REDEFINING INTERACTIONS ACROSS

CULTURES AND ORGANIZATIONS:

MOVING FORWARD WITH CULTURAL
INTELLIGENCE

E Christopher Earley

ABSTRACT
A great deal of attention has focused on intercultural understanding in the
wake of the terrorism experienced in the United States on September l l th,
2001. Among the core questions asked is why would people hate
Americans enough to inflict such a toll on its citizens? A quest for
intercultural understanding is sought frequently by people operating in
multicultural environments such as that experienced in a transnational
or multinational firm. The focus of this chapter is to introduce and explore
the implications of cultural intelligence (CQ), a construct intended to
improve understanding of intercultural interactions. Cultural intelligence
refers to a person's capacity to adapt to new cultural settings based on
multiple facets including cognitive, motivational and behavioral features.
The implications for cultural intelligence for several key aspects of
international organizations are discussed.

Research in Organizational Behavior, Volume 24, pages 271-299.

© 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.
ISBN: 0-7623-0878-8

271
272 P. CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

Pharmacia Quotes:
I think Europeans are much more international. They are used to working across borders,
in different languages. They are used to treating people in a different way.

While you can explain with brutal efficiency how high the costs are, you won't be able to
find solutions in a collective-bargaining atmosphere if you don't understand the other
side.

It is important to respect the local culture.

UpJohn, Inc. Quotes:

Americans have a can-do approach to things. I try to overcome problems as they arise. A
Swede may be slower on the start-up. He sits down and thinks over all of the problems.

I was astonished at European vacation habits.

In retrospect, I might have been a bit aggressive.

Quotes from top executives during the merger of Pharmacia, AB and UpJohn Inc.
(BBC1 newsprogram, Fall, 1998)

One o f the most significant challenges facing managers in an international

context is to ensure that they fully understand the views and position o f their
international counterparts. Intercultural misunderstandings are frequent and
often having significant impacts on organizations. In the case o f Pharmacia, AB
and UpJohn, Inc. these companies had a series o f difficult attempts to merge
with one another with questionable success. O f course, the success o f
international mergers does not hinge solely on cultural understanding.
However, such understanding seems a logical necessary, but not sufficient,
condition for effective international companies.
W h a t is required for effective intercultural understanding? A simple answer
may be that a person who has high empathy will be able to figure out and
understand the actions o f others in a non-local context. But empathy alone
seems insufficient to explain a person's capability to understand others from a
new culture. Constructs including social intelligence (Thorndike, 1920) and
emotional intelligence (Salovey & Mayer, 1990) as well as practical
intelligence or successful intelligence (Sternberg, 1997; Sternberg, Conway,
Ketron & Bernstein, 1981; Sternberg & Smith, 1985) might well explain
differential success o f intercultural encounters. However, as I argue in this
chapter, these various forms o f intelligence do not capture the complexity o f
understanding arising from intercultural encounters and travels. A single
qualitative anecdote illustrates m y point. A manager working for a large food
Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 273

and p e r s o n a l care p r o d u c t s c o m p a n y that I w o r k e d w i t h d e s c r i b e d the difficulty

he faced:

For a long time I've felt as if I really know people and I can figure them out when I need
to. I know this because my annual appraisals tell me that I'm a really strong people person
and that my employees think that I really get to know them at the job. I also have lots of
friends outside of work who say the very same thing to me. What I never expected was
what would happen when I went to Thailand for the first time. I mean, I knew that things
are different there and I even read up on it and found out more about the country and the
food. But I figured that my people skills would do me just fine there. Boy was I ever wrong.
The first time I was assigned to Bangkok I spent the first couple of months learning how
to apologize the right way because I kept putting my foot in it. For instance, one day I asked
a group of employees to form a team to help us with some production problems at one of
our plants. I figured that teamwork was a natural for them. What I didn't realize is that the
Thais don't like working in teams very much because if they help one another it makes
them feel indebted and they don't like this. It was not at all like the time I worked in
England for XYZ. I mean, I am not saying that the English are the same as us but they have
an American and European mindset and this makes much more sense to me. I didn't do as
well there as I did at home but it made more sense to me and the people were easier to
figure out. It's just that at home, if I don't connect with someone right away I can usually
figure out why and correct the situation. But the Thais aren't like that. Don't get me wrong,
I liked my time in Bangkok and the Thai people are fine but I just didn't connect.

