Perceptual differences between expatriate faculty and senior managers regarding acculturation at a Korean university

ABSTRACT

This research compares the perceptions of expatriate academics and senior managers at a Korean university vis-à-vis the acculturation experience of expatriate academics there. Analyses, based on interview data, depict expatriate faculty who are trying to integrate, but who feel uninformed and pessimistic about trust building and opaque promotion processes. Departments are concerned with maintaining the status quo. Management is cogent of several problems voiced by expatriate faculty, particularly issues revolving around language, but there is evidence of perceptual differentiation concerning several other facets related to expatriate faculty acculturation. A patchwork of support infrastructures leading to varying degrees of expatriate faculty inclusion and marginalization results. Recommendations forwarded include targeted hiring of high-potential early and mid-career expatriate faculty going forward; the hiring of one bi-lingual assistant in each college dedicated to expatriate faculty support; improved transparency of promotion and tenure review documentation and procedures; and the resolution of the Korean language dilemma.

KEYWORDS:

• Acculturation
• expatriate Academics
• higher Education
• international Faculty
• organizational Culture
• Korea

Acknowledgements

Along with gratitude for the funding, the authors would also like to thank the editors and anonymous referees for their input and assistance in bringing this manuscript to its final form.

Disclosure statement

There are no conflicts of interest with this research or manuscript.

Notes

¹ Following Trembath (2016), the term expatriate academic (or faculty or faculty member) refers to full-time, tenure-track faculty-holding terminal degrees and employed permanently outside of their home countries of record.

² While the present study does not delve into aspects related to language plurality and its impact on expatriate faculty, administration, and student perceptions, this is an interesting topic to which a 2019 special edition of The Journal of Higher Education was dedicated (Plurilingual expatriate teachers in higher education: Roles and impacts, 9(3)). The authors would like to thank an anonymous referee for bringing this to our attention.

³ The government pays the costs of hiring expatriate academics, including their salary, pension, and health insurance (Ministry of Education, 2007).

Additional information

Funding

Partial fulfillment of this study was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea [NRF-2018S1A5A2A03029277].