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United Nations International Police
Officers in Peacekeeping Missions

Why do international policing missions often fail to achieve their mandate? Why
do United Nations Police officers struggle when serving in foreign peacekeeping
missions? United Nations International Police Officers in Peacekeeping Mis-
sions: A Phenomenological Exploration of Complex Acculturation unravels
these problems to find a causal thread: When working in hyper-­diverse organiza-
tions such as the United Nations Police, United Nations police officers must
grapple with adjusting to a kaleidoscope of different and competing cultures
simultaneously—an issue the author identifies as complex acculturation. In this
introduction to the novel concept of complex acculturation, Michael Sanchez
explores the reasons behind the chronic performance troubles of the United
Nations Police, and explains how the very fabric of the organization contributes
to its ineffectiveness. While previous research has focused on private sector
expatriate workers’ challenges when adapting to a single new culture, this timely
book describes a previously unstudied phenomenon and applies this knowledge
to help businesses, governments, organizations, and citizens navigate the increas-
ingly diverse workplace of the future. This book lays the foundation for a new
area of study and provides a forward-­thinking perspective that will interest
multinational companies, police agencies, international relations organizations,
prospective expatriate workers, and academics alike.

Dr. Michael R. Sanchez has over 20 years of experience in the criminal justice
system, including four years as an International Police Officer for the United
Nations in Kosovo and one year in Haiti. Dr. Sanchez currently teaches Criminal
Justice at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley.
Routledge Innovations in Policing

This series explores innovations in the field of policing and offers the latest
insight into the field through research, theoretical applications, case studies, and
evaluations. Famous innovations developed over the course of the late twentieth
century and into the turn of the twenty-­first include approaches such as com-
munity policing, “broken windows” policing, problem-­oriented policing,
“pulling levers” policing, third-­party policing, hot spots policing, CompStat, and
evidence-­based policing. Some of these approaches have been successful, and
some have not, while new innovations continue to arise. Improving police per-
formance through innovation is often not straightforward. Police departments are
highly resistant to change, but through such research we expect to find further
refinement of our knowledge of “what works” in policing, under what circum-
stances particular strategies may work, and why these strategies are effective in
improving police performance.

Edited by Ellen Boyne

Police Militarization
Understanding the Perspectives of Police Chiefs, Administrators, and Tactical
Officers
Scott W. Phillips

United Nations International Police Officers in Peacekeeping Missions

A Phenomenological Exploration of Complex Acculturation
Michael R. Sanchez

For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/

Routledge-­Innovations-in-­Policing/book-­series/RIP
United Nations International
Police Officers in Peacekeeping
Missions
A Phenomenological Exploration of
Complex Acculturation

Michael R. Sanchez
First published 2019
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
business
© 2019 Taylor & Francis
The right of Michael R. Sanchez to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in
any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing
from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or
registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation
without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-Publication Data
A catalog record for this title has been requested

ISBN: 978-0-8153-7162-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-351-24638-5 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear
Dedication

This book is dedicated to the two people who have contributed the most to my
successes in life. My father, Captain Joseph R. Sanchez, USAF retired, laid the
foundation for much of my professional success. He involved me in the Civil Air
Patrol when I was 14 years old where he began to mold me into a leader. He was
so very instrumental in developing me into a leader when I was still only a teen-
ager. My father became my mentor and my leadership guide throughout my life.
I would consider my leadership skills to be one of the primary vehicles for much
of the success I have enjoyed throughout my career. I consider much of my
success in life to also be my father’s success. Every job and every function relies
on leadership in one form or another. My father made me into a leader and
taught me leadership lessons that served me well throughout my life.
This book is also dedicated to my wife Arijeta, who contributed immeasura-
bly to my successes over the past 12 years. I met Arijeta in 2006, during my
three-­year mission with the United Nations Mission in Kosovo International
Police in Kosovo. She is an Albanian Catholic who grew up in Kosovo. Through
her facilitation, I came to be amazed at how much more people are able to
accomplish when they are supported by someone who loves them, supports
them, and wholeheartedly believes in them. Arijeta made me believe in myself
and she made me believe that I could accomplish anything to which I set my
mind. With her love and support, I rose to Director of Personnel and Administra-
tion in the UNMIK mission, and completed an UNPOL mission in Haiti as a
Regional Commander. We survived the 2010 earthquake together, I completed
my Master’s Degree, survived the death of my 22-year-­old daughter, and I com-
pleted my PhD. Good times or bad … she was always by my side, supporting
me, and believing in me. Who could ever ask for more than that from a life
partner?
Contents

List of Illustrations ix
Author Biography x
Preface xi
List of Abbreviations xvi

1 Introduction 1
Study Method Sample and Population 3
Collection of Data 4
Analysis of Data 5

2 United Nations International Police 7

UNPOL Mission Mandates 9
UNPOL Mission Composition 10
UNPOL Missions and Hyper-­Diversity 13

3 The UNPOL Experience 16

4 Exploring Expatriate and UNPOL Performance 21

Expatriate Performance and Acculturation 21
Expatriate Acculturation Theoretical Framework 25
Expatriate Acculturation and Performance 31
Cultural Intelligence 32
Expatriate Productivity Success and Failure 35
UNPOL Performance 39

5 Identifying Simple and Complex Acculturation 43

Simple Acculturation 44
Complex Acculturation 45
viii   Contents
Public and Private Sector Expatriate Workers 47
Workgroup Diversity 48

6 Phenomenological Description of Complex Acculturation 50

Phenomenological Description of Complex Acculturation 51

7 Sources of Cultural Dissonance 64

National Differences 64
Religious Differences 73
Communication Difficulties 77
Perpetuation of Acculturative Stress 78

8 UNPOL Productivity and Complex Acculturation as a

Construct 81
UNPOL Productivity 81
Complex Acculturation as a Construct 86

9 Successfully Coping with the Challenges of Complex

Acculturation 96
Anticipate and Expect Cultural Dissonance 97
Be Prepared to Change 99
Cultural Socialization 100
Religious Differences 103

10 Implications of this Research 106

Implications of this Research for the United Nations Police 106
Implications Beyond International Policing 109
International Organizations and Non-­Governmental
Organizations 109
International Human Resource Management 110
Diversity Management and Complex Acculturation 111
Domestic Policing 112
Theoretical Implications 113
Complex Acculturation’s Implications for Practice and
Research 114

Glossary 118
References 120
Index 128
Illustrations

Figures
6.1 The author’s model of the complex acculturation construct 62
8.1 The author’s model of the simple acculturation process 87
8.2 The author’s model of the complex acculturation process 88
8.3 The author’s model of the spherical experience of complex
acculturation 89

Tables
1.1 Demographic of selected study participants and backup
participants by stratum 4
2.1 List of United Nations member states contributing police
officers to the UNMIK police mission 11
2.2 List of United Nations member states contributing police
officers to the MINUSTAH police mission 12
Author Biography

Dr. Michael R. Sanchez has over 23 years of experience as a criminal justice

practitioner in Virginia, Texas, and the United Nations. Dr. Sanchez has practi-
tioner experience in jail and detention, police, contract detention, and inter-
national policing. Dr. Sanchez earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Police Science
from Ottawa University, a Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice Administration
from Utica College, and a PhD in Business Administration with a Specialization
in Criminal Justice from Northcentral University.
Dr. Sanchez served four years as an international police officer for the United
Nations. Dr. Sanchez served three years in the United Nations Mission in
Kosovo International Police, from 2005–2008, where he worked his way up to
Director of Personnel and Administration. He also served one year in the United
Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti, where he reached the position of Regional
Commander.
Dr. Sanchez currently lives in Texas with his wife Arijeta, who he met and
married during his service with the United Nations police in Kosovo. Dr.
Sanchez is currently a full-­time lecturer for the University of Texas Rio Grande
Valley in Brownsville, Texas.
Preface

