David C. Thomas

Simon Fraser University · Beedie School of Business

Purpose The goal of this study is to propose and test a model of the effect of the socio-cultural context on the disability inclusion climate of organizations. The model has implications of hiring people with disabilities. Design/methodology/approach To test the model, we conducted a cross-sectional study across four countries with very different...

To this point, we have introduced our model of global competency and explained the foundation Level 1 of the model, global knowledge and the threshold traits of integrity, humility, inquisitiveness, and hardiness. We then examined the global mindset, with its two main descriptors, cognitive complexity and cosmopolitanism. We are now ready to look m...

International organizations, ranging from large MNCs to small born global firms, are increasingly recognizing that multicultural employees can help them operate across countries and across cultures. However, multiculturals – individuals who identify with and internalize more than one culture – are a diverse group, and organizations seeking to lever...

The question that motivated this editorial was, "where are the IB experiments?" The short answer is that experiments are largely absent from the IB literature; and we argue that they shouldn't be. Experimental methods offer the opportunity to significantly improve the evidence for the causal relationships in international business research in a var...

The psychological contract describes a set of individual perceptions concerning the terms of the exchange relationship between individuals and their organizations. While this concept has substantially advanced our knowledge about how individuals relate to their organization, as organizations globalize and workforce diversity increases, it is import...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to extend current conceptualizations of multicultural individuals by mapping the underlying elements of knowledge, identification, commitment and internalization as components of multicultural identity. It aims to extend discussions of how multicultural individuals manage their multiculturality. Design/method...

This article reports the development and validation of a theory-based, short form measure of cultural intelligence (SFCQ). The SFCQ captures the original theoretical intent of a multifaceted culture general form of intelligence that is related to effective intercultural interactions. The validity of the scale is established with 3526 participants i...

Cultural intelligence is the capability that individuals have to be effective in intercultural interactions. While the term has been used as an umbrella concept to include a wide variety of intercultural effectiveness ideas, it has its origins as an individual difference in a multifaceted type of intelligence. While different conceptualizations exi...

Empirical evidence supports the notion that communication behaviors in intercultural encounters are effectively extensions of cultural values as well as epistemologies. Study 1 established communication behaviors of Asians and New Zealanders (NZs) as consistent with vertical collectivism and horizontal individualism, respectively. In particular, ar...

In the broad management literature there is no common interpretation (and much misinterpretation) of the following concepts: cross- cultural competence, intercultural competence, cultural knowledge, cultural intelligence, cultural quotient (CQ). In addition, recent research in international management and leadership has focused on the importance of...

Cross-cultural management is the study of management in a cross-cultural context. It includes the study of the influence of societal culture on managers and management practice as well as the study of the cultural orientations of individual managers and organization members. At the individual level, individuals' values as well as their understandin...

Twenty-five years ago, Dunning articulated a vision for greater interdisciplinary grounding in international business (IB) research. Motivated by his foresight, this special issue aims to encourage research that explicitly combines ideas from different disciplines, with a view to creating new integrative theories with greater explanatory power than...

Social information exchange (SIE) in organizations has long been an area of interest for management scholars; however, in recent years, this literature has become fragmented and widely dispersed. As communication and transfer of information increasingly occur between individuals and aggregates of widely varying national and regional cultures, a rec...

This article advances current conceptualizations of multicultural identities by identifying constituent elements of multicultural identity as knowledge, identification, internalization, and commitment. This new conceptualization is labeled n-Culturalism and posits that there are individuals who operate at the intersection of multiple cultures by ma...

This book is available at: https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/essentials-of-international-human-resource-management/book235752

The peer review process is widely used by academic journals, including the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), to evaluate the quality of manuscript submissions relative to the journals' scholarly goals. Our overview suggests that the best reviews also facilitate the introduction of new and important ideas to the field. Content analys...

As organizations globalize, culturally based variation in the ways employees conceptualize their relationships with their employers increases in importance. In the competition for talent, organizations must understand employee preferences and expectations regarding their treatment by the firm. Recently, culture's influence on the psychological cont...

Much of the written work on Chinese psychology identifies and describes culture-specific aspects of psychology as it relates to the Chinese people. This identification of cultural specifics (emics) is important, but it is only a first step towards understanding the interactions of Chinese people across cultures. This article discusses a number of i...

