Page - (000071) - in Knowledge and Networks

62 support received from other foreigners living in the respective country was not suffi cient to assure a sojourner’s well-being. Support from home was actually counterproductive for satisfaction with the sojourn. Findings (Podsiadlowski et al., 2013 ) emphasized the importance of receiving considerable socioemotional support from host-country nationals for a successful international assignment. The Role of Personal Initiative Personal Initiative is defi ned as a behavioral syndrome relating to individuals with an active, self-initiated approach to work that exceeds normal work behavior. Personal initiative is characterized by the following aspects (Frese, Kring, Soose, & Zempel, 1996 ): it is consistent with the organization’s mission, has long-term focus, is goal-directed and action-oriented, is persistent in the face of barriers and set- backs, and is self-starting and proactive. Social support and personal initiative have a strong relationship with successful work adjustment. A study carried out by Stroppa and Spieß in 2011 adapted components of Fay and Frese’s ( 2001 ) nomological network of personal initiative and Caligiuri and Lazarova’s ( 2002 ) model for the infl uence of social support on adjustment. On this basis the authors developed and tested a model for the relationship between per- sonal initiative, social support, and work adjustment. One hundred twenty-seven respondents answered an online questionnaire during and after their foreign sojourn. The study demonstrated that personal initiative moderates the relationship between social support from coworkers and job performance . Results showed that personal initiative of the expatriates and social support received from supervisors—but not from their coworkers—predicted job satisfaction, job stress, and job performance of the expatriates. The fact that personal initiative had a main effect on all three indica- tors of successful work adjustment indicates that it is a very important predictor for successful adjustment. Consequences for the Intercultural Learning Process Increasing internationalization demands intercultural action. From a psychological point of view, this interaction is special because it involves an overlapping situation. When meeting people of another culture one is in one’s own culture as well as in another culture. The paradox is to adapt in a situation in which one becomes particu- larly aware of belonging to another culture (Lewin, 1963 ). This requires special preparation and training workshops. The intercultural learning process can be described by the construct of intercul- tural sensitivity. Bennett’s ( 1998 ) Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS) consists of three ethnocentric stages (denial, defense, minimization) and three ethnorelative stages (acceptance, adaptation, integration) constituting a contin- E. Spieß