Linking individual and organizational cultural competences: One step closer to multicultural organization

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the link between individual (IC) and organization (OC) cultural competence leading to the multicultural organization development (MOD), as proposed in earlier studies. We built on theoretical postulates that define OC as management of IC and that assert that MOD is achieved through organizational adaptation to multicultural surroundings. We proposed the managerial role as the independent variable reflecting the link between the IC and OC and assigned MNC subsidiary organizational innovativeness (OI) the dependent variable role reflecting the degree of MOD. Accordingly, we constructed a new expatriate IC model and tested its impact on OI as MNC’s subsidiary. We introduced contingency variables with the aim to increase the robustness and the merit of the research model. The survey was carried out in Croatia, on a sample of 146 expatriates by using the questionnaire method. The research results confirmed most of the hypotheses. The main contributions of this paper are the theoretical formulation of the new IC model (as an independent variable) and its empirical verification through examination of its relation with a subsidiary OI, as a dependent variable.

Keywords

• cultural competence
• subsidiary organizational innovativeness
• multicultural organization