Page - (000063) - in Knowledge and Networks

54 his or her job. A lack of appreciation for returnees by company and home colleagues has been observed as a problem during the return phase (Kupka, Everett, & Cathro, 2008 ; Szkudlarek, 2010 ). To facilitate adjustment during the sojourn, some large corporations institute comprehensive mentoring programs embedded in personnel development measures and processes (Noe, Greenberger, & Wang, 2002 ). Hechanova, Beehr, and Christiansen’s ( 2003 ) meta-analysis described the antecedents and consequences of the adjustment of transferees on foreign assignment. Self -effi cacy —the belief in one’s ability to act, the frequency of interaction with people from the host country, interpersonal skills, and family support proved to be the main predictors for successful adjustment to the entire environment. For instance, Wang and Kanungo ( 2004 ) demonstrated that the role of interper- sonal networks is often neglected, although it has a direct and signifi cant positive infl uence on the transferee’s well-being. Caligiuri and Lazarova ( 2002 ) developed a model showing the relationship between social network, social support, and adjust- ment. They assumed that social interaction and social support (e.g., family mem- bers, coworkers in the country of sojourn, transferees from home and other countries) could help activate psychological resources with the capacity to intensify recogni- tion and confi rmation, attributes that in turn can substantially improve intercultural adjustment . Social support can act as a buffer against stress that usually occurs as the transferee tries to adjust to the new environment. Successful intercultural adjust- ment is closely related to network partners and social support. In the following I present Kurt Lewin’s fi eld theory as a theoretical framework for my discussion of networks, social support in different fi elds of application, and personal initiative and for my examination of the relationship between social support and work adjustment. In conclusion results are considered regarding their specifi c meaning for the intercultural learning process and within the framework of fi eld theory. Theoretical Framework Lewin’s fi eld theory is an important model for explaining economic action in sig- nifi cant fi elds of application. The central idea of Lewin’s theory is that people are drawn to some things in their environment and repelled by others. In the Lewinian sense, all actors are situated in a fi eld: They act, bring things into motion, infl uence others, launch campaigns, and are, for their part, exposed to various, even antago- nistic behavioral forces. The advantage of the concept of fi eld is its understanding that a person exists in a fi eld of tensions, with the tensile and pressure forces within the fi eld enabling a description of human behavior. In contrast to behaviorism’s mechanistic image, fi eld theory assumes that a person is active, perceiving and assessing his or her surroundings (Lewin, 1943 , 1951/ 1963 ). Lewin ( 1939 ) regards the psychological environment functionally as “a part of one interdependent fi eld, the life-space, the other part of which is the person” (p. 878). He expresses this in E. Spieß