Thomas Rockstuhl

Antecedents and Consequences of Social Network Characteristics for Expatriate Adjustment and Performance in Overseas Assignments: Implications for HRD:

In this conceptual article, the literature on expatriate social network and its relationships to adjustment and performance in overseas assignments have been reviewed exhaustively. By identifying some gaps and inconsistencies found in the literature, a typology of research on expatriate network explanations has been proposed based on whether the aim is to explain performance variation or adaptation to local practices and norms, and also whether their explanatory mechanism is based on the structure or resources of the network. Specific propositions for each of the four resulting approaches have been developed. It has also been recommended that future researchers should study antecedents of social network structure because of their relevance to HRD interventions. The implications for HRD research and practice have been discussed at the end.

Cross-cultural decoding of positive and negative non-linguistic emotion vocalizations

Which emotions are associated with universally recognized non-verbal signals?We address this issue by examining how reliably non-linguistic vocalizations (affect bursts) can convey emotions across cultures. Actors from India, Kenya, Singapore, and USA were instructed to produce vocalizations that would convey nine positive and nine negative emotions to listeners. The vocalizations were judged by Swedish listeners using a within-valence forced-choice procedure, where positive and negative emotions were judged in separate experiments. Results showed that listeners could recognize a wide range of positive and negative emotions with accuracy above chance. For positive emotions, we observed the highest recognition rates for relief, followed by lust, interest, serenity and positive surprise, with affection and pride receiving the lowest recognition rates. Anger, disgust, fear, sadness, and negative surprise received the highest recognition rates for negative emotions, with the lowest rates observed for guilt and shame. By way of summary, results showed that the voice can reveal both basic emotions and several positive emotions other than happiness across cultures, but self-conscious emotions such as guilt, pride, and shame seem not to be well recognized from non-linguistic vocalizations.

Putting Judging Situations Into Situational Judgment Tests: Evidence From Intercultural Multimedia SJTs

Although the term situational judgment test (SJT) implies judging situations, existing SJTs focus more on judging the effectiveness of different response options (i.e., response judgment) and less on how people perceive and interpret situations (i.e., situational judgment). We expand the traditional SJT paradigm and propose that adding explicit assessments of situational judgment to SJTs will provide incremental information beyond that provided by response judgment. We test this hypothesis across 4 studies using intercultural multimedia SJTs. Study 1 uses verbal protocol analysis to discover the situational judgments people make when responding to SJT items. Study 2 shows situational judgment predicts time-lagged, peer-rated task performance and interpersonal citizenship among undergraduate seniors over and above response judgment and other established predictors. Study 3 shows providing situational judgment did not affect the predictive validity of response judgment. Study 4 replicates Study 2 in a working adult sample. We discuss implications for SJT theory as well as the practical implications of putting judging situations back into SJTs.

Cultural Intelligence and Competencies

With the continuing globalization of the workplace, it is critical to understand why some people excel in intercultural contexts whereas others do not. Cultural intelligence is a persons capability to function effectively in intercultural contexts. In this article, we take stock of the growing stream of research on cultural intelligence. In particular, we review the conceptualization, measurement, and empirical evidence for the nomological network of cultural intelligence. We conclude with an eye toward the future and suggest several exciting research directions to further advance our understanding of cultural intelligence.