The construct of cultural intelligence has recently been introduced to the management literature as an individual difference that may predict effectiveness and a variety of interpersonal behavior in the global business environment. This construct has enormous potential in helping to explain effectiveness in cross-cultural interactions. However, pro...

Full-text is available at: https://www.econbiz.de/Record/expatriate-adjustment-and-performance-revisited-lazarova-mila/10009571203 or by contacting one of the authors

Today’s global business environment requires that organizations increasingly consider the context in which management must function. While economics, politics and technology may define the playing field of international management, it is a game of cross-cultural interactions that is being played (Thomas, 2008). Cross-cultural management research in...

Distinctive features of articles accepted by the Journal of International Business Studies are that they are multidisciplinary in scope and interdisciplinary in content and methodology, and they make a substantial theoretical contribution to international business studies. Failure to meet this last requirement is an often cited reason given by revi...

This paper explores the relationship between national culture and individuals' psychological contracts. Predicted relationships were drawn from prior theory that identified cognitive and motivational mechanisms through which culture manifests its influence. The dominant forms of psychological contracts were evaluated against predictions based on th...

In recent years, international management research has focused on the cognitive development of managers as increasingly important in a complex and dynamic business environment. As part of what might be called a cognitive revolution in international management research, several individual difference constructs have been introduced that promise to im...

We conceptualize new ways to qualify what themes should dominate the future international business and management (IB/IM) research agenda by examining three questions: Whom should we ask? What should we ask, and which selection criteria should we apply? What are the contextual forces? Our main findings are the following: (1) wider perspectives from...

Co-authors (in alphabetic order) AYCAN, Z. Member of ION (International Organizations Network). ION was formed with a mission to increase the quality and impact of research on people and their effectiveness in international organizations. The network's vision is to be a catalyst for the creation and application of knowledge and understanding that p...

Cross-cultural management research typically assumes that individuals have only one cultural profile. However, given the changing patterns in the world’s workforce it is increasingly possible that more employees and managers will be bicultural. This special issue responds to the need to further our understanding of this emerging demographic in orga...

Biculturals – people who have internalised more than one cultural profile – are an under explored result of globalisation. This new and growing demographic presents some important challenges and opportunities for international management. Our study explores the idea that biculturalism fosters cultural general skills that can be useful in today's mu...

Biculturals - people who have deeply internalized more than one cultural profile - are a significant but underexplored result of globalization. This new demographic raises a number of questions for many fields that address intercultural collaboration and communication. Our research develops a theory about types of biculturals and explores the idea...

The construct of cultural intelligence, recently introduced to the management literature, has enormous potential in helping to explain effectiveness in cross cultural interactions. However, at present, no generally accepted definition or operationalization of this nascent construct exists. In this article, we develop a conceptualization of cultural...

Renowned international experts Peter B. Smith, Mark F. Peterson, and David C. Thomas, editors of the The Handbook of Cross-Cultural Management, have drawn together scholars in the field of management from around the world to contribute vital information from their cross-national studies to this innovative, comprehensive tome. Chapters explore links...

This article introduces a special issue of the Journal of Organizational Behavior on organizational behavior in the context of multinational organizations (MNOs). MNOs have distinctive organizational characteristics and operate in national settings that have distinctive institutional and cultural characteristics that together provide a unique conte...

In this chapter we examine an assumption in the literature on international assignments, the belief in a direct positive relationship between the adjustment of expatriates and their performance. We first outline the historical basis for the overwhelming focus on adjustment. We then review the literature on the conceptualization and measurement of b...

The potential for defining a reliable measure of a cross-cultural facet of intelligence has enormous implications for explaining and predicting the increasingly prevalent cross-cultural interactions that occur in business settings. In this article, the author presents a definition of cultural intelligence (CQ) that explicitly introduces the concept...

Although status and stratification processes have been studied extensively at the societal level in the sociology literature, they continue to be neglected in the study of management and organizational life. This review begins by questioning why this neglect has occurred. The authors then focus on the theoretical perspectives and empirical findings...

The concept of global careers has sparked a significant burst of recent research attention. In this article, we introduce this special issue of the Journal of World Business by raising the question of whether this activity is the result of the emergence of a new phenomenon or simply a new perspective on old issues. We then introduce the articles in...

