Conditional altruism: Effects of HRM practices on the willingness of host-country nationals to help expatriates

The assistance of host-country nationals (HCNs) both within the workplace and in the externalenvironment plays a significant role in expatriate adjustment and work performance on interna-tional assignments. Extant research exploring antecedents of HCNs' attitudes and behaviorstoward expatriates focuses on personal and intrapersonal factors but overlooks organizationalcontextual effects. In this study, we propose and test a model that HCNs' willingness to helpexpatriates is influenced by HRM practices in international subsidiaries of multinational enter-prises (MNEs). Results of analyzing data collected from Chinese subsidiaries of South KoreanMNEs showed that high-commitment HRM practices directly and indirectly influence HCNs'willingness to help expatriates through the mediation of perceived organizational support(POS). Socially responsible HRM indirectly influences the criterion variable through the media-tion of organizational identification. Moreover, POS and organizational identification sequen-tially mediate the effect of high-commitment HRM on HCNs' willingness to help expatriates.These findings shed some light on organizational antecedents that go beyond personal andintrapersonal factors of HCN attitudes and behavior toward expatriates.