Cross-cultural adjustment of global workers

Updating theory and practice, with Eun Su (Jeannie) Lee

Highlights

In this chapter, we firstly propose a brief reflection on current literature on global workers’ cross-cultural adjustment and delineate the complexity of the global workforce and their specific needs. We especially focus on the downsides of clustering global workers as a homogenous group and adopting a single approach to cross-cultural adjustment of different types of global workers in workplaces. In response, we imagine a continuum of accumulated barriers and privileges, encompassing elements such as language barriers, education, skills, discrimination, freedom to move, underemployment, or country-of-origin effect. We then examine how to move forward, provide theoretical directions in relation to cross-cultural adjustment of diverse groups of global workers focusing on gender, age, and the over-Westernized view. We finally discuss the organizational benefits to hiring global workers, before elaborating on the difficulties of hiring, retaining and successfully integrating global workers despite such benefits.

Sustainable Development Goals

Table of contents

Cite

Lee, E. S., Wechtler, H. (2024). Cross-cultural adjustment of global workers: Updating theory and practice