Job resources and demands for expatriate academics: Linking teacher-student relations, intercultural adjustment, and job satisfaction

Purpose: While there is a growing interest in expatriate academics, their specific role as teachers with daily contact to local students seems to have been largely ignored when examining their adjustment and work outcomes. Based on the job demands-resources model the authors predict that good teacher-student relations, as a supportive job resource, will have a positive effect on expatriate academics’ job satisfaction. This effect, however, will be even stronger for individuals experiencing high job demands and challenges in terms of intercultural job adjustment. In other words, expatriate academics that have difficulties adjusting will benefit more from the social support that can originate from good relations to their students. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: The authors surveyed expatriate academics adjusting to a university position in China by use of 124 responses from foreign university employees. Findings: The authors found that teacher-student relations had a positive association with job satisfaction and that positive teacher-student relations increased job satisfaction more for individuals being slow to adjust. Originality/value: This is one of the few papers to explore the impact that students can have on expatriate academics and treat this relationship as a potential resource for universities to capitalize upon in socializing their new foreign academic staff members.