How you see me, how you don’t: ethnic identity self-verification in interactions between local subsidiary employees and ethnically similar expatriates
本文研究跨国公司中，与当地员工同族群的外派人员面临的独特身份挑战，指出双方对族群身份重要性看法不一致会威胁互动，并基于自我验证理论分析影响因素与后果。
Multinational corporations often assign expatriates who share an ethnicity with host country employees (termed ethnically similar expatriates) to work on international assignments. Although sharing an ethnicity with local employees can be an advantage, it also creates a unique identity challenge. In this article, we develop the argument that ethnic similarity might in fact threaten expatriate-local employee interactions if the two parties hold divergent views towards the importance of expatriates’ ethnic identity in their interactions. Drawing on self-verification theory, we explain why people desire to achieve congruence between how they view their own identity and how others view this identity. Subsequently, we identify key cultural and personal constraints affecting expatriates’ efforts to achieve ethnic identity self-verification. We also illustrate how unfulfilled ethnic identity self-verification affects ethnically similar expatriates, local employees and their interactions. Our study, thus, introduces a new angle to understand expatriate-local employee interactions and advances self-verification research by demonstrating the challenges in achieving ethnic identity self-verification when two social parties share an ethnicity.