I stepped off the airplane and onto the roll-­up stairs, tired from 26 hours of
travel. The air was cold and crisp with a hint of wood smoke, yet somehow still
smelled fresh. The date was 14 December 2005. I had just landed in Pristina,
Kosovo to begin what would turn out to be a three-­year deployment with the
United Nations Mission in Kosovo International Police (UNMIK Police). This
was my first international police mission, and my first time outside of the United
States, aside from the occasional border crossing to Mexico from South Texas
where I lived. I was embarking on an adventure that would change my life.
Kosovo was still recovering from the 1998–1999 war during which the
Serbian government executed a crackdown on the ethnic Albanian population of
Kosovo, which at the time was a province of Serbia. The apparent intent of the
Serbian violence was to displace the Albanian majority of Kosovo. Before the
conflict was ended, more than half of the ethnic Albanian population had been
displaced. The Serbian army withdrew from Kosovo following a 79-day NATO
bombing campaign, first against Serbian army targets within Kosovo, and ulti-
mately within Serbia proper.
When the Serbian army withdrew from Kosovo, they took all of the organs of
government with them. Kosovo was essentially a province without a govern-
ment. The United Nations stepped in to create the UNMIK mission, of which the
UNMIK Police was one component, which was to become the de facto tempo-
rary government of Kosovo. By the time I arrived in Kosovo, the UNMIK Police
mission was six years old.
I was an experienced police officer from Texas, but I was to find that inter-
national policing was completely different from domestic policing. The goals
and strategic vision in post-­conflict policing were considerably more challenging
than were the goals and strategic vision in domestic policing. Additionally, the
stakes in international policing were very high and the potential consequences of
action or inaction were sobering. In the States, a mistake or an error in judgment
could bring disciplinary action, or result in a police officer being sued. In a post-­
conflict policing mission, a mistake or an error in judgment could start a war.
At the time of my arrival in 2005, the UNMIK Police was a full service inter-
national policing force comprised of 2,190 police officers from 45 different
countries. Each country’s contribution to a United Nations Police (UNPOL)
xii   Preface
mission is called a contingent. Thus, I was a part of the 222-officer American
Contingent to the UNMIK Police. During my mission, I would work with, train,
follow, or lead people from all 45 contingents, representing police officers from
every continent and region in the world, save Antarctica. My close personal
working relationship with people from all over the world was the most fantastic
learning experience of my life. I worked with people from every conceivable
nationality, ethnicity, religion, national system, and level of economic attain-
ment. I learned more about the world in my three years with the UNMIK Police
than I had in the 42 years prior. I lived a multicultural experience that could not
possibly be reproduced, or even imagined, in the United States.
I was initially deployed to a counter-­terrorism task force in Peja, Kosovo. At
the time, Peja was the murder capital of Kosovo. After four months, I was re-­
deployed to UNMIK Headquarters as a Firearms Instructor for the UNMIK
Police Training Centre, where all incoming police contingents underwent one
week of induction training before being deployed to their assigned unit. Within
six months, I had worked my way up to Deputy Chief of the Police Training
Centre.
In June of 2007, I received a huge promotion to Director of Personnel and
Administration for the UNMIK Police. This position placed me at number ten on
the UNMIK Police chain of command and I became a member of the UNMIK
Police Commissioner’s Senior Staff. I started operating at the executive level of
the mission and began to see behind the curtain. My position on the Commis-
sioner’s Senior Staff allowed me to gain a more comprehensive strategic over-
view of the UNMIK Police than the average UNMIK officer would have
enjoyed. As the Director of Administration and Personnel, I began to see the
mission in overhead strategic terms of overall performance and accomplishment
of the mission mandate.
During the 18 months that I was the Director of Personnel and Administration
for the UNMIK Police, which included five months as Acting Deputy Commis-
sioner for Administration, I began to see that the mission had serious problems
at the strategic level. One of the aspects of the mission that became clear once I
had the upper-­echelon view, was that the UNMIK Police was terribly inefficient
and quite unproductive. There were successes to be sure, but everything took an
inordinately long time. Progress was plodding and frustratingly slow. This inef-
ficiency puzzled me. Every country sent, for the most part, good experienced
police officers to the mission … theoretically the best of the best. While there
were of course some exceptions, most countries made a concerted effort to send
well-­qualified highly experienced police officers to the UNMIK Police. An
UNPOL mission is supposed to be a dream team of every contributing country’s
best and brightest police officers. So why then was the UNMIK Police so slow
and inefficient?
I ended my three-­year mission with the UNMIK Police on 18 December
2008, when the UNMIK Police mission was handed over to the European Union.
After I ended my mission with the UNMIK Police, I was sent to the United
Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUSTAH). I served in the
 Preface   xiii
MINUSTAH Police for one year, ultimately becoming a regional commander. I
was in Haiti when the earthquake hit Haiti on 12 January 2010. I commanded
my region through the recovery and normalization efforts.
While I was serving in the MINUSTAH Police, once I became Deputy
Regional Commander and ultimately Regional Commander, I saw the same lack
of efficiency that I saw in the UNMIK Police. During the time I was deployed to
the MINUSTAH Police, I was also working on my Master’s Degree. I spent a
considerable amount of time contemplating a topic for my Master’s Degree Cap-
stone project. I wanted to conduct research that would help me to figure out why
the UN Police seemed to be so unproductive. Answering the question of why an
organization comprised of the best and brightest could be so inefficient became
my personal mission.
In the middle of my Master’s Degree in Criminal Justice Administration
program, with Utica College, I ended my mission in Haiti and returned to the
United States. I absolutely loved my four years as an UNPOL officer. I served in
command level positions in two different missions … however. UN Policing can
be very exhausting. UNPOL officers work 10–12 hours per day, seven days per
week, unless they are on vacation. Add command level stress and responsibility
to that workload, multiply by four years, factor in the abject chaos of the earth-
quake and the recovery, and I was starting to burn out. I could feel it happening.
So I rejected an offer to extend my mission, took a job with a private company
that manages Immigration Detention Centers for the US Government, and con-
tinued with my Master’s Degree program.
My pursuit of an answer as to why the two UNPOL missions I had served in
proved to be so unproductive led to my Master’s Capstone project, which was
An Analysis of Administrative Policies and Procedures of the United Nations
Mission in Kosovo International Police. I thought that perhaps a clue to why the
UN Police seemed so unproductive might lie in the administrative policies and
procedures of the mission. While my Capstone project found issues that, at the
edges of the problem, could have contributed to the inefficiency of the UNMIK
Police, my research also discovered that many, if not all, UNPOL missions are
characterized as inefficient and unproductive. Since the Administrative Policies
and Procedures of the UNMIK Police did not affect other missions, I had to be
missing something.
In 2012, I started working on my doctoral program. My degree path with
Northcentral University was for a PhD in Business Administration with a Con-
centration in Criminal Justice. Considering my career path, and my winding up
in the private sector, I thought this degree path was a perfect fit.
Even before I started my doctoral program, I began to work on conceptualiz-
ing a topic for my dissertation, even though that was years down the road. The
combined business/criminal justice path of my degree program made conceptu-
alizing a topic very difficult. I wanted to find something that pertained to busi-
ness and criminal justice. I wanted to find a topic that was fresh, new, and
modern, that had not yet been done. I also wanted to develop a topic that would
answer the question that had been plaguing me since I was the Director of
xiv   Preface
Personnel and Administration for the UNMIK Police in Kosovo. Why would
UNPOL missions comprised of the best and brightest police officers from around
the world consistently perform so poorly? This paradox was perplexing.
The frustrating constraints of finding a criminal justice topic that also
somehow applied to business, or vice versa, made conceptualizing a topic very
difficult. Interestingly enough, those very constraints ultimately led me to a topic
that was fresh, new, and modern, but also teased at the possibility of an answer
to my quest for an explanation of the poor performance of UNPOL missions. My
topic had the potential to have a real impact in international policing, inter-
national business, intercultural relations, and domestic policing in an ever-­
increasingly diverse society. My topic also had the potential to begin to provide
some understanding as to why UNPOL Police missions were inefficient.
In the course of my research while developing my dissertation topic and state-
ment of the problem, I started researching expatriate workers. In essence,
UNPOL officers are public sector expatriate workers, sent by their home country
to work abroad for the United Nation. Perhaps I could find the seed of a topic
with expatriate workers. There was no eureka moment. The realization of the
importance of what I was on to crept up on me slowly. I only fully realized the
implications of my topic when I had completed writing my dissertation. I had
taken two solid years to conceptualize and research a topic that could begin to
answer the question of why UNPOL missions were so inefficient. However, my
topic also discovered a heretofore un-­researched area of study that will become
ever more relevant as time and globalization move forward. The topic of my dis-
sertation not only affects international policing, but international business as
well. I came to suspect that a large part of the reason for the poor performance in
UNPOL missions was not policies and procedures … it was culture.
My research into expatriate workers produced a tantalizing clue. Expatriate
workers who do not acculturate to their new assignment country exhibit poor
performance and frequently fail in their international assignment altogether.
Much research has been conducted into expatriate acculturation, also called
expatriate adjustment, and expatriate adaptation. The basic idea is that an expa-
triate worker who cannot adjust to the societal, workplace, and organizational
culture of their assignment country would not be productive. Hmmm … an expa-
triate worker who cannot adjust to one new culture will do poorly. When I
arrived in Kosovo in 2005, I did not have to adjust to one culture … I had to
adjust to 46 cultures … simultaneously.
It seemed intuitively logical that if expatriate workers are having trouble
adjusting to a single new culture, then having to adjust to multiple cultures
simultaneously must be exponentially more difficult. As I narrowed down my
topic to the acculturation of UNPOL officers being a possible contributing factor
to the chronic poor performance of UNPOL missions, I found that the idea of
acculturating or adjusting to multiple cultures simultaneously had not yet been
written about or studied. In two years of research, I would not find one paper that
remotely addressed this topic. The concept was so new; it did not even have a
name. Therefore, I gave the process of having to adjust to multiple cultures
 Preface   xv
simultaneously a name, complex acculturation. In naming complex accultura-
tion, I also had to name the existing construct of adjusting to a single new
culture, which I called simple acculturation.
This book provides a detailed explanation and phenomenological description
of the construct of complex acculturation. This book is in large part based on the
research conducted for, and the results of, my doctoral dissertation. It is my
belief that complex acculturation will prove to be a new and exciting platform
upon which to study the effects of multiculturalism and hyper-­diversity both in
the workforce and in society. The world is moving inexorably toward globaliza-
tion. One only need look at the effect of the US housing market collapse on the
economy of other countries to realize that, in many ways, globalization is already
a reality. With ever-­increasing globalization, will inevitably come ever-­
increasing cultural diversity, both in society, and in the workplace. The complex
acculturation construct, of adjusting to multiple new cultures simultaneously, is
truly indicative of the workforce of the future.
Abbreviations

DPKO Department of Peacekeeping Operations

KPS Kosovo Police Service
MINUSCA United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization
Mission in the Central African Republic
MINUSMA United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization
Mission in Mali
MINUSTAH United Nations Stabilization Mission in Kosovo
MONUSCO United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the
Democratic Republic of Congo
MSA Mission Subsistence Allowance
PCC Police Contributing Country
PNH Police Nationale d’Haïti
PRIME Police Reform Indicators and Measurement Evaluation
SAT Selection Assistance Team
UN United Nations
UNAMID African Union–United Nations Mission in Darfur
UNAMSIL United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone
UNFICYP United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus
UNFIL United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon
UNISFA United Nations Interim Security Force for Abye
UNMIK United Nations Mission in Kosovo
UNMIL United Nations Mission in Liberia
UNMIS United Nations Mission in the Sudan
UNMISS United Nations Mission in South Sudan
UNMIT United Nations Mission in Timor-­Leste
UNPOL United Nations Police
UNSC United Nations Security Council
UNSCR United Nations Security Council Resolution
1 Introduction

