Role Shock: An Occupational Hazard of American Technical Assistants Abroad

Abstract

American technical assistants abroad frequently experience a range of frustrations and stresses in carrying out their overseas professional and work roles. They manifest these frustrations particularly in the antagonism and criti cisms directed against the American work organizations, their American colleagues, and, to a lesser extent, host nationals and their bureaucracies. Recent studies provide evidence of the role-shock phenomenon and help to identify these major professional problems of the United States technical assistant abroad: ambiguity in the professional role, relationships with host-country counterparts, communication and participation in the indigenous hierarchy, the administrative context of the project, and the complex demands of development. Despite their frustrations, most respondents view their own efforts as successful and their professional qualifications as more than equal to the challenges of the overseas situations. They re port a vast range of personal dividends for themselves and their families, although most assess the professional returns from the experience as being minimal. Through the mech anism of technical assistance, several thousand additional Americans each year find their first opportunity to travel, live, and work abroad. In so doing, they are helping to build and define a "third culture" of intersocietal relationships.