The Role of Perceived Organizational Support, Cultural Intelligence and Marital Status in Influencing the Expatriation Willingness of Chinese Teachers

Abstract

Background and Objectives: As globalization increases the demand for internationally mobile professionals, organizations face growing challenges in attracting and retaining qualified personnel for overseas assignments. Among various professional groups, Teachers of Chinese as a Foreign Language (TCFLs) represent a unique category of knowledge-based professionals whose work requires both specialized expertise and cross-cultural adaptability. In particular, little is known about how perceived organizational support (POS) and cultural intelligence jointly shape TCFLs’ willingness to accept expatriate assignments in Thailand. To address this gap, this study examines whether knowledge sharing moderates the relationships between POS, cultural intelligence, and expatriation willingness to Thailand (EWT).

Methodology: Snowball sampling was employed to recruit participants from universities in Sichuan and Yunnan provinces, China. An online questionnaire was distributed to TCFLs in March 2025, yielding 410 responses. After excluding 23 invalid questionnaires, 387 valid responses remained for analysis. This final sample size of 387 slightly exceeds the recommended minimum of 384.16, indicating adequate statistical power for the planned analyses. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted using SPSS 25.0. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted using Mplus 8 to assess construct reliability and validity, including convergent validity, discriminant validity, and model fit.

Main Results: The results indicate that POS significantly enhances EWT. Cultural intelligence partially mediates this relationship. In addition, knowledge sharing weakens the positive effects of POS on both cultural intelligence and EWT. By contrast, the moderating effect of marital status on the relationship between POS and EWT is not statistically significant.

Discussions: This study deepens the understanding of how POS influences EWT among knowledge workers-TCFLs. The mediating role of cultural intelligence suggests that organizational support not only shapes employees’ assignment-related intentions but also enhances their psychological readiness for cross-cultural engagement. The unexpected negative moderating effect of knowledge sharing challenges the common assumption that knowledge sharing is uniformly beneficial. It suggests that excessive or unstructured knowledge exchange may generate concerns regarding professional differentiation, competitive pressure, or uncontrolled disclosure of expertise. These concerns may, in turn, weaken the motivational impact of organizational support. Finally, the non-significant role of marital status suggests that expatriation willingness is driven more by organizational and psychological factors than by demographic characteristics.

Conclusions: Cultural intelligence plays a partial mediating role in the relationship between POS and EWT. However, excessive knowledge sharing may generate concerns over unrestricted disclosure of expertise and create perceptions of burden or competitive tension, thereby reducing EWT. Institutions should therefore encourage knowledge sharing while simultaneously providing adequate emotional support, resources, and structured incentive mechanisms to promote voluntary knowledge exchange and improve expatriation outcomes. These findings have practical implications for organizations managing knowledge workers in China and Thailand. From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the international human resource management and organizational behavior literature by identifying cultural intelligence as a mediating mechanism and knowledge sharing as a boundary condition in the relationship between perceived organizational support and expatriation willingness among professional knowledge workers, with TCFLs serving as the empirical research context.