经验开放性对跨文化管理有效性的作用机制

The Mechanism of openness to experience's effect on cross-cultural management effectiveness

以特质激发理论和工作绩效理论为基础,通过对27家中国跨国企业派驻海外分公司的119名中高层外派经理及其上级的问卷调查,本研究探讨了跨文化情境下外派经理的经验开放性与跨文化管理有效性的关系。结果显示外派经理的经验开放性会通过文化智力的中介作用正向预测其跨文化管理有效性,而文化距离在中介作用的前后阶段起到不同方向的调节作用:文化距离强化了经验开放性与文化智力的正向关系,却弱化了文化智力与跨文化管理有效性的正向关系。

Although researches have shown openness to experience is positively related to cross-cultural adaptation, studies in the Chinese context have indicated a negative relationship between managers＇ openness to experience and their leadership effectiveness. Combined with a large number of failure cases in expatriates practice, it should be noted that it＇s necessary to examine the relationship between managers＇ personality traits and management performance as well as its mechanism in a cross-cultural context. According to trait activation theory, only trait-relevant contexts can evoke traits action on the corresponding performance. Yet cross-cultural context accords with all the characteristics inspiring openness to experience. Therefore, this study aimed to explore the effect of expatriate managers＇ openness to experience on cross-cultural management effectiveness. Besides, based on job performance theory, we revealed that cultural intelligence mediated the above relationship. In the meantime, since contexts could not only stimulate traits acting on performance, but also affect the relationship strength between them, we thus explored the moderation role of contextual features – represented by cultural distance – on the two stages of indirect effects. Participants are from 27 Chinese multinational corporations. We collected paired data through a questionnaire survey of 119 expatriate senior managers located in five host countries / regions and their headquarters＇ supervisors. Data collection contained three waves with two months＇ interval. First, expatriate managers reported their demographic information and Big Five personality traits. Second, they reported their cultural intelligence. At last, CEO or HR managers at headquarters evaluated expatriate managers＇ cross-culturalmanagement effectiveness. In the end, we formed 119 paired data and the valid response rate was 58.6%. The present study mainly adopted hierarchical regression to test hypotheses. The results showed a positive relationship between openness to experience of expatriate managers and their cross-cultural management effectiveness. Moreover, cultural intelligence completely mediated the relationship between openness to experience and cross-cultural management effectiveness. As predicted, cultural distance played an opposite moderated role in the two stages of the indirect effect. Specifically, cultural distance accentuated the positive relationship between openness to experience and cultural intelligence, while it weakened the positive relationship between cultural intelligence and cross-cultural management effectiveness. The main contributions of this study are as follows. First, we reconcile the conflicting research findings between openness to experience and cross-cultural management effectiveness. This study opens the ＂black box＂ of their relationship by exploring cultural intelligence as a mediator, exploring cultural characteristics＇ moderating role by including cultural distance as a dual-stage moderator, thereby providing a comprehensive understanding of the divergent relationship between openness to experience and performance. Second, the present study identifies the boundary conditions of the impact of openness to experience on cultural intelligence, providing a theoretical basis for training and developing expatriate managers＇ cultural intelligence. Third, this study explores the edge conditions of cultural intelligence predicting cross-cultural management effectiveness, explaining the inhibition of cultural distance in the above relationships, therefore providing insights for organizations to form a reasonable expectation of expatriate managers＇ reassignment to other host countries. Finally, we offer the corresponding theoretical foundation of the expatriate manager selection, training and appointment for organization cross-cultural management practices.