B y m o s t standards, this m a n a g e r s e e m s to possess g o o d social skills and he has

d e m o n s t r a t e d characteristics that one w o u l d associate w i t h h i g h social and
e m o t i o n a l i n t e l l i g e n c e reflected in his p o s i t i v e p e r f o r m a n c e appraisals.
H o w e v e r , he clearly ran into b o u n d a r y c o n d i t i o n s w h e n m o v i n g to a n e w
cultural setting.
W h a t , then, can help e x p l a i n w h y s o m e o n e with s e e m i n g l y e f f e c t i v e social
skills and i n t e l l i g e n c e d o e s not adjust p r o p e r l y to a n e w cultural c o n t e x t ? In this
chapter, I d e s c r i b e a c o n s t r u c t called Cultural Intelligence, or CQ, (Earley &
A n g , 2003) and I use it to e x p l o r e several issues r e l e v a n t to an international
o r g a n i z a t i o n i n c l u d i n g m u l t i n a t i o n a l t e a m s and international assignments.
T h i s c h a p t e r is b r o k e n into three sections b e g i n n i n g w i t h an o v e r v i e w o f
cultural i n t e l l i g e n c e d e s c r i b i n g its c h i e f features and relation to existing
constructs. Next, I use cultural i n t e l l i g e n c e to understand better m u l t i n a t i o n a l
t e a m s and international assignments. Finally, I p r o v i d e s o m e c o n c l u s i o n s
c o n c e r n i n g the i m p o r t a n c e o f cultural i n t e l l i g e n c e to other aspects o f
international w o r k such as j o i n t v e n t u r e s and strategic alliances. In addition, I
discuss the potential application o f this c o n s t r u c t at a societal level o f analysis.
T h a t is, I address the q u e s t i o n c o n c e r n i n g the overall level o f cultural intelli-
g e n c e in various cultures. Finally, I d e s c r i b e the role o f cultural i n t e l l i g e n c e as
an integrative agent c o n n e c t i n g c o g n i t i o n , m o t i v a t i o n and b e h a v i o r in basic
psychology.
274 P. CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE - OVERVIEW OF THE

CONSTRUCT

Cultural intelligence captures a person's capability to adapt effectively to new

cultural contexts and it has both process and content features. 2 Its general
structure consists of three facets including cognitive, motivational and
behavioral elements as depicted in Fig. 1. In this section, I describe these facets
and the underlying processes that link them.

Cognitive and Meta-cognitive Facet

The first facet refers to cognitive processing aspects of intelligence and a useful
way of conceptualizing it is through self concept theory. The self is a person's
mental representation of her own personality, social identity, and social roles
(Kihlstrom & Cantor, 1984). The functioning of the self-concept depends on
personal motives being served and on the configuration of the immediate social
situation and roles enacted. The self is a dynamic interpretive structure that
mediates most significant intrapersonal and interpersonal processes (Gecas,
1982; Markus & Wurf, 1987; Markus & Kitayama, 1991; Markus, Kitayama &

Cultural Intelligence

Motivational

Declarative and Efficacy Repertoire

Procedural Knowledge Goals and Effort Mimicry
Perseverance Habits and Rituals
Meta-strategies

Fig. 1. Facets of Cultural Intelligence.

Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 275

Heiman, 1997). Intrapersonal processes include cognitive information process-

ing, affect and motivation, whereas interpersonal processes reflect the
interaction with the social milieu, including social perception, choice of
situation, interaction strategy, and reaction to feedback. The self is a person's
mental representation of her own personality and identity formed through
experience and thought, and encoded in memory alongside mental representa-
tions of other objects, reflected and imagined, in the physical and social world
(Kihlstrom et al., 1988).
One way of conceptualizing the self is through a schematic representation
(Erez & Earley, 1993; Markus & Kitayama, 1991). Self-schemas are derived
from past social experiences and it consists of both structure and process. As
such, the self is both the knower and what is known (Markus & Wurf, 1987).
The content of self conceptions and identities form the structure, and anchors
the self in the social system and self-evaluation deals with the dynamic
dimension of the self (Erez & Earley, 1993; Gecas, 1982).
Knowing oneself is insufficient for high CQ; awareness does not guarantee
flexibility. Cognitive flexibility is critical to CQ since new cultural situations
require a constant reshaping and adaptation of self concept to understand a new
setting. Flexibility of self concept and ease of integrating new facets into it are
associated with high CQ since understanding new cultures may require
abandoning pre-existing conceptualizations of how and why people function as
they do. High CQ also requires a capability of reformulating one's self concept
(and concept of others) in new complex configurations. Thus, flexibility and a
capability to inductively reorganize one's self concept is necessary. An
exception to this argument might be someone who is bi- or multi-cultural since
self knowledge in this case implies awareness of more than a single culture.
Such an individual may have a sufficiently complex self concept to reflect the
flexibility needed for CQ.
High CQ requires strong reasoning skills as well. Given that exposure to a
new culture often requires a type of detective work to ascertain significant cues
in the environment, clearly inductive reasoning is very important. Inductive
reasoning is an important capability as a person attempts to sort out, and make
sense of, a multitude of social and environmental cues. Take, for example,
Hall's (1976) discussion of his experiences staying in hotels in Japan. After a
short visit in his hotel (several days of a stay that was to last approximately a
month), he returned to his room only to find that he had been moved to another
room. After several more days, he found that he had been moved again.
This room shuffle reoccurred when he stayed in a small hotel in other parts of
Japan as well and he initially concluded that he was being moved around
because of his low status (gaijin, or foreigner) within the culture. That is, the
276 P. CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

reason he was m o v e d about was because higher status patrons wanted his room.
A t one time in Kyoto, he was even moved from one hotel to another! His
cultural frame and self concept suggested that he was m o v e d around because
o f low status. As he later surmised,

It was my lack of understanding of the full impact of what it means to belong to a high-
context culture that caused me to misread hotel behavior at the Hakone. I should have
known that I was in the grip of a pattern difference . . . The answer to my puzzle was
revealed when a Japanese friend explained what it means to be a guest in a hotel. As soon
as you register at the desk, you are no longer an outsider; instead, for the duration of your
stay you are a member of a large, mobile family. You belong. The fact that I was moved was
tangible evidence that I was being treated as a family member - a relationship in which one
can afford to be "relaxed and informal and not stand on ceremony." This is a very highly
prized state in Japan, which offsets the official properness that is so common in public
(p. 65).

Hall interpreted r o o m and hotel shuffling as a sign o f low status, consistent with
an A m e r i c a n perspective. However, one might inductively reason that only a
close friend would be i m p o s e d upon by a Japanese host given the culture's
emphasis on politeness and distance kept from strangers. A person having high
CQ has g o o d inductive reasoning since many new cultural contexts provide, at
best, ambiguous and, at worst, misleading, cues for what is happening.
A n important aspect o f cognitive functioning in relation to C Q refers to the
meta-level strategies that expatriates have for understanding a new culture.
These higher-level cognitive processes are part o f a person's metacognition.
Metacognition refers to thinking about thinking, or k n o w l e d g e about cognitive
objects (Flavell, 1987). Metacognition can be further broken down into two
complementary elements: meta-cognitive knowledge and meta-cognitive
experience. Meta-cognitive knowledge refers to one's acquired world knowl-
edge that has to do with cognitive matters and it reflects three general
categories o f k n o w l e d g e (Flavell, 1987). First, it reflects the person aspects o f
knowledge or the cognitions that we hold about people as thinking organisms.
Second, it refers to task variables, or the nature o f the information acquired by
an individual. A person learns things about how the type o f information
encountered influences how it should be dealt with in various contexts. Third,
it reflects strategy variables, or the procedures used to achieve some desired
goal. Whereas a cognitive strategy might be something such as adding a set of
numbers to attain a total, a meta-cognitive strategy might be to add the numbers
up several times to ensure that the total is correct. The original addition
procedure gives a "correct" answer to the p r o b l e m but the successive checks on
the total function differently. The follow-up operations are intended to reassure
that the correct answer has been found.
Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 277

