Cultural Intelligence and Global Business Competencies - Essay Example

?CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE s Introduction According to (Thomas, 2006, p. 78), cultural intelligence is a relatively new concept that in the international business. Cultural intelligence refers to the capability for one to deal effectively with individuals from varying backgrounds (Creque & Gooden, 2011, p. 143). Cross cultural competence however, has been used for a long period to reflect cultural intelligence. However, in it was in an effort to define this multidimensional concept unambiguously that cultural intelligence emerged (Creque & Gooden, 2011, p. 143). Cultural intelligence was described by Creque & Gooden (2011, p. 143) as a set of skills, from fundamental to advanced, which allow a person to demonstrate effectiveness in transferring social skills from a particular cultural context to the another. Cultural intelligence is indeed critical in business especially for a manager dealing with people from different cultural backgrounds. In international business, managers are called upon to relate with partners from different countries and therefore cultural intelligence is needed for good working relations and successful interaction among partners. In light of this, cultural intelligence would be an important to the manager of Global Alliance Company to work with the different cultural backgrounds and enhances their functioning within a particular setting. Culturally Intelligent Persons Triandis (2006, p. 20) outlines various things that an intelligent persons should do. He asserts that a culturally intelligent person should suspended judgments until he acquires adequate information beyond the ethnicity of the other person given that personality attributes like idiocentrism-allocentrism have to be considered (Triandis, 2006, p. 20). A practical example to explain this is a situation in which during the first meeting with international business partners, they may have low negotiation skills and therefore want they point to be taken. However, it would be wrong to argue that people from his ethic group behave that way but it would be wise to try and explore the personality of the person. Failure to do this would negatively affect future relations with people from this group. Trandis (2006, p. 23) explains that an intelligent person seeks training to overcome ethnocentrism. He notes that an intelligent person seeks cognitive, behavioral and affective training. An example of training for a person involved in international business would be to seek from the internet the cultural behaviors of people with whom you anticipate to interact with from available literature and the internet. The other aspect described by Triandis (2006, p. 24) of intelligent person is that they are able to tolerate different organizational attributes. An example of this is a person who is transferred to a new company where they have to report everything to the manager in the evening although at his previous posting each employee enjoyed autonomy. An intelligent person would be able to adapt to this changes. Although Triandis outlines the various things that an intelligent person should do, he fails to list tools for measuring cultural intelligence. The challenges in developing tools for measuring cultural intelligence is on whether the tools will be able to meet he quality standards in terms of reliability and validity (Tung & Verbeke, 2010, p. 1259). The other challenge is determining the most appropriate research questions in a given context (Tung & Verbeke, 2010, p. 1259). CQ as a Functional Tool Management of any given organization usually use various tools in order to achieve the set organization tools. However, not all tools achieve similar purpose because some of them fail to be functional. It is important to know if a tool works or not. One of the management tools that most organizations use is cultural intelligence (CQ). Ward and colleagues have attempted to explain CQ whereby they have come out critiquing it as a functional tool. They argue that, to date, CQ has only one available assessment; a self-report measure that was constructed by Ang, Van Dyne, Koh, and Ng (Ward et al, 2008, p. 86). As such, the assessment and construct of CQ are relatively new. This implies that the validity of CQ scores across studies and its contribution in the investigation of cross- cultural adaptation and transition is not at par with the other tools. As noted by Ng and Earley (2006, p. 7), cultural intelligence research must be able to address both the substantive and measurement issues because they are important in the establishment of the CQ construct validity. Ward and colleagues did not find that the CQ tool was different from “Emotional Intelligence”; they found that the two concepts have a relationship. This relationship founded on the capacity of emotional intelligence being used as a way of construct validation as it investigates the CQ’s scores incremental validity in the prediction of academic, sociocultural, and psychological adaptation (Ward et al, 2008, p. 86). They also note that CQ and emotional intelligence overlap in a number of ways as they share similar attributes. That notwithstanding though, as had been noted by Brackett (2006, p. 788), they assert that the two concepts are quite distinct and separate and should not be subsumed under the social intelligence. They note that, to date, there is no reported study that has tested the discriminant or convergent of emotional intelligence and CQ scores. Problems associated with CQ Tool Ward and colleagues argue that CQ tool is a self- reported instrument, hence problematic. Their argument is informed by the fact that CQ has only one available assessment; a self-report measure that was constructed by Ang, Van Dyne, Koh, and Ng (Ward et al, 2008, p. 86). This implies that the validity of CQ scores across studies and its contribution in the investigation of cross- cultural adaptation and transition is not at par with the other tools. Besides, CQ is a problem as a self- reported instrument because it fails to explain additional variance in academic, sociocultural, and psychological adaptation outcomes over and above those which have been explained by emotional and personality intelligence. As such, CQ tool can fail to make a new contribution of cross- cultural expatriate and adaptation effectiveness, hence challenging Earley and Ang’s assertion of the same (Earley and Ang, 2003, p. 33). Practically, CQ as a tool can go wrong as demonstrated by the following example: in the study of the relationship between cognitive ability and cultural intelligence, CQ scores may fail to