Social support is the provision of beneficial help for at least two individuals and is intended to buffer psychological distress and positively associate with emotional well-being (Copeland & Norell, 2002; Kim, Kirkman, & Chen, 2008) . Social support literature suggests that support from diverse sources (i.e., originations, supervisors, and colleagues) can promote an individual’s work adjustment by reducing psychological distress in multi-cultural situations (Kupka & Cathro, 2007; Viswesvaran, Sanchez, & Fisher, 1999) . Among the most prominent stress factors that expatriates struggle with is the loss of social support provided by the organization with which they are associated, as well as family and friends (Harvey, 1995: p. 226) . Yet, it is not only the loss of close family and friends but also the deprivation of the entire community at their home base that many expatriated families have to cope with. There is an argument that social support can be applied to expatriate adjustment during international assignments when the expatriate can gain emotional support from organizations and a supervisor in the form of host country nationals or peer expatriates (Caligiuri & Lazarova, 2002; Kraimer et al., 2001) . Therefore, these two facets (i.e., perceived organizational support and supervisor support) are adopted for this study. Perceived organizational support is defined as employees’ belief that the organization’s actions affect their obligation to aid the organization and care about their well-being (Eisenberger, Huntington, & Sowa, 1986) . When employees believe their contribution is valued and respected by the organization for which they work, they are likely to devote themselves to their assignments positively, increasing loyalty and keeping their promises because of higher rewards and better job satisfaction. Research on leader-member exchange and socialization has indicated the importance of employee attitudes and feelings being influenced by their supervisors. Supervisors act as bridges between organizations and subordinates and are responsible for directing and evaluating their subordinates’ performance (Fusilier, Ganster, & Mayes, 1986; Kraimer et al., 2001) . Employees view their supervisor’s favorable or unfavorable orientation toward them as indicative of the organization’s support (Eisenberger et al., 1986) . If employees perceive their supervisor’s support to include an evaluation of and concern for their well-being, this will affect their commitment and loyalty to the organization. Other scholars have also argued that perceived organizational support may be an important determinant of employee adjustment following a transfer (Payne, 1980) .

Cultural intelligence plays an important role in developing cross-cultural relationships because individuals with high CQ enjoy interacting with people from different cultural backgrounds (Mendenhall & Oddou, 1985) . CQ represents an individual’s capability for successful adaption to new cross-cultural settings (Alon & Higgins, 2005) , and it is particularly relevant to the working conditions of expatriates dealing with international assignments about handling pressures that are placed on decision makers (Elenkov & Manev, 2009) . There are four facets of CQ: metacognitive CQ, cognitive CQ, motivational CQ, and behavioral CQ (Ang & Van Dyne, 2008) . Metacognitive CQ refers to an individual’s ability to understand a new cultural environment effectively (Ang et al., 2007) . Cognitive CQ refers to “specific knowledge people can gain and comprehend about a new culture based on various cues provided” (Earley & Ang, 2003: p. 91) . Motivational CQ refers to an individual’s level of self-determination to satisfy the need to direct and sustain energy on a particular task or problem-solving in varying cross-cultural situations (Elenkov & Manev, 2009; Wu & Ang, 2011) . Lastly, behavioral CQ refers to an individual’s ability to be sensitive regarding adjusting to a new multicultural setting and having the flexibility to act effectively (Elenkov & Manev, 2009) . Overall, cultural intelligence (CQ) is defined as an individual’s ability to identify or behave appropriately in a new culture (Ang & Van Dyne, 2008) . Expatriates may need to rely on themselves to cope with foreign assignments’ stressful and uncertain circumstances (Aryee, Chay, & Chew, 1996) . Understanding why expatriates from different backgrounds act as they do relates to a primary part of human thinking—cultural intelligence (CQ)—as the capability to solve problems and adapt to a new and changing environment (Lee & Sukoco, 2010) . Earley and Ang (2003) proposed a CQ approach to capture the capability to adapt across cultures.