Metacognition is a critical aspect of CQ since much of what is required in a

new culture is putting together patterns into a coherent picture even if one
doesn't know what this coherent picture might look like. To do so requires a
higher level of strategy about people, places and events. It is for this reason that
many cultural training programs fail since they overemphasize the specific
example at the expense of a more general learning principle. Many companies
train their expatriates by providing country specific information. This approach
is not only limited by a person's involvement in the training method but it does
not prepare adequately an expatriate for understanding and mastering novel
situations. With an effective meta-strategy this problem is overcome.
CQ reflects cognitive processing capabilities in a number of ways. CQ
captures a person's self concept and degree of differentiation. Incorporating
new information and using the self as a complex filter for understanding new
cultural settings is critical. Inductive reasoning is central to CQ since many
new cultural situations require that a person step beyond their existing
knowledge in order to fully understand what is going on around them. This is
not merely empathy; cues determining another person's affective state relied
upon by an empathetic individual may be absent or conflicting with what is
expected. Emotional expression may be misleading since it is the underlying
emotional states that are truly reflective of a person's feelings (Mesquita &
Frijda, 1992). A high CQ person must inductively create a proper mapping of
the social situation to function effectively. Finally, CQ captures metacognition
and higher order learning for an individual.

Motivational Facet

Cognitive processing and functioning has long been the limiting domain for
traditional work on intelligence. Scholars working in this field traditionally
neglect other aspects of psychological functioning even though they are
obviously critical for successful adaptation. (There are several prominent
models of motivation that incorporate cognitive functioning such as Bandura's
efficacy theory (1997) or Locke and Latham's goal-setting theory (1990).
Ironically, it appears that motivation theorists have integrated cognition into
their models more so than have the intelligence researchers done with
motivation). In this section, I explore the motivational basis for cultural
intelligence focusing on a person's self efficacy and personal motives.
It is not sufficient to have knowledge of another group's ways of dealing with
the world. One must be able (and motivated) to use this knowledge and produce
a culturally appropriate response. In Sternberg's (Sternberg, 1983) formulation
of the triarchic theory of intelligence he diverged from a traditional view and
278 E CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

posited the importance of alternative aspects of psychological functioning for

understanding intelligence. His triarchic model has three sub-theories including
a componential, experiential, and contextual sub-theory. The componential
sub-theory includes a performance component to it that focuses on the proper
execution of actions similar to our behavioral element. In discussing the
influence of a person's motivation as a component of cultural intelligence it is
important to retum to a person's self concept (Epstein, 1973; Erez & Earley,
1993; Greenwald, 1980; Markus & Wurf, 1987; Markus & Kitayama, 1991;
Markus et al., 1997). That is, cultural intelligence reflects self concept and
directs and motivates adaptation to new cultural surroundings. Self efficacy is
a key facet of the self (Bandura, 1997; Erez & Earley, 1997). Perceived self
efficacy is "a judgment of one's capability to accomplish a certain level of
performance" (Bandura, 1986, p. 391). People tend to avoid tasks and
situations they believe exceed their capabilities. Efficacy judgments promote
the choice of situations and tasks with high likelihood of success, and
eliminate the choice of tasks that exceed one's capabilities.
Self efficacy plays an important role in CQ because successful intercultural
interaction is based on a person's sense of efficacy for social discourse in a
novel setting. A person who does not believe in her own capability to
understand people from novel cultures is likely to disengage after experiencing
early failures (and failure is likely to occur early in such encounterst). If the
motivational facet of cultural intelligence is weak, adaptation will not occur. A
person's proactive engagement of new cultural circumstances is highly
influenced by a sense of self efficacy. Some individuals are highly efficacious
concerning unfamiliar social settings and how to mix and learn more about
people from unfamiliar cultures. Further, high efficacy means that as
individuals confront obstacles, setbacks or failures they will reengage with
greater vigor rather than withdraw (Bandura, 1997). This feature of efficacy is
critical for a cultural sojourner because much of discovering and adapting to a
new culture means overcoming obstacles and setbacks. Highly efficacious
people do not require constant rewards to persist in their actions; not only may
rewards be delayed, they may appear in a form that is unfamiliar (and thereby,
not appearing as a reward). People having low efficacy expectations are unable
to maintain commitment to a course of action under such duress.
An additional benefit is derived from a heightened sense of efficacy, namely,
a strategic way of thinking and problem-solving (Bandura, 1997; Locke &
Latham, 1990). Individuals who have a strong sense of efficacy engage in a
problem-solving and strategic approach to overcoming obstacles and this is
very important in intercultural encounters since immediate and obvious
answers to dilemmas may be absent. High CQ people have a strong efficacy
Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 279

