Antecedents and consequences of expatriate satisfaction: an empirical investigation of hotel managers in Pacific Asian countries

With increasing global competitiveness, top management of multinational corporations have realized that their resources cannot be effectively and efficiently transformed into marketable outputs without having managers who have global perspectives and a familiarity with the company's interest in overseas operation. To create a management team with global perspectives, multinational firms are using expatriate managers to fill overseas managerial positions.

In Pacific Asia, the region's economic growth has attracted tremendous investments in hotel development from multinational companies, and these companies are increasingly hiring foreign professionals and managers to fill their business needs. However, while some expatriates have been very successful in Asia, many others encountered inherent problems related to overall satisfaction in the foreign environment which may lead to failures in their assignments. Failures in overseas assignments or expatriate turnovers are very costly to multinational companies. Current literature indicates a void in the research on predictors of hotel expatriate satisfaction and the relationship between satisfaction and turnover.

The purpose of this study is to examine the antecedents (predictors) and consequences (turnover) of hotel expatriate satisfaction in three Asian countries; China, Hong Kong, and Singapore. The study consisted of a mailed survey of the expatriate hotel managerial employees in the three countries, followed by compilation and statistical analysis of relevant data to obtain empirical results which are used to develop a model of antecedents and consequences of hotel expatriate satisfaction.

The findings from this study suggests that expatriate satisfaction can be predicted by five factors; (1) cultural adjustment, (2) skill variety, (3) role clarity, ( 4) participation, and (5) cross-cultural training. In addition, the research indicates that both expatriate job and general satisfaction relate to turnovers, and job satisfaction has stronger impact on expatriate's intention to quit.