The cross-cultural adjustment framework developed by Black (1988) argued that cross-cultural adjustment is conceptualized as the degree of psychological comfort an expatriate has with the various aspects of a host culture (Van, Pater, Kristof-Brown, & Johnson, 2004) . Cultural adjustment has been distinguished in the literature by Black and Stephens (1989) and has been said to consist of three dimensions: general, work, and interaction adjustment. General adjustment refers to the degree of association with general factors such as living conditions, climate, facilities, food, and transportation (Wu & Ang, 2011) . Work adjustment is defined as the degree of comfort with working conditions related to job responsibilities and performance. Interaction adjustment focuses on the extent of socialization with local co-workers in the host-cultural environment. When an expatriate is adjusted to these dimensions, they experience satisfaction and perceived acceptance from hosts and can function during everyday activities without severe stress (Brislin, 1981) . In practice, most MNCs select managers as expatriates according to their technical skills. However, research evidence suggests that many management skills must still be transferred from a domestic country to the host country. Managers who perform well in the domestic setting may need help to adapt to managing in a different cultural environment or even living in intimate contact with members of another culture. In contrast, research has suggested that the major contributing factor to expatriate failure is an inability to adjust to the host cultural environment rather than a lack of technical competence (Andreason, 2003b) . Black, Mendenhall and Oddou (1991) argued that adjustment can be applied to different situations. Through their adjustment in a host country, managers can manage subordinates in a manner that leads to agreement between subordinates and managers and supports completing tasks that lead to achieving goals. Therefore, this study focuses on how the two variables, adjustment to work and interaction with local people, affect expatriate performance in working environments.

Performance is essential for organizational success (Day, Therrien, & Carroll, 2005) and effectiveness (Ohly & Fritz, 2010) . Performance refers to the degree to which an employee meets the known expectations and requirements of his or her role as an individual (Pulakos, Arad, Donovan, & Plamondon, 2000) . The theory of job performance has indicated that job performance consists of task and contextual dimensions (Borman & Motowidlo, 1997) . Task performance is the expected behaviors that indirectly support an organization’s core technical processes. Contextual performance helps shape the organizational, social, and psychological conditions that support task activities in the host country’s workplace (Borman & Motowidlo, 1997) . Theorists have argued that psychological stress can perniciously affect work performance (Cohen, 1980) . Parallel arguments have been made about international assignments. For example, Shaffer et al. (2001) contended that well-adjusted expatriates will have greater personal resources (time, effort, and emotional investment) to spend on the behaviors that facilitate their job performance. Models of the “criterion space” in international human resource management (Ones & Viswesvaran, 1997) have suggested that fulfilling specific task requirements and maintaining relationships with host and home country nationals are the core facets of expatriate performance.

Individuals more capable of adapting to social support tend to be better adjusted in a cross-cultural environment (Aryee et al., 1996; Wu & Ang, 2011) . According to Forster (1997) , expatriates with a lower ability to adapt to new cross-cultural environments will have poorer performance and increased psychological stress. If expatriates need more support from organizations and supervisors, their adjustment can easily fail and result in reassignment (Andreason, 2003a) . In contrast, expatriates who get more resources and support from their organizations and colleagues may be better able to adjust to a new host culture (Andreason, 2003a; Shaffer et al., 1999) . Such support can also provide newly arrived expatriates with valuable information about what behaviors are acceptable or unacceptable in a new cultural environment (Andreason, 2003b) . Social support during an international assignment is one of the most critical determinants influencing cross-cultural adjustment (Aycan & Kanungo, 1997; Black et al., 1991) .

The provision of support provided by organizations and supervisors is expected to be particularly important regarding its contribution to reducing problems encountered in the host environment, which may influence expatriate commitment to their adjustment and assignments (Wu & Ang, 2011) . Social support helps mobilize psychological resources and provides feelings of reinforcement, recognition, and affirmation (Rook, 1984) that may greatly enhance expatriates’ cross-cultural adjustment to a new environment (Andreason, 2003a) . Empirically, social support is a significant positive predictor of expatriate adjustment (Shaffer et al., 1999) . The role of perceived social support from host-country nationals for the adjustment of expatriates and their spouses while on international assignments (Abdul Malek, Budhwar, & Reiche, 2015) . Social support is one of the most critical predictors of expatriates’ cross-cultural adjustment (Bayraktar, 2019; Khedher & Asadullah, 2020) . Other empirical evidence reveals that support from their organizations relates positively to expatriate adjustment, assignment completion, and increased job satisfaction (Sokro, Pillay, & Bednall, 2021) . Therefore, when expatriates gain social support from the host and home country nationals, this support helps them to adjust to their assignments successfully. Then, the following hypothesis is proposed:

Hypothesis 1: Social support has a positive influence on expatriate adjustment.