The transition from socialist or communist economy to market economy in many countries has been dramatic, unpredictable, and mostly on the surface, observable in new consumption patterns or higher standards of living. But deeper change in the managerial mindset in these new market economies has been much slower and less evident. It is crucial to bu...

This study examined the moderating effect of national culture on the relationship between a key situational indicator (job satisfaction) and the exchange behaviors of employees. The main effect of job satisfaction on the outcome behaviors of exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect was consistent in Indonesia and New Zealand suggesting a possible universa...

This study examined the communication styles of East Asians and Anglo-European New Zealanders (Pakeha). Results indicated that in general, Asians exhibited more sociocentric communication behavior whereas Pakeha exhibited more idiocentric behavior. In intercultural interactions, both the frequency and intensity of these behavior styles were exacerb...

This article reports the results of a field study that evaluated behavioral responses to low job satisfaction of participants in Hong Kong and New Zealand. Culture, measured by vertical and horizontal individualism and collectivism, had both main and moderating effects on responses. First, cultural groups responded differently to low job satisfacti...

Planning processes are potentially important governance mechanisms in multinational enterprises (MNEs). However, the complex multi-level and multi-cultural nature of these organizations may result in compatibility or clashes of culture between the various units of the MNE with respect to planning processes. In this theory building paper we develop...

Literature on the psychological contract has made significant contributions to our understanding of the exchange relationship between employees and their employer. However, the influence of cultural differences on perceptions of the employment relationship has largely been neglected. We propose both cognitive and motivational mechanisms through whi...

Recently, the psychological contract has attracted increased attention because of a perception that employment relationships, particularly in the United States, are undergoing a period of dramatic change and that contract violations are becoming more commonplace. The psychological contracts literature has largely ignored the idea that cultural diff...

Changes in workforce demographics resulting from globalization, combined with the rising popularity of team-based management techniques, has resulted in a practical concern with the management of multicultural groups. In this experimental study, three mechanisms that are proposed to influence group effectiveness are examined. Results supported the...

This study examined followers' perceptions of the leadership style of leaders who were culturally similar or different to themselves. Participants were members of two ethnic groups who were employed in one of four New Zealand organizations. Findings indicated that leader and follower ethnicity interact to affect follower satisfaction. Additionally,...

Causal attribution for three different levels of adaptive behaviour by a foreign (Japanese) manager to the cultural expectations of host country (United States) subordinates was examined in an experimental setting. Two methods, written descriptions of the intercultural interaction (scripts) and direct observation (videotapes produced from the scrip...

Business in New Zealand is increasingly global in nature. Additionally, the domestic workforce reflects a unique blend of cultural groups. These factors highlight the need for managers to understand the cross-cultural nature of their task. In this article we review the research on cross-cultural management that has been conducted in New Zealand. Fi...

Business in New Zealand is increasingly global in nature. Additionally, the domestic workforce reflects a unique blend of cultural groups. These factors highlight the need for managers to understand the cross-cultural nature of their task. In this article we review the research on cross-cultural management that has been conducted in New Zealand. Fi...

This study examined how an often advocated strategy for bridging cultural distance in international business relationships affected participants' responses and behavioral intentions. Participants were employees ( N = 223) in the US subsidiaries of Japanese manufacturing firms. The context was simulated by having participants respond to videotapes o...

The recent increase in Japanese business involvement in the United States makes the effective interaction between Japanese managers and American (U.S. National) subordinates a salient management issue. This study examined the process by which an often advocated strategy for bridging cultural distance (cultural adaptation) affected the behavioral re...

This research explores expatriate assignments from a career development perspective. First, the article examines the impact of five organization-level career development programs and policies on expatriate effectiveness. Then, it explores the impact of five individual-level career management strategies on the success of expatriate transitions. Data...

For expatriates, the challenges of adjusting to different cultures and mores when conducting business become even more difficult during times of political turmoil. The authors document the fears and frustrations of U.S. expatriates stationed in Saudi Arabia during the Persian Gulf crisis. In addition to worry about the safety of their families and...

Boundary spanning theory has been used to examine a number of organizational roles; however, it has not been applied to the functioning of expatriates. Recent conceptualizations of the multinational firm, as a network of interrelationships, place greater emphasis on the exchanges between the subunits of these organizations. The focus of this intern...

Typescript. Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of South Carolina, 1992. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 167-179).