with regard to intercultural encounters and so they "work smart as well as

hard".
A person's norms and values are related to CQ and they are an important
aspect of the self as they guide what features of the social environment that a
person attends to and what she values (Schwartz, 1992, 1993). A full review of
personal and cultural values is well beyond my means in this chapter and the
interested reader is referred to a number of seminal sources including (Glenn
& Glenn, 1981; Herskovits, 1955; Hofstede, 1991; Kluckhohn, 1954;
Kluckhohn & Strodtbeck, 1961; Rokeach, 1973; Schwartz, 1992, 1993). The
role of values and norms (from a motivational perspective) for CQ is that they
guide our choice of activities as well help define our evaluation of them. A
person having strong group-based values is likely to avoid situations requiring
personal actions. Further, such a person is likely to evaluate individual,
idiosyncratic behavior negatively. Thus, cultural adjustment may be impaired
by one's cultural values and norms.

Behavioral Facet

The third facet of cultural intelligence refers to the behaviors that a person
engages in. The behavioral aspect of CQ suggests that adaptation is not only
knowing what and how to do (cognitive) and have the wherewithal to persevere
and exert effort (motivational); it requires having in one's behavioral repertoire
responses needed for a given situation. Lacking these specific behaviors, a
person must have a capability to acquire such behaviors.
CQ reflects a person's capability to acquire or adapt behaviors appropriate
for a new culture. Difficulties in acquiring a new language can be important to
cultural adjustment such as accurate pronunciation of tones and phonemes in
languages such as Mandarin or Thai. Given that language conveys many
subtleties of a person's culture, it is my argument that people who lack an
aptitude for acquiring languages, at least at some reasonable level of
proficiency, will have a low CQ. In a sense, language acquisition is a work
sample of various types of behavior that one might need to acquire to be
successful in an expatriate work context. I am not saying that there is a causal
connection between language acquisition and CQ; I am merely arguing that the
two are related.
A person's behavior is tied to CQ in more indirect ways as well. There are
instances in which a person may know and wish to enact a culturally
appropriate behavior but he cannot do so because of some deep-set reservation.
For example, imagine an expatriate who is provided with a plate filled with a
local delicacy of fried grubs and earthworms in the outback area of Australia
280 E CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

but who is unable to overcome his revulsion and eat. This type of response (or
lack of it) can be thought of in behavioral terms (Luthans & Kreitner, 1985).
That is, the specific reinforcement history of an individual bears strong
relevance to her execution of particular actions in a new cultural setting. In an
intercultural encounter, even if a person is able to provide a desired response
eventually, it remains a problem that the host may detect hesitation and react
negatively.
Behavior properly executed requires a willingness of a person to persist over
time. Persistence is necessary for the acquisition of new skills and so is a
person's aptitude to determine these new skills. That is, it is not merely enough
to be willing to try and learn new behaviors; a high CQ person has an aptitude
to determine where new behaviors are needed and how to execute them
effectively.
Role modeling provides an important contribution to behavioral CQ. A
person with high CQ is able to adapt his behavior to be appropriate to any given
cultural context. This is loosely illustrated by the old adage of "When in Rome,
do as the Romans do". That is, adapting the behaviors that are consistent with
a target culture is an important aspect of intercultural adjustment and
interaction. It is not just acting the same as others to pretend to be a member
of another culture; it is engaging in actions that put people from another culture
at ease and comfortable. This adaptation of one's personal actions to suit a new
context has a number of positive benefits. As I suggested, one of the
consequences of enacting culturally appropriate behavior is to put others at
ease. However, there is a potentially more important effect through that of
mimicry. A myriad of cues are provided through observing others, and
observing their reactions as you interact with them; a person high in behavioral
CQ integrates and mimics these cues and behaviors (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999;
Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). Work on mimicry suggests that the effective
mimicking of another person's behavior, even if done unconsciously, results in
an increased satisfaction with the interaction. Mimicry is subtle and even
unconscious (Chartrand & Bargh, 1999) but it results in generally positive
effects in a social encounter. A high CQ person is a talented mimic although
such mimicry may be largely unconscious. If mimicry is used purposely then
it constitutes a type of cognitive strategy as well as a behavioral intervention.
It is not simply enough that a person is an effective actor able to control
personal displays and actions but she must be able to use the various behavioral
cues provided by others to interpret their actions and underlying motives. What
is particularly difficult about such inferences is that these behaviors often occur
in highly unfamiliar settings and as part of unfamiliar rituals. In addition to
these facets of CQ there are a number of processes that are core to how people
Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 281

