ویژگی های فردی به عنوان پیش بینی کننده های توسعه هوش فرهنگی : ارتباط خودکارآمدی

Cultural intelligence represents a promising development in the field of cross-cultural management. While foundational models and predictors of cultural intelligence have been proposed, there remains a need for more empirical research in cultural intelligence education and development. Theory relates cultural intelligence, and the development of this capacity, to a number of important considerations, including individual attributes and experiences. This research effort examines a multi-cultural group of over 370 managers and management students, testing theoretical relations between individual characteristics (i.e. general self-efficacy, international travel experience, management and work experience) with cultural intelligence development (meta-cognitive, motivation and behavior aspects). An experiential approach to cultural intelligence education is summarized. The findings suggest that general self-efficacy holds a key relation to predicting successful development of cultural intelligence capacities.

It is an often cited reality that more organizations are operating internationally due to expansion via the influences of globalization (Black and Gregersen, 1999 and Black and Mendenhall, 1990). Managers are required to navigate culturally novel and culturally ambiguous situations more than ever. Cultural intelligence (also known as “CQ”) refers to an individual capacity, allowing one to more effectively interact with a variety of cultural settings; thus representing an advancement that can help to better situate individuals for a variety of inter-cultural interactions. Cultural intelligence provides a potentially effective approach in preparing for multi-cultural settings, culturally vague contexts or culturally dynamic places because it has the potential for assisting people in navigating culture specific realities (e.g. one identifiable target culture) as well as more culturally vague realities (e.g. multi-cultural teams without a specific cultural identity). There are excellent treatments for the general topic of cultural intelligence (Brislin et al., 2006 and Earley and Ang, 2003), but there is a need for more work investigating how certain individual nuances might influence the potential development of, and propensity for, cultural intelligence. To investigate such potential links among a group of multi-cultural participants presents another layer of value to such an examination. Experiential approaches to educational efforts are proposed as being effective (Dewey, 1938) and this is supported in Kolb's (1984) Experiential Learning Theory. Experiential encounters are hypothesized as being relevant for cultural intelligence development and there is empirical evidence supporting that position (Ng et al., 2009 and MacNab and Worthley, 2010). As specified by the method summarized in this manuscript, experiential education holds potential advantages over experiential learning because of greater instructor involvement and reduced opportunity for mis-education ( Itin, 1999 and MacNab and Worthley, 2010). Theoretically, experts in the field of cross-cultural training have suggested that individual attributes and traits are potentially important in cultural intelligence development (Brislin et al., 2006 and Ng et al., 2009) and more generally to multi-cultural performance (Burke, Watkins, & Guzman, 2009). Kolb's (1984) Experiential Learning Theory suggests that individual life experience could have an influence on propensities toward cultural intelligence. Because cultural intelligence is a relatively new topic, more research is needed to investigate the relation of individual characteristics, such as self-efficacy, to the concept of cultural intelligence. Self-efficacy has been proposed relevant as an antecedent to CQ development (Earley and Ang, 2003 and Earley and Peterson, 2004) yet little research has been produced to empirically examine this. Self-efficacy has also been proposed as an important antecedent for development of cultural competence and in social learning contexts (Bandura, 1977a). More clearly understanding this relation to CQ development is one important motivation of this paper. The remainder of this work: (1) summarizes the concept of cultural intelligence; (2) examines theory supportive of hypotheses examining certain individual characteristics, such as international travel and work experience as well as self-efficacy, to cultural intelligence development indicators; (3) overviews an experiential method to cultural intelligence development; and (4) discusses the findings and suggests the relevance of such findings to organizations as related to education, training and candidate selection.

Experiential approaches to cultural intelligence (CQ) development have been proposed to hold potential (MacNab and Worthley, 2010 and Ng et al., 2009). While the concept of CQ has been generally established in the literature (Earley & Ang, 2003), CQ measurements established (Ang et al., 2006) and CQ learning, education and development approaches are starting to become more specified (MacNab and Worthley, 2010 and Ng et al., 2009), there remains a need for more empirical examination of antecedents to CQ and potential catalysts toward CQ learning and development. Our research fills that gap by examining individual attributes as theoretically related to outcome indicators of CQ development via an experiential CQ education approach. Participants engaged in a multi-week experiential CQ development approach and CQ development indicators were examined in relation to individual measures for general self-efficacy, formative international travel experience, work experience and management experience. Additionally participant gender, age and postgraduate status were controlled for. The findings reveal several potentially interesting results. Participant general self-efficacy held the only pervasive relation to learning cultural intelligence (LCQ) outcome indicators. Not only was there a significant relation to the higher-order LCQ construct but also with each of the three LCQ sub-components examined in this study (i.e. meta-cognitive, motivation and behavior). The consistency and strength of this finding suggests that participant general self-efficacy is an important trait in relation to CQ education and development efforts. Such efforts can be challenging and general self-efficacy allows participants to more readily reap the intended benefits. The findings point toward self-efficacy as a potentially important aspect for pre-CQ education development as well as a selection criteria for such training. As a side note, gender did have an influence on self-efficacy which has also been noted in other research efforts (MacNab & Worthley, 2008). Gender as influential to cultural intelligence development cannot be established from the findings of this research but remains an intriguing question for future efforts. Somewhat counter-intuitive on the surface, formative international travel experience did not hold a meaningful relation to CQ development. One explanation is that unstructured international travel experience can be associated with experiential learning while theoretically based, and instructor-involved, cross-cultural encounters are associated with experiential education.MacNab and Worthley (2010) have made a case that experiential CQ education efforts, like the type summarized in this study, are more effective because they are comparatively more focused and tend to avoid mis-education. This finding also suggests that simply because one might be well travelled the translation of that experience into advanced CQ competencies, or propensities for developing such competencies, is not a given. However, this finding should not be interpreted to suggest that international travel experience cannot become an effective component with CQ education efforts. Both participant work and management experience were not related to CQ development. While these experiences might hold a general value toward efficacy development, particularly with management experience, these do not necessarily translate into realizing the specific complexities of CQ education more readily. In all, the experience findings, as a package, are interesting to CQ education because they suggest that within a wide range of individual experience levels, CQ development efforts can be effectively established. Our research contributes to the literature by examination of an important individual attribute impact on CQ education and development. However, there is much more that could be examined in this area. Other individual traits and capacities might hold relevant influence with CQ education. Additionally, types of self-efficacy could be examined beyond general self-efficacy. Other independent aspects, like the context of the CQ education environment, are expected to also impact outcome indicators. The process of experiential education could be examined to determine if certain phases are more impacting on CQ development than others. Finally, more experimental approaches could be developed to supplement the current findings.