The role of cultural intelligence of managers in promoting employees’ collaboration

Abstract

Collaboration can be a very challenging process precisely because it is a highly intense way of working, requiring new ways of thinking, behavior and ways of operating. Cultural Intelligence (CI) is an antecedent for collaboration . The primary goal of this survey is to investigate the relationship between cultural intelligence of managers and their employees’ collaboration. This research is a descriptive-correlation study where 119 managers and 175 employees are selected by stratified random sampling from the Social Security organization managers and their workers. To measure cultural intelligence, the Iranian version of the cultural intelligence questionnaire is implemented and collaboration is measured using a questionnaire developed by the researcher. The Cronbach's alpha reliability coefficient respectively for cultural intelligence and collaboration questionnaires are 0.933 and 0.813, respectively, which are well above the minimum acceptable limit. Data collected using SPSS 19 and they are analyzed using LISREL 8.54 software packages. The results indicate a significant and positive relationship between cultural intelligence among managers and their employees’ collaboration. As the relationship between motivational and behavioral CI dimensions and collaboration is also determined to be positive and significant. Based on demographic factors such as gender, age and education we cannot comment on the cultural intelligence of managers and employee’s collaboration but having inter-cultural experiences has had a positive impact on the cultural intelligence of managers. Based on the findings obtained we can say that Cultural Intelligence is a key factor, influencing and determining for collaboration.

Keywords

• Cultural Intelligence
• Collaboration
• Cooperation
• Social Security
• Organization