The impact of international experience on global leadership emergence: The moderated mediation effect of cultural intelligence and intercultural adjustment

Drawing on the social cognitive theory this study contended that cultural intelligence and intercultural adjustment mediated the relationship between international experience and global leadership potentials. This study expected that the strength of the relationship between international experience and cultural intelligence depended on the personality traits, general self-efficacy, and language proficiency of the employee and that the strength of the relationship between international experience and intercultural adjustment depended on the employees' level of general self-efficacy and language proficiency. A questionnaire to collect data from 312 employees in a multi-franchise organization in Australia in a three-tier process was administered. The findings indicated that cultural intelligence mediates the relationship between international experience and global leadership potential, and that the effect international experience has on intercultural adjustment is mediated by cultural intelligence. Hence, the major contribution is illustrating that the effect intercultural adjustment has is sequential and through cultural intelligence. Moreover, the strength of the relationship was found to be conditioned upon the level of language proficiency and openness to experience. Furthermore, not only did higher levels of extroversion and agreeableness strengthen the relationship between international experience and cultural intelligence, but also lower levels of these personality traits change the nature of association into a negative. Extroversion and agreeableness not only moderated the impact of international experience on cultural intelligence, but they also moderated the indirect impact of international experience on global leadership potential through cultural intelligence. We have also found that the strength of the relationship between international experience and intercultural adjustment depended on the general self-efficacy, while higher levels of language proficiency strengthen the relationship between international experience and intercultural adjustment whereas lower levels of language proficiency reverse the association between the constructs. The current study's most important theoretical contribution is building a comprehensive understanding of global leadership development process by merging the learning and personality lenses based on the social cognitive theory through expanding the understanding of theory to include personality traits as self-regulatory mechanisms.