bout de papier, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1985) — March 1985 // Mars 1985, pp. 11–12
McGill University Professor of Management, Nancy Adler, recently completed a study of the lives of spouses whose husbands were posted abroad by their companies. Sponsored in part by the U.S. Peace Corps, Proctor and Gamble and CIDA, Professor Adler interviewed more than 200 wives. bout de papier invited Professor Adler to share her study with us and in this issue we begin a two-part series of excerpts from her book International Dimensions of Organization Behaviour (Boston: Kent Publishing, 1985). This issue will look at the background to the posting abroad and the initial encounter of the wife with foreign posting: part two will examine the transition to life abroad and the subsequent readjustment on return to Canada.
In an international move, the role of the spouse is the most difficult role for any family member. While employees have the structure of the job and company that continue from the home to the foreign country, and the children have the continuity and routine of school, spouses often must give up their friends and activities. More and more frequently today, spouses must also leave a job or career in order to follow their partners to the foreign country. Spouses lose both the structure and the continuity in their life.
Dissatisfaction of the spouse, often leading to early return, is the single most important reason for failure on an overseas assignment. Nearly half the companies surveyed have brought familes home early due to the unwillingness, or inability, of the spouse to adapt. The average cost to the company to repatriating an executive and the family exceeds $100,000.
The experience of international employees differs quite markedly from that of the spouse. The spouse’s cultural immersion exceeds that of the employee; the challenges for successful adjustment are both different and greater. The reason is not that all spouses are women: rather, very few-married women have been sent overseas in expatriate status and even fewer have been accompanied by a male spouse.
Can the wife turn down an overseas transfer? Although the company and the employee usually believe that the wife has a role in the decision to move overseas, in reality, she rarely does. By the time the company identifies the employees they want to send and announces its decision, it has made a large investment in their acceptance. Subtle pressure mitigates against only discussing the pros and the cons of the move. Employees often feel they would let down the company if they did not accept; the wife feels she would let down her husband. Employees often feel they would hinder their career by saying “no”; the wife hesitates to disagree. Concerns that they could discuss and resolve prior to departure are never mentioned. At a time when communication is critical, open communication is often absent.
Venezuela Bill came home in November and asked me what I thought about moving overseas. I was silent. Then he told me about what a big promotion it would be and what it would mean for the rest of his career. I told him that I was delighted. The company told us about the things to take and the name of an international school. And we were madly busy with the preparations. We left.
Expatriates must not only physically move overseas, they must adjust to the foreign culture and create a meaningful life overseas. Much attention is paid generally to the logistics of the transfer itself: what should be packed, which shipper used, where to stay upon arrival, an so on. Less attention is paid to acquiring the skills necessary for adjusting to the foreign country: good language training, a knowledge of the culture and its people, and an awareness of culturally-based differences in values, attitudes, and behaviors. Least attention is paid to assisting the spouse in creating a meaningful portable life overseas. While not a potent issue for either the employee or the children, the structureless role of the spouse demands explicit attention; if she is to have a fulfilling life overseas, she must design it.
When wives move overseas, they come into more direct contact with the “foreignness” of the new culture than do employees. Employees have the continuity of the company and their job. For the wives, everything changes. Employees generally work with the most internationally sophisticated strata of society; they meet people who speak English and have met foreigners before. Wives meet much less sophisticated people. Whether in personally taking care of the family’s daily living needs or in arranging for servants to perform household tasks — shopping, cleaning, schooling, medical care, and other services – wives meet people who do not speak Enlgish and have never met foreigners. Whereas employees often have secretaries and local colleagues to translate the language and explain the foreign customs, the wife must depend on her own skills and ingenuity. Whereas employees work in an office filled with other expatriates to answer their questions and share their frustrations, the wife often finds herself isolated in her home world. She must confront the differences on her own.
