Happy Expatriates Have Higher Cross-Cultural Adjustment and Retention? A Study of Chinese Expatriates in Thailand

The phenomenon of significant increase of Chinese expatriates has drawn attention of researchers to study on this population. Past research showed that cross-cultural adjustment (CCA) positively affected work outcome and expatriate retention (ER). Therefore, it is a critical issue for management practice and academic research to unfold expatriates' psychological mechanism of adjustment process, for enhancing expatriates' CCA and ER. This study adopts Fredrickson's Broaden-and-Build Theory (BBT) of Positive Emotions [1] to develop and examine the hypothesized model. The results of this study indicate that expatriates who perceived more organizational support (POS) could feel more subjective well-being (SWB), perform better CCA, and result in higher ER. Expatriates who perceiving higher organizational performance (POP) couldn't moderate the positive effect of SWB on CCA. The implications for research and practice were discussed.