中方外派管理者的跨文化适应压力及应对机理

The Cross-cultural Stress Adjustment and the Coping Mechanism of Chinese Expatriate Managers

外派管理是跨国企业亟待解决的战略难题。本文整合压力-应对和资源保存理论,探索中方外派管理者的跨文化适应压力及应对机理。运用诠释性质性研究,通过与27位外派管理者的深度访谈,基于扎根理论方法的数据分析发现:①中方外派管理者的跨文化适应压力-应对过程包括"压力-资源-策略-结果",在应对资源的影响下,中方外派管理者的应对策略相对积极且对情境高度依赖。②混合关系资源增益能有效缓解跨文化适应压力,因而产生相对积极的适应结果。最终建构了"中方外派管理者的跨文化适应压力及应对"理论框架,为既有研究贡献了基于中国情境的新知与解释,并能为中方外派管理实践提供启示与借鉴。

Expatriate management is an urgent strategic problem for multinational enterprises. The literature review allows us to integrate the stress-coping theory and the conservation of resources theory into one coherent framework to deeply explore the cross-cultural stress adjustment and coping mechanism of Chinese expatriate managers. This paper applied the exploratory qualitative study to investigate the phenomenon. We collected the data through in-depth interviews with 27 expatriate managers, and analyzed the data based on the grounded theory method. In general, this paper has some important findings: First, it sorted out the four aspects of Chinese expatriate managers’ cross-cultural stress adjustment and coping process that includes “stress-resource-strategy-result”. Under the influence of coping resources, the coping strategies of Chinese expatriate managers are more positive and highly context-dependent. Second, it is the mixed relationship resource gain which is the most conducive to the alleviation of cross-cultural stress adjustment. The present research finally constructs the theory framework, and takes a significant step forward by providing the new knowledge from Chinese context and the empirical evidence to better manage Chinese expatriates.