Cultural Agility And International Assignees' Effectiveness In Cross-Cultural Interactions

While many mutable competencies and immutable personality traits have been shown to have a direct positive relationship with international assignee success, this study examines whether a set of situation-specific cross-cultural competencies comprising cultural agility are also related to international assignee success. This study examines whether the combination of three situation-specific responses to cultural differences (cultural adaptation, cultural minimization and cultural integration) explain any additional variance in supervisor's ratings of international assignee success above and beyond personality and cross-cultural competencies. To test this hypothesis, supervisor-rated of assignees' effectiveness in working with host nationals was regressed on the number of international assignees' cultural orientations. Controlling for personality and dynamic competencies, the overall model was significant explaining 17 per cent of the total variance. This study provides some preliminary evidence on the importance of expatriates' possessing the ability to possess concurrent cultural orientations. The HR practices to foster cultural agility are discussed.