The Expatriate Flow Model - Towards understanding Internet usage in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Authors

  • Marie Hattingh

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18489/sacj.v53i0.197

Keywords:

Expatriate, Internet, Culture, Degree of Isolation, Degree of Flow, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Positive Affect

Abstract

Expatriate adjustment research has identified a number of challenges that expatriates experience when adjusting to the host country. These include spousal influence, cultural training/understanding, fluency in the host language and personality or emotional readiness of the expatriate. These challenges are amplified when it is considered in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), which has large cultural distance when compared to an average Western culture and therefore provides a setting for an interesting study. This ongoing study has thus far proposed a theoretical model derived by following Glaser’s Grounded Theory Methodology (GTM). This paper will report on a specific aspect of this proposed model namely the substantive category “degree of flow” which extends the previous discussion of “degree of isolation”. Within the proposed theoretical model, the “degree of flow” experienced by expatriates influences the “degree of isolation” experienced by expatriates. This paper describes how the Flow Theory was operationalized at affective level to aid the understanding of the emotional relationship expatriates in KSA have with the Internet. An expatriate flow model was developed based on the generally accepted three stages of Flow Theory namely: Antecedents to Flow, Experience of Flow and Consequences of Flow.

Downloads

Published

2014-08-29

Issue

Vol. 53 (2014)

Section

Research Papers (general)

License

Copyright of all work published here subsists in the authors. While SACJ retains right of first publication, subsequent re-publication is expressly permitted provided the original SACJ publication is acknowledged and cited, according to the terms detailed below. If plagiarism is detected during review, a paper may be summarily rejected and will not be accepted unless even minor infringements are corrected. Should plagiarism be detected after a paper is published, the Editor reserves the right to withdraw a paper from publication. We expect authors to be honest in representing work as their own, and to respect the time and effort our reviewers put in without an undue burden of policing plagiarism, and hence take violations seriously. SACJ applies the Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial 4.0 License (CC BY-NC 4.0) to all papers published in this journal. Authors who publish with SACJ agree to the following:
  1. Authors retain copyright and grant SACJ right of first publication. The work is additionally licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License that requires others who share the work to acknowledge the work’s authorship and initial publication in SACJ. Should anyone else wish to make commercial use of the work, SACJ cedes the right to the author to negotiate terms and does not expect to be paid any royalties.
  2. Authors may enter into additional arrangements for non-exclusive distribution of the SACJ-published version of the work (e.g., post it to a repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
  3. Authors are required to refrain from posting their work online prior to completion of reviews so as not to compromise double-blind reviewing or confuse plagiarism checks.