Faire sens de l'ajustement des expatries: L'importance du contexte

Over the past 40 years, in response to the global expansion in the number of companies using expatriates, a range of scholars have investigated various aspects of expatriate adjustment. Rarely, has this scholarship focused on the role of specific national and organisational cultural contexts or the adjustment process. This conceptual paper aims to address these limitations in order to enhance understanding of how the cultural context of expatriation influences how expatriates make sense of the new cultural situations they encounter as part of the process of their adjustment. To this end, we develop a conceptual framework that links national and organisational cultures to Weick’s inter-subjective, generic-subjective and extra-subjective levels of sensemaking. We then use these concepts to explore the way culture influences how expatriates notice, interpret and act upon new and surprising situations and events in their new workplaces. We argue that the concept of sensemaking enables a deeper and contextualised understanding of the expatriate adjustment process in organisations.