Cultural intelligence as an enabler of cross-cultural adjustment in the context of intra-national diversity

Abstract

Job transfers within the country can lead to adjustment issues, similar to what expatriates face, especially in the case of highly diverse countries, where a host of sub-cultures exist with distinct cultural practices within a single national culture. Intra-national variations in terms of language, ethnicity, food, clothing, economic development, geographic regions or urban-rural differences can be as significant as cross-cultural differences and cause barriers to social integration. Thus, it becomes important to equip employees with cross-cultural capabilities when they are deployed to a culturally distinct part of the country. The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of cultural intelligence (CQ) as a critical capability that can enable the cross-cultural adjustment (CCA) of employees in a domestic context. Participants of this study consisted of employees from the information technology sector of India, who were transferred to a different state within the country in the past 1-month. They were further categorized into those working in culturally homogenous versus heterogeneous environments. Data were gathered using a structured questionnaire. The hypotheses under study were tested using structural equation modeling. The results indicated that CQ enabled the adjustment of employees within the domestic context. Furthermore, the CQ-CCA relationship was found to be positively moderated by intra-national diversity. While the ability of CQ to predict outcomes in cross-cultural scenarios has already been explored in employee mobility literature, this paper addresses the issues of intra-national diversity and domestic adjustment within the CQ framework, and establishes the usefulness of CQ to overcome the challenges put forth by intra-national differences and within-country cultural variations.