Exploring the idea that acculturation issues could be a substantial contributing

factor to the chronic poor performance of United Nations International (UNPOL)
Police officers is the core of this research. UNPOL missions in general have
been characterized as very poor performing, or in some cases as abject failures.
While each UNPOL mission is comprised of a different mixture of nationalities,
the extreme diversity of the composition of each UNPOL mission is constant. In
an age of ever-­expanding globalism, the cultural composition of an UNPOL
mission can be seen as representative of the extreme diversity of the workforce
of the future. Thus, developing an understanding of how intercultural issues,
which accompany extreme diversity, affect a diverse workforce will have
implications and applications far beyond the improvement of UNPOL
performance.
The central question of explaining the poor performance in UNPOL mis-
sions led the author to research and investigate the subject of expatriate accul-
turation. Expatriate acculturation, also referred to as expatriate adjustment and
expatriate adaptation, refers to an expatriate worker’s ability to adapt and
adjust to their new environment. Considerable research exists linking the
ability of an expatriate worker to adjust to their new environment to that expa-
triate worker’s work performance and ultimate success or failure in their expa-
triate assignment. In attempting to apply the concept of expatriate acculturation
to the question of the performance of UNPOL missions, there was one signi-
ficant difficulty the author needed to address. In all the existing literature per-
taining to expatriate acculturation, there is but a single cross-­cultural paradigm.
All the existing literature refers to an expatriate worker engaging in a bi-­
cultural adjustment process. Expatriate adjustment consisted of the expatriate
worker adjusting to a single new culture and environment. A paradigm wherein
the expatriate worker must adjust to multiple cultures simultaneously was not
found in any literature about expatriate adjustment. Thus, the author concluded
that the concept of an expatriate worker having to adjust to multiple cultures
simultaneously was an emerging phenomenon that had not yet been identified
or researched.
The utter lack of research into the construct of expatriate workers adjusting to
multiple new cultures simultaneously made it impossible for the author to
2   Introduction
research this phenomenon, as the construct had not yet been clearly defined or
described. The first logical step in addressing an emerging phenomenon would
be to conduct a phenomenological description of the emerging phenomenon.
One weakness identified in current research into acculturation is that the the-
ories, constructs, and paradigms of expatriate acculturation are in need of pheno-
menological study to provide a firm description of each phenomenon, upon
which to build empirical research (Rudmin, 2010a). It is difficult if not imposs-
ible to research a phenomenon that has not yet been detailed, defined, and
described. As the first logical step in pursuing the original question of why
UNPOL missions are chronically inefficient, the author determined to conduct a
descriptive phenomenological exploration of the expatriate acculturation con-
struct whereby an expatriate worker must adjust to multiple cultures simultan-
eously. The author refers to this paradigm, of adjusting to multiple cultures, as
complex acculturation. The original paradigm of an expatriate worker adjusting
to a single new culture, the author refers to as simple acculturation.
This study explores three essential issues. The first issue is to provide a thor-
ough phenomenological description of the construct of complex acculturation,
through the lens of the lived experiences of United Nations International Police
officers who have served in at least one UNPOL mission. As complex accultura-
tion is an emerging phenomenon, heretofore unwritten about, the logical starting
place is to conduct a phenomenological study to provide a foundation for future
study of the complex acculturation construct. The phenomenological exploration
of complex acculturation was conducted by applying Giorgi’s descriptive vari-
ation of Husserlian phenomenological method, accomplished through interviews
with six different former UNPOL officers. The phenomenological reduction of
the data collected through the semi-­structured phenomenological interviews
yielded a rich phenomenological description and modeling of complex accultur-
ation as a construct within expatriate acculturation theory.
The second essential issue of this research was to assess the data, subsequent
to the phenomenological description of complex acculturation, to determine if
complex acculturation should be considered a separate and unique construct,
within acculturation theory, in its own right; as opposed to merely being a vari-
ation of the existing simple acculturation construct. This analysis was important
in order to determine if the findings of this research were seminal in nature,
having identified a new and modern construct within acculturation theory, or if
the findings of this research were merely a variation of existing constructs. The
model of the construct of complex acculturation was compared to that of the
construct of simple acculturation in order to determine if there were significant
differences between the two constructs.
The third central issue of this research was to analyze the phenomenological
data to determine qualitatively if complex acculturation could possibly be a major
contributing factor to the chronic poor performance of UNPOL missions. The
results of this third central issue would be very general in nature, owing to the
low number of participants necessary in conducting phenomenological explora-
tions. Nevertheless, a careful analysis of the phenomenological interviews
 Introduction   3
and data could provide insight into whether or not complex acculturation might
seem to warrant further research and exploration as a potential contributing
factor to the chronic poor performance of UNPOL missions.

Study Method Sample and Population

Because of the time-­consuming and complex nature of phenomenological reduc-
tion, phenomenological studies normally require a low number of participants.
The recommended minimum number of participants when constructing a
descriptive phenomenological study is three participants (Gill, 2014). The author
wanted to ensure that this study accurately reflected the hyper-­diversity of an
UNPOL mission. Therefore, six participants were utilized for this study. All
participants were former UNPOL officers having served at least one complete
year in a UN police mission. The need to ensure extreme diversity in the sample
for this study was critical. A cultural study where the population sample is
limited to the perspective of a few select nationalities would severely limit the
context and depth of the data. It is logical to assume that the perceptions of an
UNPOL officer from a developed nation would differ substantially from the per-
ceptions of UNPOL officer from an undeveloped country.
As there is no centralized database of former UNPOL officers, the author uti-
lized several different networking tools to reach out to former UNPOL officers
seeking willing participants. The author utilized Facebook, the International
Network for the Promotion of Rule of Law, and the author’s own personal network
of colleagues and acquaintances from his two UNPOL missions. Thirty-­two former
UNPOL officers from 16 different nations volunteered to participate in this study.
In order to provide for the greatest possible diversity in the study sample, the
author stratified the volunteers into three categories based on the national eco-
nomic attainment of each volunteer’s home country, in accordance with the
United Nations Development Programs 2014 Human Development Report. The
author then randomly selected two participants from each stratum, ensuring that
there was no duplication of nationality within a stratum, to ensure the greatest
possible diversity of the sample. The stratification of the participant pool was
very important to ensuring the accuracy of this research. Ensuring that data is
gathered from a variety of nationalistic and cultural perspectives ensures that the
diversity of an UNPOL mission is accurately reflected in the data. Furthermore,
a broad cultural and nationalistic base of responses will provide for triangulation
in the data, which will correct for nationalistic or cultural bias, strengthening the
internal validity of this project.
The results of the selection process yielded six participants for this pheno-
menological study and three backup participants, one for each stratum. The
nationalities of the participants for this study, being from the United States,
Denmark, Jordan, Bulgaria, Ghana, and Pakistan, were an accurate representa-
tion of the overall diversity of UNPOL missions.
Table 1.1 indicates the demographic of the selected participants and backup
participants for this study, sorted by stratum. The three backup participants were
4   Introduction
Table 1.1 Demographic of selected study participants and backup participants by stratum

Participant Nationality Strata

Study Participants
1 United States Developed
2 Denmark Developed
3 Jordan Developing
4 Bulgaria Developing
5 Ghana Undeveloped
6 Pakistan Undeveloped
Backup Participants
Backup Romania Developed
Backup Turkey Developing
Backup Kenya Undeveloped

Source: Sanchez, 2016, p. 80.

selected in order to ensure, against the duplication of any nationality already

represented in the selected sample. The author intended to use the backup parti-
cipants in the event one of the selected primary participants proved unable to
complete the study. The backup participants were from Romania, Turkey, and
Kenya.

Collection of Data
Data was collected through scheduled semi-­structured interviews with the parti-
cipants either by telephone or through the Skype Internet telephone program. As
the participants in this study were located around the world, face-­to-face inter-
views were not practicable. The interviews were recorded and then transcribed
by the author.
The primary goal of a study applying the method of descriptive phenomeno-
logy is to develop a rich and textured description of the phenomenon under
exploration as lived by the participants (Giorgi, 2009). The use of semi-­
structured interviews allowed the author to explore each participant’s responses
thoroughly, and allowed the participants’ responses to range wherever their
answer took them, while following a general outline to ensure all research ques-
tions were addressed. In phenomenological interviewing, participants are asked
open questions that seek the deeper meaning of the phenomenon under explora-
tion. In addition, participants are strongly encouraged to recount the essence of
the experience, rather than a mere report of factual information (Bevan, 2014).
Having the participants convey the essence of their experiences was more diffi-
cult than anticipated, because police officers, for the most part, are programmed
to report only information and facts in a non-­emotional dispassionate manner.
Conducting an effective phenomenological interview requires the interviewer
to have some institutional knowledge of the subject under study, while simultan-
eously maintaining interviewing distance (Bevan, 2014). The author’s own
 Introduction   5
UNPOL experience was a benefit to the interview portion of this research study.
The author’s institutional knowledge of UNPOL missions allowed for the asking
of highly contextualized and specific questions that teased out more detail and
more of the essence of the experiences lived by the participants. In addition, the
author applied deliberate naïveté. While the author utilized his own institutional
knowledge to create highly contextualized and penetrating questions, deliberate
naïveté requires that the author must ask the questions, and more importantly the
follow-­up questions, as if the author knows nothing about the UNPOL experi-
ence. The goal of the phenomenological interview is to have the participant
essentially relive the phenomenon and provide a thorough description of the phe-
nomenon as lived. The participant should not express their thoughts or feelings
in a social vacuum, but in the context of the lived experience of the phenomenon
under investigation (Finlay, 2012; Giorgi, 2009).
The use of the author’s personal knowledge to formulate the questions, and
the application of deliberate naïveté to the author’s responses to each answer,
provided for a rich descriptive account of each participant’s experience with
complex acculturation (Giorgi, 2009). Where necessary, the author conducted
follow-­up interviews in order to provide full and complete data. At the conclu-
sion of each interview, each participant was asked if he or she had any recom-
mendations for interventions that could have improved their own ability to adjust
to their first UNPOL mission.

Analysis of Data
To analyze the data gathered during the interview portion of the study, the author
applied Giorgi’s method of scientific phenomenological reduction. The transcript
for each participant’s interview was read several times in order to gain an over-
arching sense of the essence of each participant’s experience. Critical passages
known as meaning units were then identified. Meaning units describe or define
an important element of the complex acculturation experience (Gill, 2014). In
this manner, interviews are distilled down to a concentrated set of statements.
Once meaning units were identified for all participants, the author applied scient-
ific phenomenological reduction to the meaning units.
Utilizing the method of scientific phenomenological reduction, each meaning
unit, which could be a single sentence or an entire paragraph, is reduced into a
single concise phrase that encapsulates the essence of the meaning unit. Each
meaning unit identified was subsequently reduced to a single overarching state-
ment. The author ultimately identified between 37 and 44 meaning units for each
participant in this study. Scientific phenomenological reduction yielded a total of
216 meaning units for all participants.
The meaning units were then transferred to a spreadsheet with each partici-
pant’s meaning units in a specific column. Meaning units were then arranged
into groups based on the similarities between first the overarching meaning of
each meaning unit, and then by the specific similarities. Some groups of meaning
units were then divided further, depending on more subtle similarities between
6   Introduction
meaning units within each group. The grouping of meaning units provided the
author with an overhead view of the experience of complex acculturation as a
whole. Each group of meaning units was contextualized within the overall
experience of complex acculturation. Contextualization was accomplished by
zooming in on each meaning unit, then zooming out, and assessing that meaning
unit within the context of the totality of all meaning units within the group.
Through this method, the author was able to develop a rich and detailed descrip-
tion of complex acculturation, while ensuring that each detail was consistent
with the overarching essence of the collective meaning units for each participant
and for the entire body of data.
After thorough analysis, the groups of meaning units ultimately became the
foundation for the model of the complex acculturation experience. The author
then went back through the meaning units and identified key passages of parti-
cipant interviews where the participant can be quoted to provide texture and
context to the meaning unit. Many of the key points of the phenomenological
description that follows are supported by the participants’ own words.
2 United Nations International
Police

