Tolerance of ambiguity: Relations with expatriate adjustment and job performance

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Authors

International assignments are strongly characterized novelty, complexity, insolubility, and unpredictability. In such environments, dispositional tolerance of (or even attraction to) ambiguity may be an important contributing factor to expatriate success. We use data from the iGOES project to examine the contributions of tolerance of ambiguity to expatriate out-comes. Results show that tolerance for ambiguity has only small positive benefits for expat-riate locational and work adjustment, as well as for contextual and management/supervision performance. Tolerance of ambiguity-criterion relationships showed negligible variability across samples, suggesting that these weak relations are stable across differences in cultural distance and time on assignment. Results indicate that organizations selecting expatriates may realize better utility with constructs other than tolerance of ambiguity.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationManaging Expatriates : Sucess factors in private and public domains
EditorsBrenton Wiernik, Heiko Rüger, Deniz S. Ones
Number of pages12
Place of PublicationOpladen
PublisherVerlag Babara Budrich
Publication date2018
Edition1
Pages71-82
ISBN (Print)978-3-8474-2031-6
ISBN (Electronic)978-3-8474-1017-1
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Bibliographical note

c 2018, ersch. 12.2017