Many wives feel unprepared for their move. They know little about the country, the culture, or the specific location. Their expectations and the foreign reality have little in common. Upon arrival, they often react with surprise and excitement mixed with bewilderment and fear:
Guinea Well, my expectations were very, how would I say, very large. For me, Africa was … totally unknown.. except that I could equate it with wild animals, missionaries, nice black people and a very different way of life than in Canada… I didn’t question anything. I was very young, just married, and very happy to discover a new country. I could imagine that they had modern cities, that Conakry would be a modern city with all the amenities, asked no questions and just left. Finally I arrived at … this hazy airport… I got off the plane, and there were… all of these black faces which I wasn’t really used to in such mass. So I said, “It’s so good to be here and I am so looking forward to getting into the house…. (My husband) didn’t know how to say it, but he said, “But we don’t have a house.” So I burst into tears. I guess it was just the whole stress of thinking that finally I was going to be in a house, and the jet lag, and just being in a completely different culture and a completely different color.
(continued on page 12)
Millions of sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings bombard expatriates without them knowing which are meaningful and which can be ignored. During the first few months in a foreign culture, expatriates often find that other people’s behavior does not make sense, and even more disconcerting, that their own behavior does not produce expected results. The wives, being in more direct contact with the foreign culture than the employees, were often surprised, bewildered, and disoriented:
Guinea…. Well, then we went into our building, a very modern building. We were on the ninth floor, and the building was with no elevators. So we had to walk the nine floors. And then we arrived in this beautiful, huge apartment, with three bathrooms and no water…
Hong Kong. Before I went to Hong Kong, I’d read a lot of books. I expected the Chinese to be dignified and very courteous. The Cantonese in Hong Kong are the opposite of that. They are very noisy and… very pushy. In Argentina I expected the romantic Latin. Instead, I was annoyed at the “macho-ness” men. The reality… was disappointing.
The first few months in a foreign culture are rarely easy. Frustration follows surprise
– the constant frustration of not understanding and not being able to get simple things done. It’s the constant minor frustrations … the phone never works, the electric power is variable, and oh yes, filling the water bottles at 4 a.m., just to be sure that we’d have some water… We were not aware of the fact that everything seems to be done through a bribe. We were insulted when it was suggested. I think we just didn’t understand the culture. So we waited from January until May before our furniture was sprung from customs. Things can be very very difficult… (say) you have to put on a dinner party: dinner parties are very important because there is not very much entertainment, so you have to make your own entertainment. You have ten people coming, and there is no electricity, and you have just put the roast in the oven. Right, what do you do? And it’s pouring with rain outside so you can’t make a bar-bque. So you raid the cupboard and find a tin of ham, and you find some tomatoes, and then you find this and that, and you all have a good giggle. You know, really, there is no other way of doing it. You can’t get depressed about these things.
While the newness of the environment in large part causes the difficulties, they are exacerbated by insufficient language competence, loneliness, boredom and a sense of meaninglessness.
While most employes have less immediate need for foreign language competence than do the wives, many organizations only offer language training to employees. They expect the wife to enroll in language courses if she so desires, and often not at company expense. Consequently, many women never become fluent in the foreign language and, therefore, have little possibility of becoming fully comfortable living in the culture.
Italy. I think the most difficult thing when you arrive in a country is not being able to communicate. You feel very isolated because you don’t speak the language. So everything becomes very difficult; all small details, everyday life is difficult because you don’t know how to communicate.
The lack of intimate friendships causes a major part of the difficulty of the initial period abroad. Most wives leave their family and friends at home and experience a void upon arrival overseas. The loneliness expresses itself in a number of ways:
I spent more time alone than anywhere ever… It’s hard to spend so much time alone.
We had a lot of acquaintances, few good friends…. You can’t make friends until you’ve learned the language.
Many of the wives describe themselves as having hours and hours on their hands with nothing to do. They describe themselves as living in gilded cages; they have nice homes and servants to do the work but they do not have a meaningful role to fulfill. They no longer feel needed to perform many of the duties that they had previously fulfilled for their families, and, in addition, most are barred from working or continuing careers outside of the home.
I was going to be a nurse, but I had to have a work permit… So I threw myself into the women’s club. bridge and golf, empty activities, but they filled my time.
After the novelty wears off, you have to find something to do with your time. I worked in a hospital, cooked, gardened…. I want to work again. (Continued next issue) A
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 3, No. 1 (1985) — March 1985 // Mars 1985, pp. 11–12. Read the rest of this issue →