The United Nations was founded on October 24, 1945, with the ratification of
the United Nations charter by the United States, China, France, Russia, and the
United Kingdom (Hårleman, 2003). As a successor to the failed League of
Nations, the United Nations’ founding principle was the promotion of inter-
national peace through the collective security of United Nations member states.
United Nations intervention in the promotion of international peace is known as
peacekeeping. The power to authorize United Nations peacekeeping missions
resides with the United Nations Security Council (Ram, 2006).
Worldwide, there have been 54 peacekeeping missions undertaken by the
United Nations, since the United Nations was formed. Peacekeeping missions
can take the form of military intervention, creating a military buffer between
warring factions, post-­conflict democratization, police development, and capa-
city building. Since the first peacekeeping mission in Palestine in 1948, the role,
mandate, and methodology of peacekeeping have evolved significantly. United
Nations peacekeeping accelerated in the 1990s. Fully 70 percent of all United
Nations peacekeeping missions have been initiated after 1990 (Bayley, 2006).
The United Nations first utilized a police component to peacekeeping opera-
tions in the 1960s, when a police component was deployed to the United Nations
mission in the Congo. Other modern United Nations police operations have
taken place in Panama, Haiti, Kosovo, Bosnia, and Timor Leste, among others
(de Saint-­Claire, 2007). Increasingly robust police components are an ever more
critical component in modern peacekeeping missions.
The integration of a police component into peacekeeping missions was a
result of the realization that democratic police reform is critical to the reform and
stabilization of a post-­conflict society. In many repressive or unstable societies,
police forces are frequently a leading mechanism for the oppression of the popu-
lation. It is practically impossible to stabilize and democratize a post-­conflict
population without reforming the leading vehicle of prior oppression, the police
(Bayley, 2006; Durch & England, 2010).
When the author was deployed to the UNMIK Police in Kosovo, his first
assignment was as an investigator on a counter-­terrorism task force. Being
assigned as investigators, the officers assigned to the task force asked if the task
force was a plain-­clothes assignment. It is a status symbol in policing to be in
8   United Nations International Police
plain-­clothes. The officers were told that all investigators in the UNMIK Police
were uniformed. The reason for this rule was that the Albanian population in
Kosovo was extremely distrustful of plain-­clothes police. During the Serbian
oppression of the ethnic Albanian population in the 1990s, the Serbian secret
police wore plain-­clothes. When the Serbian secret police showed up, people
tended to disappear. Considering that uniformed police officers were usually
recruited from the local population, and the secret police generally came from
Belgrade, the populace was very distrustful of all plain-­clothes police officers,
which necessitated the UNMIK Police requiring all investigators to wear uni-
forms. As this example indicates, the effect of police oppression on a population
can be profound and long lasting.
United Nations Police (UNPOL) missions began as monitoring missions
where UNPOL officers were tasked with monitoring and reporting on the activ-
ities of local police. The idea being that the local police would know that they
were being watched, and would refrain from oppressive behavior (Levine, 2008).
While such actions might restrict abuses in the moment, simple monitoring did
nothing to change the oppressive nature or culture of an oppressive police force.
Once the monitors left, the police would return to their previous oppressive
behavior because nothing had been done to change the mentality, training, or
quality of the police. Thus, more robust and more involved police missions were
forthcoming. In 1999, the United Nations began what is known as the fourth
generation of modern peacekeeping missions. The United Nations Mission in
Kosovo (UNMIK) and the United Nations Transitional Administration in Timor-
­Leste (UNTAET) were the first UNPOL missions where the UN Police was
given executive law-­enforcement powers. The new generation of UNPOL offi-
cers, in some missions, had the power to arrest, conduct investigations, and to
file criminal charges, rather than simple monitoring responsibilities, which carry
no real authority (Silander, 2009).
Modern peacekeeping missions are generally comprised of three main com-
ponents. There is the civilian administration, the military component, and the
police component (Benner & Mergenthaler, 2008). Each component serves a
critical purpose. The civilian administration interfaces with organic civilian gov-
ernmental organizations in the mission area. The military component engages in
physical peacekeeping, where the UN troops literally position themselves
between warring parties. The military component also engages in security and
deterrence patrols, but do not engage in law enforcement. The police component
performs all manner of police work, depending on the scope and requirements of
the mission mandate. Most importantly, the police component is responsible for
mentoring and capacity building of the organic police forces.
United Nations police forces are highly diverse multinational forces. An
UNPOL mission is staffed with police officers assigned by United Nations
member states, known as Police Contributing Countries. In 2007, there were 92
United Nations member states contributing police officers to UNPOL missions;
however, not all Police Contributing Countries participate in all UNPOL mis-
sions (Greener, 2009). An UNPOL officer is still a police officer of his or her
 United Nations International Police   9
nation’s police forces; the officer is temporarily assigned to the UNPOL mission
through a process known as secondment (Durch, England, Mangan, & Ker,
2012). Thus, the United Nations does not have a police force per se. United
Nations police officers are police officers from Police Contributing Countries
who are assigned by their country to work for an UNPOL mission temporarily.
The modern UNPOL officer does not now merely observe and report. The
modern UNPOL officer is much more integrally involved in the reformation of
the organic police in the mission area. UNPOL officers engage in enforcing the
rule of law, providing training, mentoring, and capacity building for the local
police forces in the mission area. The UNPOL component is a key and primary
engine of reform through its work with and mentoring of the mission’s organic
police forces (Smith, Holt, & Durch, 2007). This focus on the reformation of the
police drove a strong increase in the number of UNPOL officers deployed by the
United Nations from 3,000 UNPOL officers in 1998 to 13,500 UNPOL officers,
serving in 13 peacekeeping missions worldwide, in 2010 (Durch & England,
2010; Rotmann, 2011). As of 2017, there is a UN Policing component to 12 of
18 UN peacekeeping operations active in the world. Those peacekeeping mis-
sions with a police component include MINUSTAH (Haiti), UNISFA (Abyei,
Sudan), UNMISS (South Sudan), MINUSCA (Central African Republic),
MONUSCO (Democratic Republic of Congo), UNFICYP (Cyprus), UNMIK
(Kosovo), MINUSMA (Mali), UNAMID (Darfur), UNIFIL (Lebanon), and
UNMIL (Liberia) (United Nations Peacekeeping, 2017).

UNPOL Mission Mandates

All UN peacekeeping missions are created through a resolution passed by the
UN Security Council. The Security Council Resolution will define, in the broad-
est terms, the nature, scope, and responsibilities of the peacekeeping mission, of
which the UNPOL component would be a part. The overarching goal of a peace-
keeping mission in general, and an UNPOL mission specifically, is referred to as
the mission mandate. The mandate of a peacekeeping mission is highly specific
and is crafted to the unique nature of the conflict that led to the need for a peace-
keeping mission. Other considerations that affect the nature of the mission
mandate include the political climate at the time, the security status of the
mission area, and the historical context of the conflict (Hårleman, 2003). The
UN Security Council Resolution’s articulation of a mission mandate can be quite
broad and quite succinct, encapsulated in the briefest and broadest terms. It is
left to the United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO), and
the leadership of each particular mission, to determine the specifics of precisely
how the mission mandate is to be accomplished.
The United Nations Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) included a robust execu-
tive police component. The UNMIK mission was created through the passage
of United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1244, which was
passed in June of 1999. Article 11 of UNSCR 1244 defined the mandate for the
police component of the UNMIK mission. The entirety of the UNMIK Police’s
10   United Nations International Police
mandate was encapsulated in a single sentence. The UNMIK Police were
responsible for “… maintaining civil law and order, including establishing local
police forces and meanwhile through the deployment of international police
personnel to serve in Kosovo” (UNSCR 1244, 1999, p. 4). This simple phrase
encapsulated bringing order and rule of law to a post-­conflict region, conduct-
ing police operations, investigations, border policing, war crimes, etc. In addi-
tion, the mandate required the UNMIK Police to create, recruit, train, mentor,
and develop an organic police force in Kosovo from scratch. Exactly how all of
this was to be accomplished was left to DPKO and the staff of the UNMIK
mission.
Where the UNMIK Police mission was one of establishing rule of law and
creating an organic police force, the UN Police mission in Haiti had a very
different mandate. The United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (MINUS-
TAH) was created by UNSCR 1529, which was passed by the UNSC in 2004.
The MINUSTAH mission was in response to the chronic instability of the gov-
ernmental institutions of Haiti, and persistent lawlessness within the population.
Section 2, paragraph “c” of UNSCR 1529 authorizes the deployment of an
interim peacekeeping force for a period not to exceed three months. Thus, the
MINUSTAH mission was initially conceived as a temporary stopgap measure.
The mandate for the police component of the MINSUTAH mission was to
“… facilitate the provision of international assistance to the Haitian police and
the Haitian Coast Guard in order to establish and maintain public safety and law
and order and to promote and protect human rights;” (UNSCR 1529, 2004, p. 2).
Thus, the MINUSTAH Police mandate was one of training, support, and capa-
city building of the existing Police Nationale d’Haïti (PNH); rather than an
executive mission requiring enforcement of the rule of law. The mandate of the
MINUSTAH mission has been consistently extended and is currently still opera-
tional as of 2018.
The mandates for police mission components are quite succinct and should be
viewed as strategic statements, outlining the goals of the mission in broad
strokes. It should be noted that in the two examples of UNMIK and MINUS-
TAH, the police components were deeply involved in training, development,
capacity building, and mentoring. The modern era of UNPOL missions has
moved away from monitoring and now has the UNPOL officer deeply involved
in a transformational role in the peacekeeping process (Durch & England, 2010).

