Posted: September 17th, 2017

Cultural Intelligence

An Investigation Of The Relationship Between Cultural Intelligence And Organizational Effectiveness Mediated By Trust In Public Schools Within The Mid-Atlantic Region

Abstract

 With increasing Globalization, growing diversity in schools’ demography, and the popular use of team-based organizational structures (Friedman, 2006), multicultural teams are a central feature in learning communities today. Employees are increasingly required to work interdependently with team members that have different culturally significant affiliation (knight, 2007). To reduce the uncertainty caused by cultural differences, organizational leadership has increasingly shifted the focus on Cultural Intelligence (CQ) (Lin et al., 2012).

The construct of CQ has been introduced by Earley & Ang (2003) for the first time, and it is defined as a specific form of intelligence that focuses on the capability of an individual to function effectively in situations characterized by cultural diversity. Ang et al, (2007) further suggest that CQ is another complementary form of intelligence that can explain variability in coping with diversity and functioning in new cultural settings. Research has yet to examine how CQ affects organizational effectiveness, and how trust could be an interfering agent between those two variables.

The purpose of this presentation is to examine the impact cultural intelligence have on organizational effectiveness. Trust will also be examined to determine the relationship to organization effectiveness. This presentation will draw upon the trust and cultural intelligence literatures to explain a model by which leaders in a cross-cultural context can find a balance in the tension between their own deeply held values and those of their culturally different counterparts.

An extensive literature review and meta-analysis was conducted to address the following research questions:

1. To what extent is there a relationship between cultural intelligence and organizational effectiveness?

1. To what extent does trust interferes with CQ and organizational effectiveness as a mediating factor.

The data collection and analysis procedures included examining several empirical studies (a meta-analysis) focusing on contrasting and combining results from different studies. In this process, identified patterns among study results, studies disagreement among those results, and other interesting relationships emerged in the context of the many studies. The meta-analysis provided a thorough summary of cultural intelligence, organizational effectiveness and trust and their impact on educational organization, particularly public education. These studies provided extensive information on whether a relationship exists between cultural intelligence and the  impact this had on organizational effectiveness mediated by trust.