provide prediction that is over and above that of emotional and personality intelligence (Brackett, 2006, p. 795). In studying participants from different cultures using CQ tool, the results show that CQ does not relate to scores on the Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices (RAPM), thus confirming that it has discriminant validity (Raven, 1998, p. 51). CQ may predict variance beyond personality, intelligence, and demographic variables, as well as not sufficiently explaining any additional outcome variance. Testing CQ Effectively It is important that cultural intelligence is tested effectively in order to ensure that its outcome is valid, credible, and reliable, as well as being able to explain additional variance in academic, socio cultural, and psychological adaptation outcome over and above those explained by emotional and personality intelligence (Brackett, 2006, p. 789). So, how can CQ are tested effectively? As noted in the article by Ward and colleagues, CQ scores should be arrived at using separate instruments which are: the Multicultural Personality Questionnaire (MPQ), the Cultural Intelligence (CQ), the Satisfaction With Life Scale (SWLS), the Zung Self-rating Depression Scale (ZSDS), the Sociocultural Adaptation Scale (SCAS), and the Academic Adaptation Scale, as well as additional questions concerning demographic data such as age, gender, length of stay in a particular area, and proficiency in a specific language. Use of separate instruments will help test CQ effectively, thus giving its outcomes the credibility, validity, and reliability required. In as much as I would advise my manager to read both articles, I will advise him to pay more attention to the article written by Harry Triandis “Cultural Intelligence in Organizations” because it provides detailed and precise information regarding cultural intelligence. Also, this article is alive to the realities of the organization in the 21st century whose environment is multicultural. Critique of the Articles Both articles are relevant to the organizations in the modern times. They are up- to- date and address the issues that organizations are facing in modern times especially in regard to cultural intelligence. Additionally, they have backed their arguments with studies and results that have been arrived at scientifically. More importantly, they have taken into account management theory without actually changing it; they have focused on the management aspects such as emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence that are shaping management practice across the world. The articles have also highlighted the shortcomings of the tools are used in CQ and have recommended the need to use separate instruments so as to test CQ effectively. A closer look at the articles points to the fact that cultural intelligence is important in providing a favorable business environment, as well as boosting organizations’ productivity. Importance of Cultural Intelligence to Managers Research demonstrates that there is increased globalization which comes with a need for multinational teamwork (Scholl, 2009, p. 9). However, this comes with additional challenges to managers of such groups who are called upon to demonstrate cultural intelligence in their leadership. Culture influences the style of leadership, the process of decision making and ways of reasoning (Scholl, 2009, p. 57). Culturally intelligent managers are able to go beyond the influences of ethnocentrism in building teams at their workplace but will embrace a culture of collectivism. This is important since for the success of any organization, teamwork must be upheld (Triandis, 2006, p. 25). Moreover, managers who are culturally intelligent are more supportive to the employees and therefore their employees will always be at ease to approach thereby increasing coordination in an organization (Triandis, 2006, p. 23). Managers are supposed to work in different environments with varying attributes and therefore they must be able to tolerate different organization (Liu, 2006, p. 17). Consequently, they must be able to adapt to different organizational attributes which is an aspect that is can be observed from cultural intelligent people (Triandis, 2006, p. 24). Cultural intelligence is important in managers as they are supposed to assess the importance of a situation and act accordingly. In addition, a culturally intelligent is able to suspend judgment until after they make a critical assessment of the situation and can therefore come up with a rational decision. This would avoid victimization of the employees and improve the working relationship. Bibliography Ang, S., Van Dyne, L., Koh, C., & Ng, K. Y, 2004, The measurement of cultural intelligence, Paper presented at the Academy of Management Meeting’s Symposium on Cultural Intelligence in the 21stCentury, New Orleans, LA. Brackett, M. 2006, “Relating emotional abilities to social functioning: A comparison of self-report and performance measures of emotional intelligence”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 91, 780-795. Creque, C.A. & Gooden, D.J. 2011, "Cultural Intelligence And Global Business Competencies: A Framework For Organizational Effectiveness In The Global Marketplace", International Journal of Management and Information Systems, vol. 15, no. 4, pp. 141-146. Earley, P. C., & Ang, S, 2003, Cultural intelligence: Individual interactions across cultures, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Liu, J.S. 2006, A shared reality based on a perceived phenomenon: The effective characteristics of cross-cultural virtual teams, Walden University, P. 16-17. Ng, K.-Y., & Earley, P. C, 2006, “Culture+intelligence: Old constructs, new frontiers”, Group & Organization Management, 31, 4-19. Raven, J. C, 1998, Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices manual, London: Harcourt Assessment. Scholl, D.H. 2009, The relationship between cultural intelligence and the performance of multinational teams, University of Phoenix, p. 1-57. Thomas, D.C. 2006, "Domain and Development of Cultural Intelligence: The Importance of Mindfulness", Group & Organization Management, vol. 31, no. 1, pp. 78-99. Triandis, H.C. 2006, ‘’Cultural Intelligence in Organization’’, Group & Organization Management, Vol. 31(1), p. 20-26 Tung, R.L. & Verbeke, A. 2010, "Beyond Hofstede and GLOBE: Improving the quality of cross-cultural research", Journal of International Business Studies, vol. 41, no. 8, pp. 1259-1274. Ward, C et al, 2008, “The Convergent, Discriminant, and Incremental Validity of Scores on a Self-Report Measure of Cultural Intelligence”, Educational and Psychological Measurement 2009; 69; 85- 105. Read More