UNPOL Mission Composition

The composition of each UNPOL mission, both in the structure of the UNPOL
organization and the national composition of the organization, differ from
mission to mission. These factors depend greatly on the mission mandate and the
precise nature of the mission as defined by the mandate. Each UNPOL mission
is staffed with seconded police officers from dozens of different UN member
states. The cultural diversity of an UNPOL mission is extreme, with UNPOL
organizations being comprised of police officers from dozens of different
 United Nations International Police   11
nations. For example, in 2007, the UNMIK Police was comprised of 2,190
police officers from 45 different countries (UNMIK, 2008).
Every UNPOL officer is an experienced domestic police officer within that
officer’s home country. As such, UNPOL officers are thoroughly steeped in the
police culture and policing philosophy from their individual home country
(Tomforde, 2010). Thus, each UNPOL officer’s concept of policing and societal
norms can be in conflict with the UNPOL officer’s colleagues from different
countries and different cultures. A refined cultural awareness and the ability to
adjust to the demands of such a complex cultural environment are essential to
effective peacekeeping (Haddad, 2010). When police officers from dozens of
different nationalities must work together, and each nationality is convinced of
the correctness of their own police culture and philosophy, one can anticipate a
significant amount of tension. Each nationality will be attempting to assert that
their method is correct and should be followed.
UNPOL missions are extremely diverse and each mission has its own unique
cultural mixture of UNPOL officers. The diversity of UNPOL missions and the
extreme differences in cultural mixtures of UNPOL missions can be assessed by
considering the list of Police Contributing Countries to UNPOL missions. Table
2.1 displays a list of Police Contributing Countries providing police officers to
the UNMIK Police mission in June of 2008. There are police officers from all
six populated continents, including many different cultures, levels of economic
attainment, governmental systems, and religions.
In comparison to the list from the UNMIK mission, Table 2.2 shows the list
of police contributing countries to the MINUSTAH mission is just as diverse,
but of a decidedly different and unique mixture of nationalities. Each UNPOL
mission is comprised of police officers provided to the United Nations by such

Table 2.1 List of United Nations member states contributing police officers to the
UNMIK police mission

Argentina Hungary Portugal

Austria India Romania
Bangladesh Italy Russia
Brazil Jordan Slovenia
Bulgaria Kenya Spain
China Kyrgyzstan Switzerland
Croatia Lithuania Sweden
Czech Republic Malawi East Timor
Denmark Nepal Turkey
Egypt Netherlands Uganda
Finland Nigeria United Kingdom
France Norway Ukraine
Germany Pakistan United States
Ghana Philippines Zambia
Greece Poland Zimbabwe

Source: Adapted from UNMIK Police personnel report (June 2008). Pristina, Kosovo: United
Nations Mission in Kosovo Police, Director of Personnel
12   United Nations International Police
Table 2.2 List of United Nations member states contributing police officers to the
MINUSTAH police mission

Bangladesh Guinea Romania

Benin India Russian Federation
Brazil Indonesia Rwanda
Burkina Faso Jordan Senegal
Cameroon Madagascar Slovakia
Canada Mali Spain
Chad Nepal Sri Lanka
Colombia Niger Sweden
Djibouti Nigeria Togo
El Salvador Norway Tunisia
Ethiopia Pakistan Turkey
France Philippines United States of America
Germany Portugal Uruguay

Source: United Nations Peacekeeping, 2017.

police contributing countries as have a national interest in a particular mission.

Thus, each mission is highly diverse and each mission has its own unique blend
of nationalities.
While UNPOL organizations are extremely diverse in composition; UNPOL
organizations are also completely integrated. A multinational military effort
might involve military organizations from several different countries working as
organic units but in cooperation with units from other countries. The soldiers on
the ground would still be in platoon or company units of their own military, so
the average solider does not work with soldiers from other nationalities. The cul-
tural and coordination issues would occur at the interface between the national
elements of the multinational forces, which would occur at the command level.
Smaller military units would be intact and would work as they do in their home
country. In an UNPOL mission, UN police officers are deployed according to
skills and needs, with no consideration of nationality. All UNPOL units, down to
the smallest element, are fully multi-­national in composition. An UNPOL officer
would most likely work in a unit with police officers from many different nation-
alities. An UNPOL officer will ultimately work directly with any conceivable
combination of nationalities, depending on which nations contribute to the
mission.
The extreme diversity of the UNPOL officers participating in the UN police
mission is not necessarily a weakness. In a post-­conflict or struggling nation, rife
with ethnic tension, the positive effects of a fully integrated and multinational
support organization cannot be overstated. To staff an UNPOL mission with a
few select nationalities, would be to promote and verify the efficacy of a lack of
inclusiveness that most likely contributed to the problems in the mission area. It
would be very difficult for the United Nations to take on the role of peacekeeper
and peacemaker, if there was no diversity amongst the member states participat-
ing in the peacekeeping mission. It is imperative to expose the population in the
mission area to diversity and democratic ideals.
 United Nations International Police   13
UNPOL Missions and Hyper-­Diversity
While UNPOL missions are clearly very diverse, the level of diversity of an
UNPOL mission surpasses the simple categorization of being diverse. In most
diverse societies, there is nevertheless a hierarchical relationship between cul-
tures, with a general dominant culture and subordinate cultures in evidence.
However, societies can reach a level of diversity that is so profound that there is
no dominant culture. The dominant culture of such a society ultimately becomes
an amalgamation of all of the contributing cultural influences. Thus, the extreme
diversity itself creates a new transcultural dominant culture. This level of soci-
etal diversity is referred to as hyper-­diversity (Kirmayer, 2013).
In a hyper-­diverse society or community, the idea of a dominant or heritage
culture is very difficult to define because the dominant culture in a hyper-­diverse
society is in and of itself transcultural. Current examples of hyper-­diverse com-
munities could include the cities of Montréal and Toronto in Canada (Doucerain,
Dere, & Ryder, 2013). In the study of the acculturation of immigrants, hyper-­
diversity can increase the difficulty and complexity of the immigrants’ adjust-
ment to their new environment. The transcultural nature of a hyper-­diverse
society means that there is no identifiable dominant culture per se, which an
immigrant can imitate, study, and emulate.
The concept of hyper-­diversity, as defined by Kirmayer (2013), pertains to
diversity at a societal level. However, considering that the transcultural nature of
the hyper-­diverse society is key to the definition of hyper-­diversity, the defini-
tion of hyper-­diversity could be applied to an organization as well. In looking at
the extreme level of diversity in an UNPOL organization, and taking into
account that the UNPOL organization is completely integrated culturally, it is
clear that there is no dominant culture present in an UNPOL organization.
Rather, the dominant culture of an UNPOL organization is a transcultural amal-
gamation of all of the cultures present, particularly the cultures of those UNPOL
officers in leadership positions. An organization that is so diverse that there is no
dominant culture, where the organizational culture is a transcultural collection of
the cultures contributing to the organization; such an organization could reason-
ably be considered to be a hyper-­diverse organization. Following this line of
reasoning, the author concludes that UNPOL organizations can be considered to
be hyper-­diverse organizations.
Leadership and leadership styles have a profound effect on organizational
culture (Buble, 2012). Taking into account the extreme diversity of an UNPOL
mission, the organizational culture of an UNPOL mission is complex, unique,
and challenging. Organizational culture in general is a result of the downward
cultural influences exerted by each person within the chain of command. Each
leader within the chain of command applies their own unique vision to their
position, which then affects subordinate units. In most cases, organizational
culture will follow a fairly predictable line, because each member of the chain of
command would be from the same country, same culture, and same organiza-
tion, so many of the professional perceptions of the leaders would be reasonably
14   United Nations International Police
consistent. Each leader in the chain of command has a profound impact on the
organizational culture of all subordinate units (Neiminen, Biermeier-­Hanson, &
Denison, 2013; Schein, 2010). In an organization where the cultural paradigms
of each member of the chain of command are considerably different, one could
expect the organizational culture to be more fluid and volatile. Furthermore, the
organizational culture of subordinate units could reasonably be expected to
reflect the aggregate of the downward cultural influences of each member of the
chain of command.
The organizational culture of an UNPOL mission is not only different for
each mission, but is also fluid and dynamic. The standard length of deployment
for an UNPOL officer is one year (DPKO, 2007). UNPOL officers are continu-
ally rotating into and out of an UNPOL mission. The effect of such fluidity can
best be understood through a hypothetical example.
Consider the hypothetical example of the UNPOL officer who is deployed to
a United Nations police mission, and is deployed to an investigative unit. The
investigative unit would be comprised of police officers from any of the coun-
tries contributing to the mission. The national diversity of the chain of command
for the hypothetical UNPOL officer’s investigative unit could be as follows:
Police Commissioner—British; Deputy Commissioner for Crime—Swedish;
Director for Crime—German; Deputy Director for Crime—Ghanaian;—Chief of
Major Crimes Unit—Indian. The organizational culture for this investigative unit
would then be a combination of the downward influences of each person in the
chain of command from the Police Commissioner to the chief of unit. Each
UNPOL officer within the chain of command would be exerting their own
unique downward influences based on that leader’s own national policing philo-
sophy, national training, national police doctrine, cultural communication para-
digms, nationalistic perceptions, and perceptions of what constitutes appropriate
leadership. Thus, as an aggregate of the national and professional culture of each
person in the chain of command, the organizational culture for the hypothetical
investigative unit would be unique. As the chain of command for every unit in
an UNPOL mission will have a unique national mixture, the organizational
culture for every unit in an UNPOL mission is a unique blend of the influences
of each member of the chain of command.
Three months after the hypothetical UNPOL officer is assigned to the investi-
gative unit, the unit chief rotates home to India, and is replaced by a Russian.
The organizational culture of the unit will undergo a dramatic change because of
the considerable cultural, operational, and philosophical differences (called
cultural distance) between the Indian police and the Russian police. Two months
later, the German Director for Crime rotates home and is replaced by an
American. Again, the organizational culture changes due to the introduction of
the cultural influences of the American, and the effect of the American’s culture
on the units under his or her command. Two months later, the Swedish Deputy
Commissioner for Crime rotates home and is replaced by a Brazilian. The cul-
tural dynamic in organizational culture of every unit under the Deputy Commis-
sioner’s command changes once again.
 United Nations International Police   15
Rotations and changes of personnel occur constantly in all UNPOL missions.
The constant entry and exit of UNPOL officers complicates the cultural dynamic
in the mission because the organizational culture of the UNPOL organization is
continually changing. As each person at each level of organization rotates home,
and is replaced by someone from another country, the cultural dynamic of that
unit and any subordinate units change. The organizational culture of an UNPOL
mission is not only an amalgamation of the professional cultures of all contrib-
uting countries; the organizational culture is also fluid, dynamic, and amorphous.
With each change of personnel in the chain of command, the organizational
culture of all units below that level will change.
3 The UNPOL Experience