Social support can interact and intervene to ensure that expatriates are cross-culturally adjusted, enhancing their job performance (Andreason, 2003a) . Some researchers have found that such support (perceived organizational support and supervisor support) is an important buffer against stress at work that can further influence employee attitudes and job performance (Andreason, 2003b; Kraimer & Wayne, 2004; Kraimer et al., 2001) . Other scholars have also indicated that perceived organizational support is one of the primary factors in predicting expatriate adjustment (Caligiuri, 2000; Shaffer et al., 1999) . Social support is critical in enhancing expatriate adjustment and performance (Lee et al., 2014) . According to perceived organizational support theory, social support may impact expatriates’ work adjustment, affective commitment, and job performance (Kawai & Strange, 2014) . Perceived organizational support is presented by the positive relationship with expatriate task performance (Na-Nan & Ngudgratoke, 2017) . In the context of social support (i.e., perceived organizational support) from key stakeholders, it is associated with the performance of expatriates (Fee & Gray, 2022) . Social support can further reduce the repatriation intention and lead them to perform better (Gao, Luo, Yang, Zhang, & Deng, 2023) . Consequently, this study proposes the following research hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: Social support has a positive influence on expatriate performance.

Cross-cultural adjustment has been suggested to be a key determinant of expatriate success in international assignment contexts (Templer et al., 2006) . CQ represents a person’s capability to adapt effectively to new cultural contexts in the host nation. At the same time, individuals with higher levels of CQ may expect to adjust better to new cultural environments experienced during their foreign assignments (Kim et al., 2008) . The degree of adjustment can be higher when expatriates have higher CQ that reflects an increased ability to acquire or adapt behaviors appropriate for a new culture (Earley & Mosakowski, 2004) .

Metacognitive and cognitive CQ can influence expatriates’ task performance concerning areas that require higher levels of culture-related cognitive processing and more knowledge about different cultural backgrounds in the host country (Kim et al., 2008) . According to theories of motivation (Kanfer & Ackerman, 2000) , motivational CQ can influence expatriate performance because of the motivational states inherent in CQ (namely, task-specific self-efficacy in cross-cultural settings). Individuals who have a strong sense of self-efficacy will facilitate cognitive processes and performance in a variety of settings, such as those requiring a high quality of decision-making, goal setting, and academic achievement, and will, in turn, achieve high levels of job performance (Bandura, 1977; Albert Bandura, Barbaranelli, Caprara, & Pastorelli, 2001; Luszczynska & Schwarzer, 2005) . Lastly, the social learning theory can explain how behavioral CQ influences expatriate performance (Bandura, 1977) . Social learning theory has proposed that experiencing interaction with other groups of employees through learning about different cultural backgrounds (Tariques & Takeuchi, 2008) will influence work performance (Ang et al., 2007; Templer et al., 2006) . In previous expatriate literature, CQ has been found to have a positive impact on cross-cultural adjustment (Bhaskar-Shrinivas, Harrison, Shaffer, & Luk, 2005; Hechanova, Beehr, & Christiansen, 2003; Shaffer, Harrison, Gregersen, Black, & Ferzandi, 2006) . The relationship between motivational CQ and cross-cultural adjustment has been found by Templer et al. (2006) to be the positive effect of motivational and behavioral CQ on general, interactional, and work adjustment (Ang et al., 2007) .

