Culture Meets Emotion: Integrating Hofstede-Based Cultural Distance and Emotional Intelligence to Explain Expatriate Adjustment

Expatriate adjustment is important for the success of international assignments, as employees working abroad must adapt to different cultural values, social expectations, communication styles, and workplace practices. Although previous studies have examined several factors influencing expatriate adjustment, cultural and individual factors are often discussed separately. This conceptual paper addresses this gap by integrating Hofstede-based cultural distance and emotional intelligence (EI) within a moderated framework. Hofstede-based cultural distance represents differences between expatriates’ home and host cultural environments and is expected to create greater adjustment difficulties as cultural distance increases. EI represents an individual capability that helps expatriates understand and manage emotions, deal with stress, communicate effectively, and develop relationships in unfamiliar environments. Drawing on the person–environment fit perspective and cross-cultural adjustment literature, the paper proposes that EI has both a positive relationship with adjustment and a buffering role: emotionally intelligent expatriates may be better able to manage the uncertainty and emotional demands created by greater cultural distance. Three propositions are developed. First, greater home–host cultural distance is negatively associated with expatriate adjustment. Second, EI is positively associated with expatriate adjustment. Third, EI moderates the relationship between cultural distance and adjustment by weakening its negative effect. The framework focuses deliberately on cultural distance and EI to provide a parsimonious explanation of the interaction between an external cultural challenge and an internal emotional resource, while recognising cultural intelligence, language ability, international experience, and organisational support as relevant contextual influences. Future research should test the framework using longitudinal and multi-country samples, compare objective and perceived cultural distance, and examine general, interaction, and work adjustment separately.

: cultural distance; emotional intelligence; expatriate adjustment; Hofstede’s cultural dimensions; international assignments

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