This year at SAMIBC2020 we are pleased to announce another of our presenters, Weichun Zhu from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania. Weichun will be presenting, Examining the Impact of Pre-Departure Cross-Cultural Training on Expatriate Adjustment: Implications for International Human Resource Management and The Effects of Ethical Leadership on Group Members: The Evidence from the Online Communities.

Presentation 1 Abstract: Globalization of business and quests for international presence have led many multinational corporations (MNCs) to expand their activities into foreign markets with higher returns. This expansion has increased competition for talented employees and motivated the employment of an increasing number of expatriates assigned manage business operations overseas. Studies have shown that poor performance and high expatriate failure rates are linked to instability of the expatriates to adjust to their new environment. One of ways to enhance adjustment and improve job performance is to provide employees with knowledge and awareness of appropriate norms and behaviors of the host country through cross-cultural training (CCT). Using expatriates to manage foreign subsidiaries seems to be an efficient means to manage and control foreign subsidiaries, however, the use of expatriates to manage overseas operations are costly. Researchers have noted that increasing expatriate failure rates are of great concern for MNCs as failure rates are estimated to be between 25 and 40 percent. The monetary value for each expatriate failure is substantial, ranging from US$250,000 to US$1 million per year. A great deal of research on expatriate adjustment has been conducted in Europe and North America. However, with respect to Africa in general and Nigeria in particular, research on expatriate adjustment has received little attention, particularly research on cross-cultural training and expatriate adjustment, demonstrating that there is a knowledge gap in our understanding of this topic in the context of Africa and Nigeria. The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of cross-cultural training on expatriate adjustment in Nigeria. This research is important because it may assist human resource professionals in planning and implementing an appropriate CCT program for employees relocating to Nigeria. It may also help to bridge the gap in the literature on this topic with regards to Nigeria, Africa, and other emerging nations. It could also contribute to a better understanding of cross-cultural training (CCT) which has been identified as one the major ways for improving managers’ cross-cultural effectiveness and for reducing expatriate failure rate.

Presentation 2 Abstract: Interest in ethical leadership has burgeoned in the past two decades partially due to ethical scandals in a range of institutions across the globe. Many of the prior research has consistently demonstrated the value and effectiveness of ethical leadership—the demonstration of normatively appropriate conduct through personal actions and interpersonal relationships, and the promotion of such conduct to followers through two-way communication, reinforcement, and decision-making (Brown, Treviño, & Harrison, 2005, p. 120)—for influencing employee work attitudes, pro-social behaviors, moral cognition and misconduct (Kuenzi, Brown, Mayer, & Priesemuth, 2019; Kuenzi, Mayer, & Greenbaum, 2019; Moore, Mayer, Chiang, Crossley, Karlesky, & Birtch, 2019; Zhu, Zheng, He, Wang, & Zhang, 2019). However, most of the current research has been conducted at for-profit and non-for-profit organizations, and tended to neglect the contexts of online communities, which are also an important type of virtual organizations that are also worthy of more explorations and have important theoretical and practical implications for ethical leadership.
In this study, we examine whether stronger ethical leadership of group leaders of the online communities is associated with an increase in group members’ individual knowledge sharing behaviors and OCBs across both the individual and group levels. We also test the mediating roles of organizational commitment and ethical climate in these relationships.
Specifically, we collected data from the multi sources across three points in time from 68 online WeChat groups/communities. The final sample includes 68 group managers who rated group outcomes, and 682 group members who rated ethical leadership, individual and group outcomes. Through the Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) analyses, we found that ethical leadership of managers of the online communities has a positive effect on knowledge sharing and citizenship behavior of individual group members, and the whole group. At the group level, ethical climate plays a full mediating role in the effects of ethical leadership of managers of the online group on the knowledge sharing and OCBs of group members. At the individual level, member’s organizational commitment plays a partial mediating role between group managers’ ethical leadership and group members’ knowledge sharing and OCBs. Members’ perceived ethical climate plays a mediating role between the relationship between group manager’s ethical leadership and members’ knowledge sharing and OCBs. The study makes theoretical contributions to ethical leadership, including testing cross-level effects in the online non-work groups.

Join us in Nashville, Tennessee to see this great paper and many more March 19 – 21, 2020. For registration information visit www.samnational.org/conference.