PMGM7002 Chap.3 Culture Shock and Expatriate Adjustment
Culture Shock and Expatriate Adjustment
What culture shock is and how it shows
Culture shock is the disorientation of suddenly living and working somewhere very unlike home. The course lists symptoms from confusion and homesickness through hostility and withdrawal to loss of self-esteem, depression, burnout and physical illness.
Most of these stay hidden at work until they are serious, which is why the chapter treats the timing of support as a management decision in its own right.
A curve in time, and a second shock on return
The course describes four stages, honeymoon, irritation and hostility, gradual adjustment and biculturalism, and shows a curve of adjustment over the months of an assignment.
The low point comes after novelty has faded.
Returning home brings its own re-entry shock: home can feel confining, the old role may have gone, memories of home were embellished, living standards may fall and colleagues rarely offer support.
Why organisations accept the risk
The talent evidence the course presents includes shortages in overseas management roles, a projected global talent gap of tens of millions by 2030 and an estimated fifty million expatriates worldwide in 2022. Against that sits a detailed adjustment model: anticipatory, individual, job, organisation and non-work factors feed adjustment to work, to interaction with host nationals and to the culture in general, which in turn shape satisfaction, strain, thoughts of withdrawal and performance.
Failure, its cost and its prevention
The chapter sets out the expense of an expatriate package and the cost of a failed assignment, alongside older and newer evidence on early returns, underperformance and departures after repatriation.
It closes with the course's three rules for organisations, the habits of successful individuals, and emerging trends in who is moving, including one-way transfers, virtual work, expatriates from Chinese multinationals and the under-representation of women.
What this chapter covers
- 01
Culture shock and its symptoms
- 02
The four stages of adjustment
- 03
The adjustment curve over an assignment
- 04
Re-entry shock on returning home
- 05
The talent case for expatriation
- 06
Factors that predict adjustment
- 07
The cost of expatriate failure
- 08
Organisational and individual ways to reduce failure
- 09
Emerging mobility trends
Worked example · free
Diagnose a request to come home early
- 2Locate the problem among the factor families of the adjustment model.
- 2Trace how that factor leads to an early-return risk.
- 3Recommend at least two responses, each tied to a factor or a course success habit.
Key terms
- Culture Shock
- The psychological confusion that sets in when someone is abruptly placed in a very different cultural setting to live and work.
- Biculturalism
- The final adjustment stage, in which a person can function effectively in two different cultures.
- Re-entry Shock
- Reverse culture shock felt by expatriates returning home after an overseas assignment.
- Interaction Adjustment
- The facet of expatriate adjustment concerned with comfort in dealing with host country nationals.
- Withdrawal Cognitions
- Thoughts about leaving an assignment or the organisation, which precede an early return or resignation.
- Repatriation Process
- The planned return of an expatriate to the home organisation, which the course treats as a deliberate stage of every assignment.
- Role Novelty
- How different a job abroad is from the person's previous role, one of the job factors in the adjustment model.
Culture Shock and Expatriate Adjustment FAQ
When does culture shock usually hit hardest?
After the novelty has worn off rather than on arrival. The course's stages begin with a honeymoon of excitement, and the irritation and hostility stage follows once everyday things stop working as they did at home. Support that is concentrated in the first weeks can therefore run out just before it is most needed.
Why would someone struggle to come home?
The course gives several reasons for re-entry shock. Home life may feel dull and confining after the assignment, the person may find no suitable role waiting, memories of home were often embellished while abroad, living standards can fall on return, and colleagues seldom offer the psychological support they would give someone leaving.
What does the course say organisations should do differently?
Three things. Send people abroad to build knowledge and develop global leaders rather than as a reward or to plug a gap, choose people whose cross-cultural ability matches or exceeds their technical skill, and end every assignment with a deliberate repatriation process instead of treating the return as automatic.
Assessment move
Redraw the adjustment model from memory with its five factor families, three adjustment facets and four outcomes. Then take any expatriate story, from a case or from someone you know, and trace one problem from outcome back to factor. Being able to walk the model backwards is what turns it into a diagnostic tool.
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