The Effects of Hardiness and Cultural Distance on Sociocultural Adaptation in an Expatriate Sales Manager Population

International corporations are increasingly concerned about expatriate executive attrition. There is an urgent need to develop methods for identifying the antecedents to successful expatriate performance. In choosing sales managers for international assignments, special attention should be paid to the candidate’s psychological hardiness and cultural distance between the home and host countries. An empirical study was conducted based on 544 responses from expatriate sales managers originating from 62 countries who are serving in 77 different countries around the globe. Using hierarchical regression, the authors tested main effects of both cultural distance and psychological hardiness on the sales manager’s ability to adapt to a new cultural environment. In addition, psychological hardiness was tested as a moderator of the relationship between cultural distance and sociocultural adaptation. Results suggest that practitioners now include both scales as determinants for justification when selecting expatriate sales assignments. Practically speaking, with both global cultural distance and hardiness scores in hand, companies can better select appropriate personnel who will be able to cope with cultural differences in international placements. Finally, this research provides the first known scholarly study of psychological hardiness in the marketing and sales literature.