The importance of cultural intelligence in international organizations and its impact on employee motivation

The concept of cultural intelligence (CQ) has grown to become a popular subject of discourse in the academic world, not least since Earley and Ang introduced the concept in 2003. According to Earley and Mosakowski, cultural intelligence is essentially associated with emotional intelligence, however the CQ takes over where emotional intelligence ceases. Triandis underlines the importance of cultural intelligence in today's global world and claims that being culturally intelligent may be "especially valuable" in overseas assignments. Writing in 2019, at a time when the world is unanimously accepted as a global village, intelligence and empathy alone are not enough to exhibit true leadership skills or effective performance. Cultural Intelligence plays a very important role – especially in multi-cultural organizations – when it comes to employee motivation and the annual success of a given organization. However, many organizations are omitting to introduce their expat employees to the social and cultural realities of the country they would be living in when assigned to another country/ culture. Culture shock does not necessarily always occur when in a different country in general, however, it is very likely to occur when an employee is assigned to another part of the country which has a markedly different culture. This study aims to analyse Cultural Intelligence in the intercultural organisations and its impacts on the employee motivation.