Understanding The Role of Perceived Organizational Support and Cultural Intelligence in Facilitating Cross-Cultural Adjustment

Organizations are seeking to expand their operations across the globe. In this effort, they move their employees to other countries. These expatriates face several challenges when they enter a totally new environment. They find difficulty in adjusting to the new surroundings, new people, new culture, new climate, new style of living, new work culture and so on. Everything around, to which they were conditioned to, suddenly changes. The process of getting adjusted to a new cultural setting is indeed a very stressful one. All these cause stress and fear in their minds, which adversely affect their performance. Due to the difficulty in adapting to the new circumstances, the rate of attrition gradually increases. In order to overcome all these, organizations must carefully choose employees to take up responsibilities abroad. They should select people who have the ability to quickly adapt to changes and can perform well in any cultural environment. People who have this ability to easily adjust to the changes are said to have high cultural intelligence (CQ). Organizational support (POS) also help in overcoming these challenges. The paper focus on two important factors, namely CQ and POS, which facilitate cross-cultural adjustment.