Learning in a global cross-cultural work environment : the expatriate experience

Globalization is creating new cross-cultural work environments. As a result, employees today no longer work in the comforts of their national cultures but also work across cultures around the globe. There is a growing body of literature in management on the globalization phenomenon and highlights the growing need to plan for such cross-cultural work environments. An example of one of the most intense cross-culture experiences is the foreign work assignments, namely the ‘expatriate experience’. The objective of this paper is to study how expatriate adaptation occurs using the lens of experiential learning in a cross cultural environment. This study presents the case of expatriates working in an American firm’s fully owned subsidiary located in India. The results of the research go beyond the initial research lens and bring forward interesting insights for the field of organizational learning and knowledge management.