3. CHAPTER THREE: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE (CQ)
3.7. Cultural Intelligence (CQ) Moderation and Mediation Effect
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facet, and all four CQ facets were positively influenced by the programme comprehensiveness.
Reichard et al. (2015) agreed with this understanding and added that all CQ facets development would witness enhancement if the cross-cultural training includes a simulation of the targeted culture main aspects. In there study, Rosenblatt et al. (2013) found that individual cognitive and metacognitive were enhanced as an outcome of the training programme, while behavioural and motivational CQ facets require an international experience for individuals to have the opportunity to be exposed to the other countries cultural and result in improving these two CQ facets. Therefore, the most comprehensive approached to increase the CQ for individuals would be in the integration between the training programme and international experience that includes practising situations.
In summary, international experience and cultural exposure, individual differences, and cross-cultural training and education are considered the primary CQ antecedents. There is a level of disagreement on to which degree these antecedents affect the individual CQ level. Again, CQ is becoming to a situation to be either internal factor, external factor, or both. Further investigation of this concept will be presented in the next point.
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innovation adoption was increased based on higher levels of CQ that expatriates have demonstrated. Also, when considering CQ as a moderator, leadership impact on adjustment and performance will be relatively positive based on the expatriates higher levels of CQ (Lee et al.
2013). Thus higher levels of CQ as a moderator will improve innovation adoption and employees performance.
Some scholars like Ramsey et al. (2011) have used CQ as a moderator to study the relationship between Institutional Distance (ID) (regulatory, normative and cultural-cognitive), expatriates travelling, and job strain. According to Ramsey et al. (2011) findings “Results reveal that CQ partially moderates the relationship between ID and travel and job strain”. In other words, individuals are facing more challenges based on the distance between their culture and the country cultural they are working in as their challenges are positively related to their CQ. Ramsey et al.
(2011) also added, “the fundamental assumption underlying this study on ID and CQ is that reducing travel and job strain will result in an increase in trip satisfaction and performance”. As a conclusion, more training in cross-cultural management programme is crucial for those who are working in environments different from their culture.
In the same context, many scholars like (Wu and Ang 2011) has concluded that organisational support is crucial for those who are facing low CQ where the relationship between supporting and employees adjustments moderations are negatively impacted by the expatriate's employees cognitive and metacognitive CQ facets. In this context, Wu and Ang (2011) concluded that “we found that expatriate supporting practices were positively related to adjustment as well as performance”. Wu and Ang (2011) have also demonstrated that “metacognitive and cognitive
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cultural intelligence negatively moderated the links between expatriate supporting practices and adjustment, while motivational cultural intelligence had a positive moderating effect”. As a result, it is recommended for organisations who are hiring overseas employees use the CQ as a performance indicator to determine their CQ level and provide training and support for those who have lower CQ levels at the four facets to enhance their performance.
On the other hand, Cultural Intelligence exhibits a positive influence when acting as a mediator on the individual work experience, casual experience, cross-cultural training, and work adjustment as stated by Moon et al. (2012). Also, CQ is playing a significant role on innovative work behaviour caused by the multiculturalism effect even under controlling variables like age, education, and country of residence as concluded by Korzilius, Bücker and Beerlage (2017). They also added, “CQ enables people to reconcile their different cultural schemas and integrate multiple cultural identities, to function as a catalyst in this process”. Furthermore, Sri et al. (2012) proven that CQ has a mediation effect supported by the interaction with work adjustments that enhanced the prediction of job performance. Moreover, CQ mediated the relationships between previous intercultural contact effect along with the leadership under the international context (Kim and Va Dyne 2011). Nevertheless, CQ has a strong ability to predict multicultural leadership effectiveness (Musamali and Martin 2016), as CQ has a significant correlation with effective leadership (Rockstuhl et al. 2011). Finally, CQ has a mediation effect on both openness and extraversion that lead to encourage the individuals to excel in a multicultural working environment, especially abroad assignment (Remhof, Gunkel and Schlaegel 2014). Hence, the mediation effect on the individual cognitive, metacognitive, motivation and behavioural facets showing an influence on increasing the interlinks connections between the targeted variables in this research.
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In conclusion, CQ has been found to play a significant role as a moderator and as a mediator of the relationships between Employee Performance, Adjustment, Job Strain, Innovation Adoption, Institutional Distance, Leadership Effectiveness, Innovative Work Behaviour, Job Performance, Organisational Behaviour, and Travel Strain. Given the few research studies found in this area, there is a potential to further the examination of CQ role in this research as a moderator and as a mediator to investigate its influences on the defined relationships. However, CQ notion and measurement will be adopted in this research as a moderator and as a mediator because of its natural connections to the employee empowerment and the expected outcomes of the emergence of innovation.