Police officers from United Nations contributing countries entering into an

UNPOL mission all follow the same general procedures. First, all police person-
nel deploying to an UNPOL mission must have a minimum of five years of
active police service in their home country’s domestic police force. Prospective
UNPOL officers must also pass a battery of examinations to ascertain their suit-
ability for active participation in a peacekeeping mission. Prospective UNPOL
officers must pass a language proficiency test, a driving test, and for those offi-
cers wishing to participate in armed or executive UNPOL missions, a shooting
test (DPKO, 2007). The language test is geared toward ensuring the prospective
UNPOL officer’s proficiency in the mission language. All UN missions are
assigned either English or French, the two official UN languages, as the official
mission language, with the vast majority of missions being English-­language
missions. The adoption of the mission language, in which all participants in the
peacekeeping mission must be proficient, is an excellent policy that ensures that
communication within the mission will be effective.
The English, shooting, and driving tests can be administered during induction
training upon deployment to the UNPOL mission. However, the United Nations
also provide Selection Assistance Teams (SAT), who are specially qualified UN
police instructors actively serving in UNPOL missions. The purpose of selection
assistance team is to provide the English, shooting and driving tests within the
UN contributing country. It is logistically more efficient to send four UNPOL
instructors to a United Nations police contributing country to test 600 people,
rather than to send those officers to a mission to be tested. Once the selection
assistance testing is completed, the SAT team leader provides the national police
authorities of the UN police contributing country with a list of those police
officers who passed all tests and who are qualified for participation in United
Nations peacekeeping missions.
In most countries, prospective UNPOL officers then participate in pre-­
deployment training provided by their national police organization. In some
cases, regional pre-­deployment centers are utilized. Such training at the national
level is at the discretion of the contributing country; thus the nature of the pre-­
deployment training varies considerably from country to country, and is designed
to facilitate the police officer’s transition from a domestic policing role into the
 The UNPOL Experience   17
role of an UNPOL officer. While some national pre-­deployment training pro-
grams provide multicultural information, this information is in the context of the
prospective UNPOL officer being able to interact effectively with indigenous
people within the mission area. No training is provided in multiculturalism in the
context of the intercultural challenges of working with other UNPOL officers
from so many different cultures and nationalities.
After pre-­deployment training, in coordination with the United Nations
Department of peacekeeping operations, a contingent of police officers will be
deployed to the UNPOL mission. Each national group within an UNPOL
mission is referred to as a contingent. Upon arrival to the mission area, all new
UNPOL officers then undergo approximately one week of induction training.
The exact syllabus for induction training varies from mission to mission. In
general, induction training covers: the historical background of the conflict or
unrest that led to the UNPOL mission; the current political and social situation
in the mission area; the current security situation in the mission area; the mission
mandate; UNPOL policies and procedures; a cultural presentation pertaining to
host country nationals and culture; officer safety; sexual-­harassment; HIV-­AIDS,
and other topics as deemed necessary by the mission hierarchy. The induction
training does cover cultural awareness regarding the host country culture;
however, the induction training does not cover any multicultural issues pertain-
ing to dealing with the hyper-­diverse environment of the UNPOL mission, or
how to communicate, interact, and work in a hyper-­diverse environment.
After the successful completion of induction training, UNPOL officers are
then deployed to a unit to begin work. UNPOL officers are deployed to their
operational unit in accordance with their skill sets and where they could make
the greatest contribution to the mission. It is during post-­induction training
deployment that UNPOL officers first come fully into contact with the hyper-­
diverse environment of the UNPOL mission. While the new UNPOL officer is
exposed to some limited diversity during their induction training, UNPOL offi-
cers are deployed and trained in contingents, or large national groups. So a new
UNPOL officer is likely to undergo induction training with anywhere from two
to 50 police officers from their own country. The instructors in the police train-
ing center will be from other countries; however, it is not until the UNPOL
officer reaches their assigned unit that they fully realize the extent of the hyper-­
diversity of an UNPOL mission and begin to experience acculturative stress.
When a new UNPOL officer is deployed to their assigned unit after induction
training, the hyper-­diverse environment of an UNPOL mission can be quite a
shock. Regardless of the level of diversity of the police officer’s society, when-
ever a domestic police officer experiences intercultural difficulties, there is
always the security of his or her own heritage culture or dominant culture upon
which to fall back. A new UNPOL officer is thrust into an environment that is a
kaleidoscope of competing and conflicting cultures, each struggling for domi-
nance. Each UNPOL officer, when they are prepared in their home country for
deployment to the UNPOL mission, undergoes some pre-­deployment training. In
the national pre-­deployment training, the prospective UNPOL officers are told
18   The UNPOL Experience
they are the best of the best, that they are representing their country, and that
they are expected to go to the UNPOL mission and excel.
Each UNPOL officer arrives in their UNPOL mission fully indoctrinated into
his or her own nation’s policing philosophies and culture. Obviously, each
country believes that their vision, methodology, policing approach, and policing
culture are exceptional. Indeed, these factors may be exceptional; however, they
are appropriate for the UNPOL officer’s home country, and not necessarily for
the host country of the mission. Many UNPOL officers enter their mission seeing
police methodology and strategic vision in binary terms. There is our way of
doing things … and there is the wrong way of doing things. Nevertheless, each
UNPOL officer arrives in mission believing that according to their national
police methodology, their police forces do things the right way. Each member of
a national contingent has a national centric view of the policing philosophy of
his or her own country. This national centric view of one’s own policing philo-
sophies was the cause of much of the cultural tension pertaining to philosophy
and methodology within an UNPOL organization. The participant from Denmark
mentioned this particular element of his initial experience as an UNPOL officer.
The participant stated:

It was quite an experience to witness how they [other UNPOL Officers] did
things. I was quite baffled.… When I came down there [to first UNPOL
Mission], I was pretty sure that our way [the Danish way] was the only
way.… The best way … I soon learned that other nationalities had their own
ways of doing things. They weren’t necessarily wrong they were different.
They could be quite as effective and as good as us.

Thus, in addition to facing the hyper-­diversity of the personnel within the

mission, the new UNPOL officer must also grapple with the fact that their
national policing methodology is not the only way to do things.
In an UNPOL mission, there is no dominant culture, there is only the UNPOL
mission’s organizational culture, which is constantly morphing and changing. In
addition to being immersed in such a hyper-­diverse environment, UNPOL offi-
cers must also deal with the culture of the host society. This can be problematic
when the culture of the host society is considerably different from that of the
new UNPOL officer. The Pakistani participant in the author’s study made note
of the fact that many of the more devout Muslim police officers from Pakistan
had cross-­cultural issues during their UNPOL mission, because of the cultural
distance involved. For example, some officers were not at all comfortable
working with females, or even being subordinated to females. Devoutly religious
officers had issues with colleagues who partied, drank alcohol, and engaged in
sexual relations with other UNPOL officers or with citizens from the mission
area. Thus the shock and the difficulties of an UNPOL officer’s immersion into a
hyper-­diverse environment are more extensive than mere cultural differences.
Inter-­cultural differences were also exacerbated by religious cultural norms, and
the behaviors of one’s colleagues.
 The UNPOL Experience   19
Even to those UNPOL officers who may have travelled internationally, the
complete homogenous integration in hyper-­diversity of an UNPOL mission can
be overwhelming. The new UNPOL officer is not only faced with a foreign
population and a difficult security situation, the UNPOL officer must work
effectively with police officers from all over the world. Not only will a new
UNPOL officer will most likely encounter every conceivable nationality, reli-
gion, ethnicity, governmental system, economic level of attainment, and policing
philosophy, the new UNPOL officer will be expected to work effectively with
such a diverse workforce.
While each UNPOL officer reacts to the sudden immersion into a hyper-­
diverse environment differently, the author’s study revealed that there is a certain
universality to the reactions of new UNPOLs to their first exposure to the hyper-­
diverse environment of an UNPOL mission. The American participant in the
author’s study described the experience of entering a hyper-­diverse environment
for the first time, as:

… I didn’t know what damn planet I was on. Not only [was this] my first
time out of the country, but my first time in that kind of environment
[hyper-­diverse]. You know … being around strange people who I never
was around before. So the whole thing was not traumatic, but it certainly
was difficult

The diversity experienced in an UNPOL mission is quite unimaginable to

most people. The Jordanian participant in the author’s study articulated the
extent of the diversity as compared to the participant’s own perceptions of the
world. The participant stated, “You will be dealing with different nationalities,
some of them … you didn’t even know they existed”. To be thrust into such a
diverse environment would be difficult enough without considering the duties
incumbent upon an UNPOL officer. The UNPOL officer must not only survive
in this hyper-­diverse environment, he or she must flourish in this environment.
The UNPOL officer must work effectively as a team member within this hyper-­
diverse group of colleagues to create and promote peacekeeping, peacemaking,
enforcing the rule of law, mentoring, training, and capacity building of the host
country’s police force. Policing is frequently a life and death occupation, where
the potential outcomes of one’s actions, or inactions, can be dire. To marry the
stress and difficulty of policing, with hyper-­diversity, and the fact that each
UNPOL officer’s life depends on colleagues from around the world, the total
UNPOL experience can be supremely challenging and overwhelming.
In describing the experience of being thrust into a hyper-­diverse environment,
the participants in the author’s study used many adjectives to describe their
initial reaction to hyper-­diversity. Participants’ reactions to their initial immer-
sion in the hyper-­diverse environment of an UNPOL mission range from bewil-
dering to scary. Perhaps the most accurate term to describe the experience of
entry into an UNPOL mission would be confusing. In addition to the simple con-
fusion of the hyper-­diverse environment, the UNPOL officer must also adapt to
20   The UNPOL Experience
the mission mandate, mission requirements, and the requirements of the new
UNPOL officer’s position within the mission.
There is an inherent pressure to being an UNPOL officer, particularly in post-­
conflict areas, that adds to the tension and pressure created by the hyper-­diversity
of the UNPOL organization. One very large difference between domestic polic-
ing and international policing is that the stakes in international policing can be
dauntingly high. In domestic policing, a mistake can result in a lawsuit, or pos-
sibly criminal charges. In a post-­conflict region rife with ethnic tensions, a
mistake by the police can start a war. Thus, the stakes for UNPOL officers, par-
ticularly in post conflict missions, are extremely high. The difficulty of the
mission mandate, and the serious consequences of mistakes or failure, adds sub-
stantially to the stress new UNPOL officers experience.
An UNPOL officer’s initial immersion into the hyper-­diverse environment
can be very traumatic. However, over time and after adjustment, the successfully
adjusted UNPOL officer becomes more adept at navigating the cultural com-
plexities of the UNPOL organization, and the difficulties inherent with being a
part of a hyper-­diverse organization. The most traumatic event for every UNPOL
officer is his or her initial entry into the mission. All of the participants in the
author’s study stated that each subsequent mission became easier and that the
cultural skills learned within their first mission were fully transferable, regard-
less of the cultural mix of their next mission. The portability of the intercultural
lessons learned in the first UNPOL mission would seem to indicate that the
process of negotiating complex acculturation produces lasting benefits to an
UNPOL officer’s intercultural skills.
In spite of the difficulties created initially by the hyper-­diverse nature of an
UNPOL mission, all of the participants in this study expressed very strong feel-
ings that their UNPOL mission was one of the most rewarding and challenging
experiences of their lives. The difficulties of adjusting to complex acculturation
notwithstanding, the intercultural exchange that must come from successfully
navigating the complex acculturation experience had a profound effect on each
participant. Those aspects of an UNPOL mission, which were problematic at
first, such as simply understanding that one’s own way of doing things is not the
only way, became profoundly important opportunities for personal growth. All
of the participants in the study were very positive and affirmative in their belief
that their UNPOL mission or missions had a dramatic effect on their under-
standing of policing, life, and the world. All of the participants in this study
expressed a strong belief that the personal growth that attended their successful
negotiation of complex acculturation, and the hyper-­diverse environment of an
UNPOL mission, ultimately made them better police officers, and better human
beings.
4 Exploring Expatriate and UNPOL
Performance

In exploring potential causal variables to explain the chronic poor performance

of UNPOL missions, the author’s research intersected with existing research into
the effects of expatriate acculturation and expatriate performance. The existing
data pertaining to expatriate acculturation and performance in the private sector
is relevant to the question of UNPOL performance. UNPOL officers are essen-
tially public-­sector expatriate employees who are deployed abroad to work in
foreign assignments. The existing literature pertaining to private-­sector expatri-
ate acculturation does not focus on the avocation of the expatriates under study.
As acculturation and cross-­cultural adjustment are cognitive processes, the
precise avocation of the study participants would not seem to be highly relevant.
Thus, the author’s research into private sector expatriate acculturation and per-
formance would seem to be directly relevant to the question of UNPOL accul-
turation and UNPOL performance.