deal with new and unfamiliar cultures. In the next section, I turn to a discussion
of the process aspects of CQ.

Process Aspects of Cultural Intelligence

Several processes underlie cultural intelligence. The overarching flame consists

of three analysis levels (universal, mediate and setting-specific levels) with
knowledge at each level organized into two general categories - declarative, or
what it is that I know about something, and, procedural, or what I know about
how something operates (Ackerman & Heggestad, 1997; Cohen & Bacdayan,
1994; Singley & Anderson, 1989; Squire, 1987; Tulving & Schacter, 1990).
The simplest way to think about these two general categories of knowledge is
that declarative knowledge is information about the characteristics of an entity
(e.g. a refrigerator keeps objects cold) whereas procedural knowledge describes
the way something functions (e.g. a refrigerator has a coolant circulating
through various heating coils that act to extract the heat from the ambient
environment and this heat is then given off by the coolant and recirculated).
That is, declarative knowledge concerns facts, propositions and events whereas
procedural knowledge concerns underlying function and actions (Cohen &
Bacdayan, 1994). Both types of knowledge exist at the three levels of analysis
although they differ in general specificity and link to a social setting.
Declarative and procedural knowledge at a universal level does not need to
be learned and it reflects basic psychological processes such as storing and
recalling memories, sensory encoding and language (the capacity for language
rather than a specific language). Declarative categories include features such as
distinguishing animate from inanimate, universal conceptions of good vs. evil
(not the definition of each, but the existence of these universal categories) and
self concept.
At a universal level, declarative and procedural knowledge are highly
abstract and general. Universal level knowledge is in common to all individuals
and not merely an idiosyncratic offshoot derived from personal experience.
Psychological universals such as concepts of good vs. evil represent declarative
knowledge at a highly abstract level. For example, all people have abstract
categories used in person perception and self definition (Epstein, 1973). The
depth, breadth and complexity of these categories vary across individuals but
each person has memory schema possessing some dimensions. Moral values
are universal as well according to some scholars (Wilson, 1993). If so, these
universal values constitute universal, declarative knowledge. How one should
treat self and others, views of justice, fair allocation of resources and duty to
others are possible universal values.
282 E CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