In sum, multiple facets of CQ can influence expatriates’ performance and adjustment. This statement has also been proven by recent studies that have proposed that four aspects of CQ have a positive effect on expatriate performance and adjustment outcomes in multicultural situations (Ang & Van Dyne, 2008; Kim et al., 2008; Lee & Sukoco, 2010; Shaffer & Miller, 2008) . Very few studies have empirically confirmed their research propositions, and some have inconsistent findings (Ang et al., 2007; Lee & Sukoco, 2010; Sri Ramalu, Wei, & Che, 2011) .

Using similar logic, this study posits that a higher level of CQ intelligence influences expatriate performance. Referring to Côté and Miners (2006) , when people can grasp and reason correctly with emotional abstractions and solve their emotional problems, they tend to perform better. According to a review paper conducted by Mol, Born, Willemsen and Van Der Molen (2005) , it was found that cultural sensitivity and flexibility have prominent roles in expatriate performance. When expatriates are more capable of adapting across cultures, they tend to perform better (Lee & Sukoco, 2008) . However, inconsistent findings on the relationship between CQ and expatriate performance have been reported by Lee and Sukoco (2010) , and Sri Ramalu et al. (2011) . Cultural intelligence appears to exert a stronger influence on adjustment outcomes (Han, Sears, Darr, & Wang, 2022) . In this context, cultural intelligence plays an important role in the adjustment of expatriates (Kour & Jyoti, 2022) . By drawing on the cross-cultural adjustment literature and social identity theory (SIT), this study indicated the importance of an expatriate’s identity projects as conditioning mechanisms that extend the theoretical understanding of when an expatriate’s general adjustment (Miocevic & Mikulic, 2023) . Based on this rationale, this study develops the following two hypotheses:

Hypothesis 3: Cultural intelligence has a positive influence on expatriate adjustment.

Hypothesis 4: Cultural intelligence has a positive influence on expatriate performance.

The theory of work adjustment is a key determinant of a successful work relation that tends to create a state of correspondence between individuals and new cultural environmental characteristics (Brett & Werbel, 1980; Dawis & Lofquist, 1984) . In an expatriate context, expatriate adjustment to new cultural situations enhances job satisfaction and performance. This rationale also suggests that expatriate adjustment is positively associated with performance and intent to stay in the host country during international assignments (Caligiuri, 1997; Stahl & Caligiuri, 2005) . Empirically, it has been proven that expatriate adjustment has a positive relationship with job performance (Kraimer et al., 2001; Mol et al., 2005; Sri Ramalu et al., 2011) . Another recent finding by Wu and Ang (2011) indicated that cultural adjustment partially affects expatriate adjustment, but inconsistent findings regarding this assumption were found by Lee and Sukoco (2010) . The theory of work adjustment explains the relationship between cultural adjustment and expatriate performance in terms of (Kai Liao, Wu, Dao, & Ngoc Luu, 2021) . Empirical evidence of expatriate adjustment and performance is positively associated (Sarfraz, Nisar, & Raza, 2023; Wu, Fan, & Dabasia, 2022) . Accordingly, well-adjusted expatriates will have better job performance on international assignments. Thus, it is assumed for this study that when expatriates are well-adjusted to the general environment of a host country, their performance will be similar to that of their home country. Based on the above research discussion, the following hypothesis is developed:

Hypothesis 5: Expatriate adjustment has a positive influence on expatriate performance.

We selected six research instruments that appropriately measure the constructs in our conceptual framework. In previous research, Cronbach’s alpha reliability of all instruments has been shown to be acceptable and valid. Therefore, the questionnaires were prepared for participants from Taiwan region and Chinese mainland to use in Cambodia; a standard translation and back-translation (i.e., English to Chinese and Chinese to English) procedure was performed to validate the meanings of measurement items. A 7-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree; 7 = strongly agree) was adopted for this study. All questionnaire items were adopted from existing literatures in expatriate contexts, as shown in Appendix.

