Understanding employee xenocentrism in foreign firm employment: a scale development

Despite the growth in the number of foreign firms with subsidiaries or joint ventures in developing countries, no measures of employee xenocentrism exist to guide research into the consequences of such developments from an employee perspective. Affective associations can be expected in any employment decision due to the perceived superiority of the foreign over the domestic. This study aims to develop and test a measure of employee xenocentrism that can help explain why and when employees might prefer working for a foreign company. A multimethod approach was followed to establish the new measure, which has three dimensions: Professional Development, defined as the perception of the development opportunities when working in a developing country for a foreign company; Prestige, the affective status-related advantages of working for a foreign company; and Working Environment, the perceptions of the relative advantages and disadvantages of working for a domestic or foreign company. The measure achieves good validity. It predicts the likelihood of respondents wanting to work for companies from countries with stronger economies or for a domestic company. Its expected relationship with job satisfaction and engagement depends on whether respondents have experience working for a foreign company and how international the respondent is.