Cross-cultural effectiveness of Western expatriate-Thai client interactions: Lessons learned for IHRM research and theory

Expatriates who perform poorly in their overseas assignments cost multinational enterprises billions of dollars, damage firm reputation, disrupt relationships with local nationals, and often exact a cost on expatriates’ psychological well-being. International human resource management, which assumes the crucial responsibility of managing expatriates, should therefore be able to identify the competencies underlying effective expatriate performance, and evaluate crosscultural competence and overall effectiveness. Little research, however, is available on the role of culture in determining cross-cultural effectiveness in expatriate-client interactions. Moreover, it is rarely acknowledged that the customer impacts upon the effectiveness of such interactions. This paper provides a theoretical explication of the relationships between the factors of intercultural effectiveness, sociobiographical characteristics, and perceived task and contextual performance of individual managers operating in an intercultural environment. Qualitative research is conducted which, in general, demonstrates the importance of examining intercultural effectiveness from the respective cultural perspectives of the expatriate and the host country client. The findings elucidate the factors contributing to the intercultural effectiveness of Western expatriate managers operating in intercultural teams in Thailand.