Religiosity And Job Performance Among Muslim Self-Initiated Expatriates In Malaysia’s Service Sector: The Mediating Role Of Cross-Cultural Adjustment
Loading...
Date
2021-03
Authors
Segaran, Ramya Ranee Konna
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Abstract
The significant aspect of the expatriation process is the expatriates’ job performance in the host country and the cross-cultural adjustment to the socio-cultural environment. Expatriates’ by and large, come from quite different socio-cultural backgrounds and different work conditions. It is interesting yet a problematic phenomenon to study their job performance and their adjustment to the new socio-cultural milieu, work environment and adoption to innovation in professional arenas. Thus, this research analyse the effect of religiosity (cognitive, affective and behavioural) and the job performance through cross-cultural adjustment (cognitive, affective and behavioural) as an mediating variable to the specific type of expatriate population – namely, on 204 Muslim Self-Initiated Expatriate (SIE) in a host country whose population is predominantly of the same religious background as the SIE. This research used a questionnaire as the method of data collection. Whereas, the analysis method used Structural Equation Modelling (SEM), SmartPLS v.3.0. The result of this research showed that the first path relationship between cognitive religiosity, affective religiosity, behavioural religiosity and job performance of SIE were significant. Next, the findings of the second path relationship indicated that there is a positive relationship between cognitive religiosity and cognitive adjustment, affective adjustment, and behavioural adjustment. Affective religiosity was found to have no relation with cross-cultural adjustment. The relationship between behavioural religiosity, cognitive adjustment, and affective adjustment was shown to be non-existent; however, there was a positive relationship between behavioural religiosity and behavioural adjustment. The third path relationship investigated in this study was the relationship between cross-cultural adjustment and job performance. Out of three hypotheses, only cognitive adjustment had a positive and significant relationship with job performance. Meanwhile, cognitive adjustment has a mediating effect on the relationship between cognitive religiosity and the job performance of Muslim SIE. The findings of this study demonstrate two important implications. First, the theoretical contribution is that the research highlight that the extent of an SIE’s commitment to religious value and belief have important implication on job performance. Besides that, the research framework contributes knowledge to the literature on person-environment fit theory and self-determination theory and with the measurement scale demonstrates good psychometric properties and is a promising tool for the measurement of religiosity among Muslim SIE in majority Muslim host-country settings. Secondly, the practical contribution of this research servers as a guide to Muslim-majority host countries as a whole on how to enhance Muslim SIEs’ job performance.
Description
Keywords
Management