Soft skills, such as relation Secondly, skills, affect expatriate success significantly. Agreeableness or non-judgementalism that in a recent study, considered to be of important predictor of both adjustment and performance (Shaffer et al., 2006). Further, cross-cultural communication skills and personal characteristics in dealing with host country nationals have been found key variables. Noteworthy is that the relational ability of expatriates in regard to host country nationals has been found to support both interaction among expatriate and host country nationals and expatriate effectiveness. As well, relation skills are of so important when adjusting to new cultures.
Bhaskar RealWorld et al. (2005, p. 273) concluded in their meta-analytic study of 8,474 expatriates in 66 studies that cultural adjustment is “perhaps the strongest determinant of disengagement and withdrawal decisions.” A clear relationship between levels of adjustment and overall performance which established. Lastly, group processes on the work floor play roles that were previously unaccounted for. Individuals recognize that memberships of various groups get incorporated into the self-concept, therefore, these social identifications have important consequences for behavior.
Group categorization what is found to be negatively related to the provision of social support by host country nationals (Toh et al., 2004). Interaction between groups has a positive effect on group and work effectiveness, however, expatriates’ ethnocentric beliefs have been found to emphasize group differences resulting in various negative consequences. These negative consequences are related to intergroup behavior and fall back on social identity and categorization processes. Therefore, businessmen should non-ethnocentric traits appropriate expatriate selection processes and soft skills in expatriates next harder to additional selection criteria. A ‘misfit’ will likely affect the expatriate’s adjustment process as well as the psychological wellbeing of expatriates. Cross-cultural training could provide potential expatriates access to the evaluation of their strengths and weaknesses in acculturation-related skills in order to focus training on skills that need development. However, not all skills and traits are ‘trainable.’ Appropriate expatriate selection skills procedures focusing on the right balance of soft/hard and non ethnocentric traits may prevent future expatriate failure.