Travel and living abroad good for developing better managers

This creativity effect was even more pronounced in students who had made an effort to adapt to their host countries.

In a study of 133 students from 40 countries (15 of whom held dual citizenships), we found that creative enhancement was significantly higher for students who said they had adapted to the foreign countries while they lived there than for students who said they had not.

A subsequent study reinforced the finding. Israeli managers working in Silicon Valley who had incorporated both Israeli and American cultures into their personal identities (such people are called biculturals) had better professional reputations and got promoted faster than managers who identified themselves with only one culture or the other (monoculturals).

When we measured the ability of these managers to see and integrate multiple perspectives on different issues —what psychologists call “integrative complexity” – we found that bicultural managers scored higher, and it was this enhanced integrative complexity that led to better job performance.

In another study, we found that biculturals were more likely than monoculturals to create new products.

Expatriate programmes are good for developing better managers, our research suggests.

We believe that companies could make them even better by ensuring that expats are not cocooned from the local culture during their stints abroad.

The more expats interact with locals and local institutions, the more creative and entrepreneurial they’ll become.

Maddux is a professor at Insead, Galinsky is a professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, and Tadmor is a professor at Tel Aviv University.