Feeling secure in the motherland: the role of home country attachment styles on preference for working overseas
Dawn Chow, Gary Ting Tat Ng, Hayden Kam, Ying-yi HongPurpose
Underpinned by the cultural attachment theory (Hong, 2017), this study examines the importance of home country (or home domicile) attachment styles on people's preference to stay or leave their home country/domicile to work overseas.
Design/methodology/approach
We conducted two studies (total N = 965), one in Singapore and one in Hong Kong, places with contrasting socio-political contexts. Hypotheses were tested through regression analyses.
Findings
While secure attachment to home domicile was associated with a lower preference for working overseas, dismissive attachment was associated with a higher preference. These associations remained significant after controlling for respondents' openness to experience and cultural adaptability in the Singaporean sample, whereas the effects for secure attachment remained robust even after controlling for political orientations and identifications with Hong Kong and China in the Hong Kong sample.
Originality/value
Our findings contribute to the literature by identifying home country attachment styles as a distinct psychological factor predicting mobility intentions. They also contribute to research on talent management and global talent management by suggesting that employees with different home country attachment styles may offer different forms of value to multinational enterprises: those high in dismissive attachment may be more open to expatriation assignments, whereas those high in secure attachment may support local talent retention. Still, as both studies were conducted among university students in Singapore and Hong Kong, caution is warranted when generalizing the findings to other populations and geographical contexts.