The sample was drawn from the expatriate managers of MNC subsidiaries from Taiwan region and Chinese mainland operating in Cambodia. Among India, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Cambodia, Cambodia is considered to be one of the most attractive destination investments for multinational company subsidiaries from Taiwan region and Chinese mainland in terms of a large pool of cheap labor, the costs for which are lower than those of their home companies in Taiwan region and Chinese mainland (Honglin-Zhang, 2005) . Therefore, expatriates must be assigned to deal with core tasks between the host and home companies. Primary data on MNC subsidiaries from Taiwan region and Chinese mainland in the above-referenced investment destination was collected through a structured mailing. In each MNC, we purposely selected one expatriate manager who works in an R&D department, a production department, a sales department, and a financial department to participate in this study. The purpose of selecting the samples from cross-work units among the R & D, production unit, sales department, and final department is to provide our understanding of how individuals interact with other people from different cultural backgrounds in order to improve their work performance effectively.

The sampling procedure involved two phases: First, emails were sent to the human resource department of each host MNC to ask for the details of the appropriate expatriates to participate in this study. A total of 87 MNCs and 350 expatriate managers were contacted and asked for their opinions before sending the questionnaire survey. Second, the questionnaires were sent to invite one expatriate manager in each of the above departments to use an email-based survey. A total of 39 MNCs and 160 questionnaires were collected. However, four questionnaires had to be excluded as outliers. The outliers were deleted using the graphic method, with a residual scatter plot of ±3 standard deviation (Hair, Black, Babin, & Anderson, 2010) . Finally, a total of 156 valid questionnaires were determined to be usable (a response rate of 45.71%) for further analyses.

The following is the basic information for the respondents and the sample firms. Of the respondents, 84.62% were males, and over 67% were older than 31. About 53.21% had a bachelor’s degree, and 44.23% hold a master’s degree. The sample firms operated in a conventional manufacturing industry (72.44%), and 27.56% were in service industries. More than 89% of the MNC subsidiaries had annual sales above 50 million NT$ (1$ USD = 29 NT$), and more than 87% had more than 200 employees. In addition, 84.62 percent of respondents were males, and this study investigates that female expatriates occupy lower positions than males despite the equal tenure policy being applied to all organizations. This notion is consistent with Selmer and Leung (2003) , and Cole and McNulty (2011) . This study argues that female expatriates regard expatriation as a somewhat less successful international assignment path than males because they are less engaged in meeting their career goals than males. In addition, female expatriates represent between 10% and 15% of expatriates in North and Latin America, Asia-Pacific region, and Europe (Harrison & Michailova, 2011) . Harrison and colleagues argued that women were less interested in careers abroad than men. Therefore, this study assumes that male expatriates seem to play a more important role in handling international assignments than female expatriates in the 39 MNCs in Cambodia under consideration in this study.

The construct reliability and convergent validity were assessed using the threshold guidelines of Anderson and Gerbing (1988) . First, the exploratory factor analysis and reliability test were used to validate the reliability of all research items by indicating that the Cronbach’s Alpha coefficients for each factor were greater than 0.70. Second, this study performed a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to evaluate the distinctiveness of the measures used in the present study by using AMOS 23.

For CFA procedures, the first order-factor model was adopted to examine each research construct, and the results of this procedure indicated that standardized loading for all items exceeded 0.70 and that t-values were higher than 1.96 (p < 0.001). The fitness index of each research construct was acceptable: Chi-square/degree of freedom (χ²/df) < 2, Goodness-of-fit (GFI) > 0.90, and Adjusted Goodness-of-fit (AGFI) > 0.90, Root Mean Square Residual (RMR) < 0.05, and p-value > 0.05. Thus, it satisfies the threshold Hair et al. (2010) and Kline (2011) . recommended. Then, the second-order and hierarchical models were conducted to examine the fitness of each research construct. The results of the second-order and hierarchical model were satisfied the threshold (see Figure 1 and Table 1 ), such as cultural intelligence (χ² = 30.488; df = 26; GFI = 0.963; AGFI = 0.921; RMR = 0.032), expatriate adjustment (χ² = 1.496; df = 4; GFI = 0.996; AGFI = .986; RMR = 0.005), social support (χ² = 5.227; df = 3; GFI = 0.987; AGFI = 0.934; RMR = 0.036), and expatriate performance (χ² = 6.479; df = 5; GFI = 0.986; AGFI = 0.941; RMR = 0.011), respectively. As suggested by Kline (2011) , the χ² value and model fit indices for the hierarchical model of each construct are identical to the second-order CFA model, and based on the principle of parsimony, the hierarchical model was accepted. Finally, the mean scores of individual factors of each research construct (i.e., social support, cultural intelligence, expatriate performance, and expatriate adjustment) were computed to conduct the second-order CFA in order to examine overall appropriateness of the measurement model, the results of Figure 6 showed that the overall goodness-of-fit assessment to satisfy the threshold of χ²/df (37.610/26) = 1.447; GFI = 0.956; AGFI = 0.906; RMR = 0.036, and p = 0.066, thus indicating that the research model for this study could be presented as a good model fit with good convergent validity and construct reliability (Gerbing & Anderson, 1992; Hair et al., 2010 ). Then, descriptive statistics, including means, standard deviations, coefficient alpha, and correlations among the research variables, are reported in Table 2 .