Expatriate Performance and Acculturation

Expatriate workers are employees of multinational corporations, governments,
nongovernmental organizations who are sent to live and work in a foreign country.
Most expatriate worker assignments are for a limited amount of time. The expatri-
ate worker remains a citizen of his or her home country and ultimately returns to
their home country upon completion of the expatriate assignment (Josien, 2012).
The continuing globalization of business is slowly eradicating cultural barriers.
The use of expatriate workers, which facilitate the creation of a multicultural
workforce, is creating an unprecedented level of cross-­cultural exchange in busi-
ness and international elements of the public sector (Fee & Gray, 2012). Expatri-
ate workers on foreign assignment face a significant challenge in adjusting to the
societal and organizational culture of the country in which their foreign assign-
ment takes place. Expatriate workers come into extensive contact with people
who have different societal, communication, interaction, and work-­related cul-
tural paradigms, requiring the expatriate to release his or her own cultural norms
and adapt both culturally and psychologically to their new environment. This
process is known as cross-­cultural adjustment, or acculturation (Berry, 2005;
Leong, 2014; Okpara & Kabongo, 2011).
22   Expatriate and UNPOL Performance
Expatriate workers are an important element of globalization, because the use
of expatriate workers creates multicultural multinational workforces. In the
realm of international business and international governmental cooperation,
expatriate workers tend to soften cultural barriers, making such efforts more pro-
ductive. It would be short-­sighted for an international business to assume that
their business model, strategic vision, and corporate culture would be directly
transferable to other countries across the entire cultural spectrum. Cultural differ-
ences, preferences, and norms vary from country to country creating many ante-
cedent variables to the globalization process. These antecedent variables can be
adjusted for using expatriate workers, who create a bridge to the home organiza-
tion so that the organization can adapt and adjust its approach, practices, and
vision to be strategically and culturally aligned to the new market (Lauring,
2011).
Organizations seeking to globalize face the problem of ensuring that subsidi-
ary offices in other countries function in alignment with the strategic vision set
forth by corporate or national headquarters, while simultaneously aligning that
vision to the cultural realities of subsidiary nations (Rosensbusch & Cseh, 2012).
Expatriate workers can augment the skill sets of employees and personnel in the
subsidiary country, as well as help to maintain the alignment of the strategic
vision to the cultural norms within the subsidiary office. Multinational corpora-
tions seeking to expand into foreign countries also utilize expatriate workers to
fill management positions. The subsidiary office in another country may also
require personnel with specific skill sets, who have a deep understanding of the
home offices’ procedures, best practices, and strategic vision (Oltra, Bonache, &
Brewster, 2013). Expatriate workers with a full understanding of the business
methodology and strategic vision of the home office create a conduit through
which the home office can keep its finger on the pulse of subsidiary offices in
foreign countries (Josien, 2012).
Globalization is a gradual process, because each step of globalization requires
region-­specific knowledge to align the globalizing organization to the particular
needs of the region. The deployment of expatriate workers allows multinational
corporations to gain regionally specific knowledge regarding emerging markets.
The multinational corporation can then align its strategic vision to the cultural
and regional norms of the target market (Dabic, González-Loureiro, & Harvey,
2013). Expatriate workers also culturally diversify multinational business, which
helps to create cross-­cultural understanding between satellite offices and the
home office. The use of expatriate workers allows a multinational corporation to
understand and benefit from the cultural differences between subsidiary offices,
and allows for a more cohesive global strategic vision (Ferdman & Sagiv, 2012).
While expatriate workers have proven to be a highly beneficial asset to the
globalization of multinational businesses, expatriate workers are also a very
expensive investment. The costs that accompany the selection, training, deploy-
ment, and support of an expatriate worker generally fall between $250,000 and
$1 million per year. While expatriate workers are proven to be very beneficial to
the overall success of multinational organizations, expatriate workers also
 Expatriate and UNPOL Performance   23
represent a multinational corporation’s single greatest expense for individual
employees (Josien, 2012). As expatriate workers become an ever increasingly
utilized human resource for multinational businesses, and considering the exten-
sive costs involved in supporting expatriate programs, the productivity and
success of expatriate worker assignments has become a critical issue in the realm
of multinational business. Because expatriate workers are seen as a valuable,
productive, critical, and highly expensive human resource, there has been
considerable research into understanding, facilitating, and predicting the produc-
tivity, success, and failure of expatriate workers (Rosensbusch & Cseh, 2012).
During the economic and budgetary difficulties of the past decade, multi-
national corporations’ use of expatriate workers has steadily increased, in spite
of the cost and budgetary pressures (Malek & Budhwar, 2013). A 2008–2009
survey conducted by Mercer indicated that 243 multinational corporations
employed over 94,000 expatriate workers worldwide; an 88 percent increase in
expatriate workers from a similar survey conducted in 2005–2006 (Kovesh-
nikov, Wechtler, & Dejoux, 2013). It seems clear that the continued globaliza-
tion of the world economy will lead to more multinational cooperative ventures,
which will lead to a continuing increase in expatriate assignments. Considering
the fact that expatriate workers are an expensive resource, it is important to note
that the investment into the use of expatriate workers continued, and even
expanded, in spite of cost-­cutting and budgetary constraints during difficult
economic times. Such extensive investment contextualizes and highlights the
effectiveness and the importance of expatriate workers to the success of a multi-
national corporation.
The steady increase in the globalism of business has led to ever more
employees being sent on foreign assignments as expatriate workers. The focus of
research onto acculturative issues in expatriate workers can be attributed prim-
arily to the continuing increases in globalization in the business sector. The
multinational business sector’s march toward globalization has led to a consist-
ent and continual increase in the use of expatriate workers (Howe-­Walsh &
Schyns, 2010; Takeuchi, 2010).
A considerable amount of research has been conducted into improving the
selection process for expatriate workers. The selection of expatriates who have a
greater capacity for effective acculturation is crucial to ensuring the expatriate’s
ultimate success (Koveshnikov et al., 2013). Because of the complexities
involved in an expatriate assignment, the selection of the right people is all the
more difficult. It is not enough that a prospective expatriate worker has the
excellent technical knowledge required at the subsidiary office. An expatriate
worker with excellent skills but poor acculturative ability will ultimately fail.
Thus, the selection process for expatriate workers must be multi-­dimensional.
Candidates for expatriate assignment must possess the necessary skill sets, and
they must be able to acculturate successfully in their new assignment (Josien,
2012).
The extensive use of expatriate workers does present significant retention
challenges. Multinational corporations have experienced significant difficulties
24   Expatriate and UNPOL Performance
in retaining expatriate workers due, in part, to the early return of approximately
21 percent of expatriates prior to the completion of their assignment (Okpara &
Kabongo, 2011). One factor of expatriate assignment that been extensively
studied, and has been shown to contribute to the failure of expatriates on foreign
assignments, is the inability of expatriate workers to adapt to the culture of the
assignment’s host country (Okpara & Kabongo, 2011).
The expense of expatriate workers and the importance placed on their success
have driven much research into expatriate workers. The poor performance of an
expatriate worker not only represents a financial loss, due to the need to replace
the expatriate worker, the poor performance of an expatriate worker also causes
intangible losses such as damage to the company image, loss of credibility, loss
of expansion prospect for the corporation, and the ineffable and unquantifiable
losses that might attend having a key expatriate worker who simply cannot
adjust to the environment and communication paradigms (Malek & Budhwar,
2013; Őzbilgin, Tatli, Ipek, & Samee, 2015).
The ability of an expatriate worker to adjust and adapt culturally to a foreign
environment is called expatriate acculturation, cross-­cultural adjustment, expa-
triate adjustment, and intercultural adaptation. All of these terms are essentially
synonymous. For clarity, the author will use the term acculturation. The link
between expatriate acculturation and expatriate performance, while on an inter-
national assignment, has received considerable research attention. Each expatri-
ate worker arrives at their assignment fully steeped in their own heritage culture
and communication paradigms. The process of adjusting to a new cultural
environment can be daunting, difficult, and in some cases impossible.
Culture can be defined as a set of “… behaviors, beliefs, practices and values
that typify a group of people …” (Olatundun, 2009, p. 83). As a person’s culture
is dependent on the aggregate norm of the larger group, each person shares their
cultural perceptions with their larger social group. An expatriate worker on an
international assignment will experience considerable intercultural interaction
and contact with co-­workers, supervisors, and citizens of their assignment
country. This extensive intercultural contact will require an expatriate worker to
negotiate these cross-­cultural differences successfully in order to be productive
in their job, to accomplish their goals, and to achieve results (Berry, 2005).
Entering into an alien cultural environment can be a stressful and difficult
experience for expatriate workers. When people leave their own cultural
environment and enters a completely different cultural environment, with
different cultural norms, they tend to resist change. The resistance to cultural
change is at the center of the psychological construct of acculturative stress
(Ferdman & Sagiv, 2012). Most people will resist cultural change, as people
tend to find comfort in the familiar. An expatriate worker’s ability to overcome
resistance to acculturation and acculturative stress, along with the expatriate
worker’s ability to adapt to different cultural paradigms, correlate to the expa-
triate’s productivity, success, or failure on a foreign assignment (Kim &
Slocum, 2008; Mahajan & Toh, 2013; Malek & Budhwar, 2013; Okpara &
Kabongo, 2011; Shi & Franklin, 2014).
 Expatriate and UNPOL Performance   25
The process of an expatriate worker acculturating to a new assignment
country is a contextual process, dependent on a number of individual and cul-
tural variables. The extremity of the differences between two cultural paradigms
is known as cultural distance or cultural novelty (Froese & Peltokorpi, 2011;
Halsberger, Brewster, & Hippler, 2013) .The cultural distance between the expa-
triate’s heritage culture and the assignment country culture is an important factor
in expatriate acculturation. The extent of the differences between two cultures
can make expatriate adjustment more or less difficult. For example, an American
expatriate worker assigned to work and live in England will have a relatively
easy acculturative journey, as English and American cultures are relatively
similar. Conversely, an expatriate worker from Kenya assigned to work in
Vietnam will experience much more cultural distance in the acculturative
process, which will complicate the expatriate’s ability to adjust. Obviously,
where a greater degree of cultural novelty or cultural distance exists, between
the expatriate’s heritage culture and the culture of the assignment country, the
expatriate acculturation journey will be increasingly more difficult. Thus, the
expatriate acculturation process is a highly individualized and contextual
process, dependent on each individual, each heritage culture, and each assign-
ment country culture. The contextual nature of expatriate acculturation makes
developing an overarching theory of expatriate acculturation highly problematic
if not impossible (Chirkov, 2009; Rudmin, 2009).
In the context of acculturation, the expatriate worker’s goal is to adjust to the
societal, organizational, and office culture of their assignment country. Because
of the highly contextualized nature of expatriate acculturation, the antecedent
contextual variables make it increasingly difficult to define adjustment clearly.
The definition of what constituted cross-­cultural adjustment, in expatriate accul-
turation, is determined by the context of the cultural distance and antecedent
variables, which makes the conceptualization of an all-­encompassing definition
of what constitutes adjustment very difficult (Halsberger et al., 2013).
Acculturation can also be viewed as a process. An expatriate worker is not an
immigrant who intends to spend the rest of his or her life in their assignment
country. Expatriate acculturation does not necessarily lead to a purely linear
change where the heritage culture is supplanted by a new culture (Berry, 2013).
Rather, the expatriate must attempt to adjust to, and function effectively in, their
new environment, without necessarily having to jettison their heritage culture
and enculturate to their assignment country’s culture.

