Cultural intelligence: An identity lens on the influence of cross-cultural experience

Abstract

Cultural intelligence (CQ) is an increasingly valuable asset for managers, employees, entrepreneurs, and their organizations. While there is now considerable evidence for its benefits, knowledge remains cloudy surrounding its antecedents. Drawing on identity theory, we develop a model unpacking the relationship between cross-cultural experience—a core antecedent with mixed findings in extant research—and CQ. We advance multicultural identity as a pivotal intervening variable and probe the role of self-verification striving as an identity-based boundary condition. Across two interlocking studies, we find evidence for how CQ can be cultivated from a range of increasingly common forms of cross-cultural experiences. In doing so, we shed light on the mixed results in prior research and provide key implications for future research; namely, multicultural identity helps to better account for when and how individuals translate their cross-cultural experiences into CQ.