Host country national quality of interaction with expatriates: antecedents, process, and outcome

Abstract

Little research examines host country national (HCN)-expatriate interaction from the HCN’s perspective. Our study contributes to theory and practice by introducing the concept of ‘HCN-expatriate interaction quality’, one that has received little attention in the literature. Drawing on the Intergroup Contact Theory, we examine the mediating role of HCN-expatriate interaction quality between the HCN’s on-the-job interaction with and support to the expatriate, as well as two moderating effects: off-the-job interaction with the expatriate and perceived expatriate receptivity towards support. Further, we examine how different types of the HCN’s prior international experiences enhance interaction quality with and support to the expatriate. Using a multi-wave design of HCNs in Taiwan, we find support for most of our hypotheses.

Keywords:

• Host country national-expatriate interaction quality
• host country national-expatriate interaction
• host country national prior international experiences
• host country national support
• intergroup contact theory

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available on request from the corresponding author. The data are not publicly available due to their containing information that could compromise the privacy of research participants.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Given that prior international experience variables were positively skewed, we transformed the data using a square root transformation before conducting the analyses, however, the findings were quite similar with those using the nontransformed data, so we report the findings using nontransformed data, as has been noted by Takeuchi et al. (2005).

2 We argued that each of prior international experience variables is fairly distinct and examined prior international experience at the facet level, instead of an aggregate measure because of two reasons: (1) the low intercorrelations among each of these prior international experiences in type, length and number; and (2) a one-factor solution was not found when we performed an exploratory factor analysis.

3 As a further analysis, we found a similar pattern for the moderated mediation when off-the-job interaction was used as the independent variable and on-the-job interaction was used as the moderating variable: conditional mediated effect was stronger and significant under low level of on-the-job interaction (indirect effect = .09, SE = .03, 95% CI [.04, .15]), but was not significant under high level of on-the-job interaction (indirect effect = .01, SE = .02, 95% CI [-.02, .06]). We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this analysis.

4 We thank an anonymous reviewer for pointing out this insightful comment.

Additional information

Funding

Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan.