise contradictory findings and furthers the understanding on the nature of the effect of cultural novelty on expatriate adjustment. In addition, this research tests a cultural novelty–expatriate adjustment model using expatriate samples drawn from China and India, the two largest emerging markets that capture the demographic-profile changes pertaining to the newly emerging expatriation trends.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between cultural intelligence (CQ) and adult demographic profiles in the workplace.

This cross-cultural study used a self-reported demographic and a 20-item CQ scale. The demographic and CQ level of 287 adults working in Oman from different countries was evaluated.

The mean total CQ score of adults working in Oman was 4.77 + 1.53. Out of the four dimensions, this study founds higher values relating to motivational CQ followed by metacognitive and behavioral CQ with mean scores 5.22 + 1.53, 5.13 + 1.57 and 4.59 + 1.54, respectively. Significance, between-group differences (gender, age, job level, sector type, education level, nationality and study abroad), were observed in metacognitive and motivational dimensions of CQ (p < 0.001). All the regression models are significant, indicating that they express a meaningful relationship between each of the dependent variables and the variables in the model. The total CQ model explains 10.7% of the variance.

The results of this study provide additional insight to researchers in identifying the demographic profiles which predict the level of total CQ. The use of a longitudinal design to further confirm the results of this study is proposed.

The study helps practicing managers to understand the implications of cultural Intelligence and how it influences employee behavior from the perspectives of demographic perspectives.

The CQ levels of adults working in Oman vary according to their demographic profiles and the demographic profiles predict the CQ levels.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate job expectations, experience, and met expectations of IT professionals in offshore software development and commercial banks in Sri Lanka.

For the study, quantitative research methodology was used and data were collected from 342 and 208 IT professionals engaged full‐time in offshore software development and commercial banks, respectively, in Sri Lanka. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis, paired sample t‐test, independent sample t‐test, and binary logistic regression were used appropriately for data analysis.

The findings of the study led to identify job expectations, experience, and met expectations of IT professionals that discriminate between offshore software development and commercial banks.

The literature provides evidence that job expectations of IT professionals in offshore software development are different from their counterparts in other comparable occupations. Therefore, the paper argues that sectoral differences in job expectations, experience, and met expectations of IT professionals are worthy of empirical investigation. Although the growth of the services sector has resulted in extensive employment opportunities for IT professionals in South Asia, the details on their job expectations and whether their expectations vary by the business sector remain obscure.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the differing perceptions of fear of expatriates operating in terror-exposed Nairobi and the high-crime environment of Johannesburg and its impact on stress and well-being. It illustrates how expatriates cope with the challenges associated with these two regions.

Following an interpretative and inductive research approach, qualitative content analyses were conducted using evidence from in-depth interviews with 12 expatriates in senior management or officer positions within a large global organisation, with respondents based in South Africa and Kenya.

Data suggest that expatriates in the more terrorism-exposed context perceive fear less strongly than expatriates in environments categorised by high degrees of conventional crime. Fear seems to relate to physical well-being via restricted freedom of movement, but there is little evidence that fear affects mental well-being. The study finds that respondents in terror-exposed Nairobi tend to engage more in avoidance-oriented coping strategies, whereas their counterparts in the high-crime environment of Johannesburg predominantly rely on problem-focused coping.

The qualitative design allows practitioners to better understand expatriates’ perceptions of fear, its consequences for stress, and well-being and potential coping strategies expatriates employ. It discusses a set of practical recommendations focussing on the deployment of expatriates assigned to dangerous locations.

This study develops a distinction between terror and conventional crime and contributes with practical insights for assignments into dangerous work environments. The geographic lens of the study provides an in-depth look at expatriation challenges in an arguably neglected regional context.

Conflict is one of the important aspects of the expatriate-host country nationals (HCNs) dyad. The purpose of this study is to understand how the level of conflict between assigned expatriates and HCNs emerges and evolves during acculturation over time.

Building on expatriate literature, diversity literature, and acculturation literature, the authors adopted a longitudinal lens and developed a conceptual model to describe the dynamic process of conflict emergence and evolvement between assigned expatriates and HCNs.

This study offers a dynamic multi-stage conceptual model with the authors' novel propositions to explain how conflicts between assigned expatriates and HCNs emerge and evolve through the acculturation process.

This study provided a theoretical framework demonstrating when and how conflicts between HCNs and expatriates emerge and evolve during acculturation. In doing so, the authors integrate the conflict and diversity literature with the expatriate literature and offer a theoretical foundation to enrich the authors' understanding of the conflict between expatriates and HCNs.