Growing up among cultures: intercultural competences, personality, and leadership styles of third culture kids

Abstract

The world seems to be increasingly in demand of global leaders with a transformational leadership style who do business across borders with intercultural ease. To identify such leaders, this study explores whether third culture kids (TCKs) (n = 121) compared to non-TCKs (n = 116) exhibit a stronger set of multicultural personality traits and intercultural competences, and whether TCKs compared to non-TCKs, via their multicultural personality traits and intercultural competences, prefer transformational leadership more. Results from group comparisons indicated that TCKs display more intercultural sensitivity than non-TCKs. Parallel mediated regression analyses showed that being a TCK, compared to not being a TCK, had a positive indirect effect on their preference for transformational leadership through open-mindedness, while it had a negative indirect effect on their preference for transformational leadership through flexibility and emotional stability.

Expatriate childhood as the first domino: does early international exposure lead to a later international career?

“…They also had other reasons for aiming for an international career, for example, some participants had a strong will to live abroad as they enjoy the lifestyle. JGM 10,3 This is significant since businesses are increasingly in need of skilled global leaders (De Waal and Born, 2020). As a third implication, the childhood time abroad seems to foster high career goals and performance expectations, and all of the interviewed ATCKs were interested in international work opportunities in various forms.…”

The global chameleons: the impact of early life international exposure on the career capital of adult third culture kids

“…The majority of expatriates have children and most take their families abroad with them ( Van der Zee et al, 2007). There are thus a significant number of adults who have developed international expertise during their parents' international assignment (De Waal and Born, 2020;Tarique and Weisbord, 2013) when living abroad during their developmental years, when people are at a highly receptive age (Pollock et al, 2017). One of the greatest human resource challenges in multinational organizations lies in finding skilled people for international roles (Kirk, 2021), and it has been recognized that such people could be an important recruitment pool for multinational corporations or companies (MNCs) (Nash, 2020;Westropp et al, 2016).…”

“…Another set of studies has underlined the advantages of a TCK background, such as their possible talent potential for becoming future expatriates as adults (Bonebright, 2010;Selmer and Lam, 2004;Westropp et al, 2016). Research on the development of TCKs has mainly focused on the development of cross-cultural competences (De Waal and Born, 2020;Tarique and Weisbord, 2013). However, we could expect that their time abroad offers a wider scope of developmental experiences for expatriate children, similar to those reported among expatriates Jokinen, 2010) and their partners (Kanstr en and Suutari, 2021), which can also have long-term impacts on their later work life and career choices (Caselius and M€ akel€ a, 2022).…”

“…, 2007). There are thus a significant number of adults who have developed international expertise during their parents' international assignment (De Waal and Born, 2020; Tarique and Weisbord, 2013) when living abroad during their developmental years, when people are at a highly receptive age (Pollock et al. , 2017).…”

“…, 2016). Research on the development of TCKs has mainly focused on the development of cross-cultural competences (De Waal and Born, 2020; Tarique and Weisbord, 2013). However, we could expect that their time abroad offers a wider scope of developmental experiences for expatriate children, similar to those reported among expatriates (Dickmann et al.…”