Goodbye Germany! The influence of personality and cognitive factors on the intention to work abroad

Abstract

The demand for internationally mobile employees is increasing with globalization. Being able to assess an employee's intention to work abroad already at the stage of hiring becomes an important criteria for employee selection. Cognitions specified by the theory of planned behavior (TPB) were examined as mediators of the relationship between individuals' personality traits and the intention to work abroad. Utilizing a sample of 518 German business students, mediation analysis suggests that the cognitive constructs contained within the TPB fully mediate the relationships between the personality traits of openness to experience and extraversions and the intention to work abroad.

Keywords::

• cultural intelligence
• expatriation
• intention to work abroad
• personality traits
• theory of planned behavior

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the editor Michael Dickmann and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and constructive suggestions during the revision process.