Because the data collection process for the research variables was conducted using data obtained from the same source from the expatriate side, there was a possibility that common method variance might be a concern (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Lee, & Podsakoff, 2003; Podsakoff & Organ, 1986) and that it was necessary to confirm whether the strengths of the relationships among research constructs had been either inflated or deflated (Lee & Sukoco, 2010) . To assess the potential impact of this common variance bias in this study, discriminant validity was tested in three steps. First, a Harmon one-factor test was adopted (Podsakoff & Organ, 1986) that loaded all the variables into a principal component factor analysis. The results revealed that a solution accounted for 61.520% of the total variance, while factor 1 only accounted for 31.580%. Therefore, a single factor did not emerge into one factor, and factor 1 did not explain most of the variance. Second, convergent validity was demonstrated, as all constructs’ average variance extracted (AVE) values should be higher than the suggested threshold value of 0.50 (Fornell & Larcker, 1981) . Discriminant validity was determined by comparing the square root of the AVE with the Pearson correlations among the constructs (see Table 2 ). All AVE estimates represented in Table 1 are greater than the corresponding inter-construct square correlation estimates, as shown in Table 2 . Based on these results, common method bias is unlikely to be a problem with the data (Gefen, Straub, & Boudreau, 2000) .

Note: AVE = Average variance extracted was calculated by Hair et al. (2010) . ***p < 0.001; **p < 0.01; *p < 0.05, which is significant level at t-value > 1.96. A = parameter regression weight was fixed at 1.

Note: **p < 0.001 and *p < 0.05 with significant level of Pearson Correlation Coefficient at t-value > 1.96.

Third, the results shown in Table 2 indicate that few correlations among the research variables exceeded 0.50, which indicated higher relative correlations; thus, a CFA assesses the distinctiveness of the research variables for cultural intelligence, cultural adjustment, and expatriate performance, respectively. One-factor model and two-factor model CFA procedures were adopted to compare the fit of the two-factor measurement model against a one-factor model among the research dimensions of the research constructs (see Conger, Kanungo, & Menon, 2000; Kim et al., 2008; Lee & Sukoco, 2010 ). We set the six dimensions (including four cultural intelligence and two cultural adjustment dimensions) to load on one-factor and two-factor models, respectively. The hypothesized two-construct model generated χ² = 122.343 (df = 79); NFI = 0.906; CFI = 0.964, and RMSEA = 0.059. In comparison, with all six factors loading on the one-factor model, the one-factor model had a χ² = 123.647 (df = 80); NFI = 0.905; CFI = 0.964, and RMSEA = 0.059. The chi-square differences between the two were significant, suggesting that each construct is distinct. Similarly, the results indicated that chi-square significantly differed between social support and expatriate performance, having χ² = 52.435 for the two-factor model vs. χ² = 67.810 for the one-factor model, respectively. As shown in Table 3 , the results supported the distinctiveness among the research variables in the measurement model by demonstrating a better fit for the two-factor model, as compared to the one-factor model (Kim et al., 2008) , and the results also indicated that there was no problem with discriminant validity (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988) .

Structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied with the likelihood estimation method to test the hypotheses. The research variables remaining after CFA, shown in Table 1 , were adopted to proceed with SEM. The second-order factor model was adopted to test the overall research variables (Anderson & Gerbing, 1988) . The results showed that the goodness-of-fit measurements were acceptable (GFI = 0.960; AGFI = 0.911; RMR = 0.054) (see Table 4 and Figure 1 ), indicating that the proposed model was satisfactory (Hair et al., 2010) . The results also support Hypothesis 1—social support significantly and positively influences expatriate adjustment (β = 0.181; p < 0.005; t-value = 2.456). This research finding is consistent with Bayraktar (2019) , who states that understanding the key antecedents of expatriate adjustment is critical for the success of their international assignments. Indeed, social support is one of the most critical predictors of expatriate adjustment (Gudmundsdottir, Gudlaugsson, & Adalsteinsson, 2019) . They experienced social and organizational support during their international expatriation assignment in a host country (Khedher & Asadullah, 2020) . Thus, this study asserts that organizational support and social support mechanisms extended to expatriate families influence the adjustment of the expatriate (Shah, de Oliveira, Barker, Moeller, & Nguyen, 2022) . Drawing upon social support theory, this study emphasizes that social support is a stronger determinant of expatriate turnover intention and expatriate adjustment (Karunarathne, 2022) .

Notes: A = parameter regression weight was fixed at 1.000; ***p < 0.001, **p < 0.05, *p < 0.01, and significant level at t-value > 1.96. SOS = Social support (POS = Perceived organizational support; SUS = Supervisor support); CQ = Cultural intelligence (BCQ = Behavioral CQ; MoCQ = Motivational CQ; CCQ = Cognitive CQ; MetCQ = Metacognitive CQ); CUA = Cultural adjustment (WoAdj = Work adjustment; IntAdj = Interactional adjustment); Expatriate performance (TasP = Task performance; ConP = Contextual performance).

Hypothesis 2—social support significantly and positively influences expatriate performance (β = 0.461; p < 0.001; t-value = 5.575). This research finding is consistent with Jyoti and Kour (2017) . At the same time, social support is an important factor for successful international assignments for expatriates, including adjustment, commitment, performance, and retention (van der Laken, van Engen, van Veldhoven, & Paauwe, 2019) . Hypothesis 3—cultural intelligence significantly and positively influences expatriate adjustment (β = 0.745; p < 0.001; t-value = 8.075). The findings also indicate that four dimensions of cultural intelligence (CQ) directly and significantly affect expatriate adjustment. However, this study’s results do not align with those of Lee and Sukoco (2010) and Sri Ramalu et al. (2011) , who reported that CQ has no significant effect on expatriate performance. In cross-cultural management, this is consistent with previous empirical findings and proposed frameworks of CQ that suggest that expatriates capable of interacting in different cultures will have a higher level of adjustment (Akhal & Liu, 2019; Ang & Van Dyne, 2008; Kim et al., 2008; Zhang & Oczkowski, 2016) . Cultural intelligence and cultural adjustment of expatriate talent through cultural distance between home and host countries (i.e., Song, Varma, & Zhang Zhang, 2023; Zhang et al., 2021 ).

Hypothesis 4—cultural intelligence significantly and positively influences expatriate performance (β = 0.545; p < 0.001; t-value = 3.784). This research finding is consistent with Qomariyah, Nguyen, Wu and Tran-Chi (2022) and Chew, Ghurburn, Terspstra-Tong and Perera (2021) . Hypothesis 5—expatriate adjustment significantly and positively influences expatriate performance (β = 0.236; p < 0.005; t-value = 2.055). This research finding is consistent with Jyoti and Kour (2017) , Sambasivan, Sadoughi and Esmaeilzadeh (2017) , and Setti, Sommovigo and Argentero (2022) . Thus, this study assumes that the social capital of expatriates, which includes leader-member exchange (LMX) and perceived organizational support (POS) (Qomariyah et al., 2022) , expatriate adjustment or cultural adjustment plays an important role in enhancing expatriate performance in MNCs subsidiaries in Cambodia.