Cultural Adaptation Factors and States
2
Factors of Culture Adaptation and Adaptation States
In a Multicultural Organization
Abstract
Most adaptation research focuses on immigrants’ experience adapting into the
host culture. In light of the growing globalization of world economy and the fact that
more companies are setting up branches around the world, we would like to address the
issue of cultural adaptation for employees in a multicultural organization. Samsung-
Tijuana Park is the site for a Korean electronic company and its manufacture site in the
U.S.-Mexican border city of Tijuana. One the one hand, Koreans move to Mexico and
face a real sense of cultural adaptation into the host culture. On the other, local Mexican
employees also need to adapt to the Korean organization culture. Through a search in
previous literature on culture adaptation, we determined four factors about the
individual’s conditions: preparation, expectation, communication skills, and time in
contact with the second culture. Many adaptation models use stages to represent the
process, therefore, we summarized four states: anticipation, peak, valley, and smooth. We
treated these eight concepts as variables and focused our study on finding possible
correlations among them. Results show a general tendency for positive factors such as
preparation and communication abilities to be positively correlated to positive states of
adaptation such as peak and smooth. Consequently, there is a negative correlation
between these positive factors and the valley state, which is the most obvious negative
state. The similar patterns of correlation for both the Korean and Mexican cultural groups
suggest that adaptation takes place when both parties are involved in the effort. We use
the term “co-acculturation.” Limitations and future directions are discussed.
Convention