INDUSTRY-WISE VARIATIONS IN CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE AND ITS IMPACT ON BUSINESS PERFORMANCE

Abstract

Cultural Intelligence (CQ) has become an essential skill of professionals in the context of the growing globalization, when they have to operate in the diversified and multicultural setting. This paper examines the change in levels of CQ in various industries such as Consulting, Information Technology (IT), Manufacturing, and others and its correlation to the performance of business. The research design adopted was quantitative and a structured questionnaire was used to collect data by administering it to professionals on a 5 points Likert scale. Mean differences were analyzed by the use of descriptive statistics and the One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) was the method of testing the statistical significance of CQ differences between industries. The findings show that there are vast disparities among industries in terms of CQ levels with the highest mean CQ score being the Consulting sector, then IT and other sectors and the Manufacturing being relatively lower. Further analysis shows that there is a significant positive relationship between CQ and the performance of the business and people with high CQ show better results. The post-hoc analysis with the help of Tukey HSD test also indicates the presence of certain inter-industry differences, which supports the role of industry context in the formation of cultural competencies. The research highlights the significance of the formation of CQ as a competitive organizational advantage and suggests specific training interventions, in particular, in those industries, where CQ is lower. These results add to the increasing amount of literature on cross-cultural management and they are relevant to the real world of improving the effectiveness of workforce in a global business context.