Introduction As a result of globalisation, managers increasingly work in multinational environments and move from country to country. This makes the current business environment more complex, dynamic, uncertain, and more competitive than ever before. Inevitably, globalisation brings about interactions and relationships between people from different cultures.
Tomorrow’s managers will need to learn how to work, function and to compete, in such a boundaryless and global world. Leaders have an important role in engaging their employees, it is clear that supervising employees of different cultures is a difficult, complicated matter which needs to be further studied. The aim of this study is to explore the concept of cultural intelligence in leadership in the context of a multinational company, in which employees of a variety of cultures work together. It is examined whether culturally- intelligent leaders are better able to influence the engagement of employees. The role of perceived cultural similarity as a moderator of this relationship is also examined.
The research question is: What is the effect of the perceived cultural intelligence of a leader on the engagement of employees? And to which degree is this relationship moderated by the perceived cultural similarity of the leader and the employee?
The concept of culturally intelligence in leadership has a high level of relevance in today’s multicultural and boundaryless society. Cultural intelligence might be a critical skill to possess for supervisors, which could be trained. This is important considering the high failure rates and costs of expatriate assignments due to a lack of cross-cultural competences.
Cultural intelligence is a critical skill to influence the engagement of employees in a cross-cultural setting. Engagement is defined here, following Schaufeli, Salanova, Gonzalez-Roma, and Bakker (2002), as ‘a
positive, fulfilling, work-related state of mind that is characterised by vigour, dedication, and absorption (p.74). Vigour is characterised by high levels of energy and mental resilience while working, the willingness to invest effort in one’s work, and persistence even in the face of difficulties. Dedication is characterised by a sense of significance, enthusiasm, inspiration, pride and challenge. Absorption refers to a particularly strong involvement that goes one step further than the usual level of identification.
This leads to hypothesis 1:
Hypothesis 1: Cultural intelligence of the leader has a positive effect on the engagement of employees.
Cultural dimensions are commonly used to explain differences between cultures. Cultural heterogeneity refers to the degree to which separate cultures are similar or dissimilar. The cultures in which a firm operates can range from relatively homogeneous to extremely heterogeneous. However, since individuals remain idiosyncratic and are not entirely mentally programmed the same way, in this study, perceived cultural similarity is included. This concept reflects the extent to which the leader is perceived as culturally similar or dissimilar to him/her by the employee.
Hypothesis 2: Perceived cultural similarity of the leader and employee has a positive effect on the engagement of the employee. It can be expected that cultural intelligence has a stronger effect on engagement when the leader is perceived as culturally dissimilar to the employee, than when the leader is perceived as culturally similar to the employee.
Hypothesis 3: The lower the degree of
perceived cultural similarity, the stronger the relationship between perceived cultural intelligence of the leader and engagement of the subordinates.
The conceptual model in Figure 1 (next page) depicts the hypotheses of this study.
January 2012 | Management Today 63
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114