This document discusses cultural intelligence and its importance. It defines culture and cultural awareness, and explains that culture exists at multiple levels, including individual, group, organizational, national, corporate, ethnic, industry, and demographic levels. It also discusses national cultural dimensions and clustering. Cultural intelligence is defined as the ability to adapt to and work effectively in different cultural contexts. A cultural intelligence instrument called the BCIQ is presented, which measures cultural intelligence across six dimensions: motivation, adaptive communication, cognitive preparation, active learning, cognitive awareness, and global/national knowledge. Developing cultural intelligence is important for leadership, work performance, and functioning in multicultural environments.

1. Culture and Cultural
Intelligence: Beyond Awareness
Ilan Alon, PhD
School of Business and Law
University of Agder
ilan.alon@uia.no

2. Why is there a need to understand culture?

3. What is culture?
And, by extension, what is cultural awareness?

4. Multilayer Cultural Clusters
Individual
culture
Group culture
Organizational
culture
National culture

5. Other Layers of Culture
• Corporate Culture – culture adopted, developed and disseminated in an
organization; deviate from national norms, but that depends upon the
strength of culture and the values and practices tied to it
• Ethnicity – significant ethnic communities exist in many countries; likely to
affect a myriad of issues
• Industry – important layer of culture
• Demographics – education, age, seniority and hierarchical level affect
difference in values
• Ideology – not always consistent with cultures and can vary along time and
across regions

6. National Culture

7. National Culture: Hofstede’s Cultural
Dimensions
Source: Ilan Alon, Eugene Jaffe, Global Marketing (2013), p. 67: https://geert-hofstede.com/norway.html

8. Other dimensions of culture
• Monochronic vs polychromic
• Performance vs. humane orientation
• Mastery vs. harmony
• Neutral vs. emotional
• Diffuse vs. specific, etc.
Are there international clusters with cultural commonalities?

9. National Cultural Clustering
Ronen and
Shenkar’s
culture
clustering

10. National Cultural Clustering
Huntington’s
civilization
clustering

11. Niccolo Machiavelli (1532)
“But when a prince acquires the sovereignty of a country differing
from his own both in language, manners, and intellectual
organization, great difficulties arise; and in order to maintain the
possession of it, good fortune must unite with superior talent.”

12. What is cultural intelligence?

13. • Ability to successfully work in a cross cultural environment
• Interpret unfamiliar verbal and nonverbal cues accurately
• Adapt behavior to cultural norms and expectations
• Improve situational judgment in cross-cultural situations
• Effectively manage culturally-diverse populations
What is Cultural Intelligence

14. Academic definition
• A system of interacting knowledge and skills, linked by cultural meta-
cognition, which allows people to adapt to, select and shape the
cultural aspects of their environment (Thomas et al., 2008)

15. Importance of Cultural Intelligence
• Work and academic performance and judgement
• Work related attitudes
• Psychological and sociological adjustment
• Cross cultural impression management
• Expatriate and international assignment success
• Global leadership success

17. Cultural Intelligence & Global Leadership
EQ
Emotional
Intelligence
Leadership
Behaviors
Domestic
Leadership
Success
Global
Leadership
Success
CQ
Geographic/Ethnic
Cultural
Intelligence
IQ
Verbal and
Mathematical
Intelligence
Motivation
Elements and Types
of Motivation
CQ
Organizational
Cultural Intelligence
Alon, Ilan and James Higgins (2005), “Global
Leadership Success through Emotional and Cultural
Intelligences,” Business Horizons, 48 (6), 501-512.

18. Cultural Intelligence
• IQ + EQ + CQ = Effective Global Leadership
• Cultural intelligence =
• awareness +
• motivation +
• action/reaction
• (Un)Learning through
• Experience
• Interpretation
• Evaluation

19. • Defined domains based on literature review
• Operationalized knowledge, skills, actions, and cultural metacognition
• Developed and tested prototypes
• Validated instrument using appropriate extensive statistical analysis
including EFA and SEM
• Validation published in Cross Cultural and Strategy Management
(2016) and Thunderbird International Business Review (2016)
• http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/IJoEM-01-2014-0011
• http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/tie.21826/full
Developing the BCIQ

20. BCIQ Publications

21. Four Original Dimensions of BCIQ

22. • Openness and Tolerance to Ambiguity
and Uncertainty
• Listening and Communicative Adaptation
• Cognitive Preparation and Learning Behavior
• Interpersonal Relationship Management
• Global and National Knowledge
BCIQ- 38 Establishment of Five Initial Dimensions

23. BCIQ – 50 Finalization of Six Dimensions
1. Motivation
2. Adaptive Communication Behavior
3. Cognitive Preparation and Learning Behavior
4. Active Learning and Perceptual Sensitivity
5. Cognitive Awareness
6. Global and National Knowledge

24. Prototype available via Rollins College
You can view the online version of the instrument here:
https://bannerweb.rollins.edu/prod/owa/pkg_bciq.p_login
Select Trial Visit under School/Event drop menu, with password 638512

25. Needs Satisfied
• Impact of international education (international offices)
• Teaching international business and cross cultural management
• Assurance of learning for accreditation
• Development of virtual international teams in working efficiently
together (X-culture)

26. Discussion Questions
• Why is cultural intelligence important to our university?
• How do we develop cultural intelligence in our students and staff?
• How can I develop my cultural intelligence? And how can the
university help me?
• Increasing your cultural intelligence