Expatriate Acculturation Theoretical Framework

The most widely accepted definition of acculturation was published in 1936.
According to Redfield, Linton, and Herskovits (1936), acculturation refers to the
general adjustments people from different cultures make through continuous
exposure to an environment that is culturally different from the person’s heritage
culture (as cited in Rudmin, 2010a). Modern study of acculturation has focused
primarily on the ability of immigrants to adapt to the culture of a new society
26   Expatriate and UNPOL Performance
once they migrate; and the effects those immigrants have on the culture of their
adopted society (Rudmin, 2010a). Empirical research into immigrant accultura-
tion has been ongoing since 1918 (Rudmin, 2010b).
Globalization led to a significant change in direction of acculturation research
toward a goal of establishing a more global psychology. Rather than focusing on
the study of the differences between cultures, modern acculturation research
focuses more now on the similarities between cultures. Thus modern accultura-
tion study focuses more on the finding and defining of commonalities between
cultures, rather than the differences between those cultures, with the ultimate
goal being the establishment of a global community and a global psychology
(Berry, 2013).
Research into the acculturation and adjustment of expatriate workers emerged
in the 1960s (Dabic et al., 2013). The acculturative experiences of expatriate
workers, and the goals of expatriate acculturation, are substantially different
from the construct of immigrant acculturation. Immigrant acculturation can be
seen as the end result of a process, where the immigrant has released their heri-
tage culture, and embraced the new culture. The acculturation model whereby an
immigrant releases their heritage culture and supplants their heritage culture with
a new culture gave rise to the term enculturation (Weinreich, 2009). Encultura-
tion occurs over time where an immigrant increasingly takes on more and more
of the cultural traits of their adopted land, while simultaneously becoming less
and less of their heritage culture (Ramirez, 2014).
The enculturation of immigrants is a long-­term permanent shift in personal
culture. The enculturation of immigrants can take years, decades, or generations
(Ramirez, 2014). Expatriate acculturation does not involve enculturation, but is a
process of temporary adjustment not a permanent change of personal culture. An
expatriate worker ultimately returns to their heritage culture, and once again
becomes a member of their heritage society. Therefore, the expatriate accultura-
tion process is a temporary one, making expatriate acculturation a significantly
different construct from that of immigrant acculturation.
Expatriate acculturation and immigrant acculturation differ from each other
particularly in the motivations that drive each acculturative process. An immig-
rant makes a permanent move to a foreign country for the purposes of economic
opportunity, seeking asylum, or as refugees, fleeing danger and violence. The
vast majority of immigrants do not intend to return to their heritage country per-
manently, thus immigration is a one-­way journey. An expatriate worker is
already employed and is a skilled professional seeking to improve his or her
career prospects. Expatriate workers are also generally very well paid. An expa-
triate worker accepts or seeks a foreign assignment motivated by a desire to
learn, grow, or increase their standing within their company or organization
(Adams & van de Vijver, 2015; Oltra, et al., 2013). The expatriate worker under-
takes the international assignment with the idea of returning home after the
assignment is completed. While this is not a universal rule, the vast majority of
expatriate workers engage in an international assignment with the ultimate goal
of eventually returning to their home country.
 Expatriate and UNPOL Performance   27
Because there was considerable difference between the existing construct of
immigrant acculturation, and the emerging construct of expatriate acculturation,
the acculturation of expatriate workers branched off into its own theoretical con-
struct, which formed the foundation for an entirely new field of inquiry (Selmer
& Lauring, 2011). Continuing research into expatriate acculturation has
expanded concurrently with the increased usage of expatriates in multinational
business, intergovernmental cooperation, and nongovernmental organizations.
Because of the extreme benefits of productive expatriate workers, and the
extreme investment involved in selecting deploying and supporting expatriate
workers, empirical research into expatriate acculturation has evolved into a crit-
ical human resource management issue for multinational corporations (Dabic et
al., 2013; Lin, Lu, & Lin, 2012).

Black’s Construct of Expatriate Acculturation

While there are several theoretical models of expatriate acculturation, the most
widely accepted is Black’s construct of expatriate acculturation. Black’s con-
struct is perhaps the most accurate particularly when contemplating expatriate
acculturation in the context of assessing the effects of acculturation on expatriate
work performance. Black’s construct views the expatriate’s ability to adjust to
three separate yet linked dimensions of adjustment. The three dimensions of
expatriate acculturation in Black’s construct are general adjustment, interaction
adjustment, and work adjustment (Black, 1988). The success or failure of an
expatriate assignment is critical to the productivity of a multinational organiza-
tion. Since the work product itself is seen as an element of adjustment, Black’s
construct is firmly aligned to the issues of the success, failure, and productivity
of the expatriate worker (Black, 1988).

General Adjustment
The dimension of general adjustment reflects the expatriate’s level of comfort with
the societal culture and the general living conditions of the host nation. The level
of comfort in general adjustment is dependent on the expatriate’s knowledge of the
culture of the host nation, or at least an understanding of the lifestyle within the
host nation (Black, 1988). There are considerable variables within the dimension
of general adjustment that can have a significant effect on the expatriate’s comfort
level with their environment and their living conditions. The nature and type of
living quarters available have a profound effect on an expatriate worker’s comfort
level. A lack of reliable heat or air conditioning can create environmental comfort
factors, which can significantly affect an expatriate’s general adjustment. The local
cuisine, diet, the availability and quality of food in the host nation are also signi-
ficant comfort factors. The greater the cultural novelty, as it pertains to diet, the
more likely food is to affect the expatriate’s comfort level in general adjustment.
Expatriate workers, like all other workers, require time off to rest and
recharge. The expatriate’s ability to socialize with host country nationals while
28   Expatriate and UNPOL Performance
off duty, and the availability and type of leisure activities that might appeal to
the expatriate worker, can also affect the expatriate worker’s sense of general
comfort. The overall living situation of an expatriate worker can profoundly
affect that worker’s ability to adjust to their new environment. After a stressful
day of adjusting and adapting to a new workplace, an expatriate worker who
returns to an accommodation that is an additional source of stress, rather than a
refuge, can greatly exacerbate and expatriate workers’ acculturative stress.
Issues pertaining to the expatriate worker’s family are particularly powerful
variables in general adjustment, regardless of whether or not the expatriate work-
er’s family accompanies the worker on their expatriate assignment. An expatri-
ate assignment where the worker is not able to bring his or her family to the
assignment country, will likely cause separation anxiety, which will exacerbate
the expatriate’s general adjustment (Malek & Budhwar, 2013). Conversely, an
expatriate worker who is accompanied by his or her family must deal with the
cumulative acculturative stresses of the family, as well as his or her own accul-
turative stress (Gupta, Banerjee, & Gaur, 2012). Nevertheless, research seems to
indicate that expatriate workers who are permitted to bring their families on
foreign assignments, display more effective acculturation and stronger work per-
formance than expatriate workers who are not accompanied by their families
(Shi & Franklin, 2014). It would seem that in the context of general adjustment,
being accompanied by one’s family on an expatriate assignment allows the expa-
triate worker to seek refuge in the familiarity of their family relationships, to
alleviate acculturative stress.

Interactions Adjustment
The ability of an expatriate worker to interact effectively with people in the host
nation can be broken down into two categories. The expatriate worker must be
able to interact effectively with host country nationals in the workplace and host
country nationals in general society. As general adjustment and workplace
adjustment both seem to rely in part on the expatriate’s ability to interact cross-­
culturally, it would seem to make the dimension of interactions adjustment a
bridge between the dimensions of general adjustment and work adjustment.
Primarily, an expatriate must be able to interact effectively with host country
nationals at the workplace. No worker, expatriate or domestic, can be productive
if that worker cannot interact effectively with supervisor, subordinates and col-
leagues. Relationships and interactions between the expatriate worker and peers,
supervisors, or managers each create different impact on the expatriate worker’s
level of work adjustment. Thus, the expatriate worker must be able to adjust
to societal and cultural communication paradigms quickly. Furthermore, the
expatriate worker must be able to interact effectively and productively in the
workplace.
As with general adjustment issues of housing, food, and leisure activities, the
ability of an expatriate worker to interact with host country nationals outside of
the workplace can also affect the expatriate worker’s general adjustment and
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