Procedural knowledge at a universal level refers to the routines that

individuals have for processing the information they receive. Procedural
memory stores sequences of actions; in the case of universal level procedural
knowledge, routines that people have for processing information such as
storing new memories or categorizing experiences (Wyer & Srull, 1980, 1989).
This is much like what Wyer and Srull (1980) called an executor, or a construct
whose function is to store, move and retrieve information. Universal level
declarative and procedural knowledge exist for all people but to varying
degrees. I conjecture that a person with high CQ has a greater capacity to store
and categorize new experiences than a person with low CQ (although both
possess varying levels of this universal capacity).
At a mediate (cultural) level, procedural and declarative knowledge reflects
more culture-specific information and characteristics. For example, on my first
trip to Japan's Narita Airport, I noticed that several of the airline personnel
were wearing white cotton gloves as they handled baggage, directed buses, etc.
What was the purpose of wearing white gloves? This information is processed
so that I might understand the meaning of white gloves. Is there a concern
about contamination? Is there a concern about communicable diseases? Is there
a norm of cleanliness? Procedural knowledge reflects my existing knowledge
about how the Japanese work at airports, how other Asian cultures operate at
airports, etc. and my specific declarative knowledge of the Japanese might
emphasize cleanliness, xenophobia, etc. At a mediate level, I am trying to
generate an inference about Japanese workers and why they wear white gloves.
My inference will not necessarily apply outside of this instance, but it applies
to more than a single idiosyncratic individual.
This gives rise to further processing at yet a more setting-specific level
(unique to the specific instance) to understand the significance of gloves at this
airport for a given airline employee. At a mediate level, I draw from my shared
experiences within my own culture (and across cultures as a sojourner) as a
general lens for viewing and understanding this situation. I ask myself, why do
some airline employees wear white gloves? To formulate an answer I must
draw upon setting specific procedural and declarative knowledge to deal with
the uniqueness of this situation. That is, the specific setting that she is operating
in largely influences my use of particular procedural routines as well as the
declarative knowledge. I seek collaborating cues to form an hypothesis that
might explain the use white gloves by airport personnel. For example, I
hypothesize that the Japanese are fearful of disease and so gloves are worn to
fend off biological contamination. To assess this, I turn to past experiences at
airports, encounters with Japanese students and colleagues, prior visits to other
Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 283

Asian countries, etc. and ultimately forms an impression based on this

information combined as a judgment.
My specific reaction and processing of this intercultural encounter is the
product of information processing and integration at many different levels of
processing. At a universal level, I deal with the encounter by processing the
events, categorizing the information and storing it into general person construct
categories. These categories include features such as human vs. inanimate
object, a general sense-making concerning the nature of people, and their
function and role. At a mediate level, I process the encounter within the context
of what I know about Japanese culture and norms. I draw from my existing
memory concerning Japan and the Japanese people. At a proximate level, I
process the encounter as why this particular person is wearing gloves, his
reaction towards others, whether or not all personnel are wearing gloves, how
I feel about a person wearing gloves on this given day, the ambient temperature,
and a multitude of additional setting-specific cues.
In summary, the process aspects of cultural intelligence can best be
conceived as operating at different levels of analysis and consisting of
declarative and procedural knowledge. They operate at three levels: universal
level - processes and knowledge for general processing of a universal con-
ception of humanity; mediate level - processes and knowledge that is culture-
specific; and setting-specific level - processes and knowledge that is
specifically tied to the context, people and timing of events.

Comparison of Cultural Intelligence with Other Facet Models of Intelligence

As I stated at the outset of this chapter, the fundamental difference of cultural

intelligence from other faceted models of intelligence is based on the domain
of interaction. Cultural intelligence reflects a social adaptation fled to
intercultural interactions. That is, it reflects a person's capability to adapt as he
interacts with others from different cultural origins.
There are a number of intelligence theories using a multi-faceted construct
approach (e.g. (Gardner, 1983, 1998; Salovey & Mayer, 1990; Sternberg, 1985;
Thorndike, 1920). Dating back to work by Thorndike (e.g. Thorndike, 1920)
among others, we see facet models of intelligence incorporating a social or
interpersonal element. Howard Gardner proposed and popularized the idea that
there are multiple facets to intelligence (Gardner, 1983, 1993). He argued that
his intelligences exist on the basis of their cultural significance and their
relation to underlying brain structures and functioning. This departure from the
dominant view of intelligence as a consisting of an underlying construct, "g",
is reflected in a number of other scholars' works as well. Steruberg's Triarchic
284 E CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

Model (1977, 1988) is an important example of a multi-faceted framework for

understanding intelligence.
A central part of this discussion focuses on the idea of social intelligence;
that is, there exists a social intelligence separate from the cognitive skills often
thought to underlie intelligence. Social intelligence refers to the capability of a
person to adjust to and interact with others in an effective fashion. People
having a high social or emotional intelligence are thought to be relatively more
able to empathize, work with, direct, and interact with other people. In essence,
high social intelligence reflects a person's capacity to perform actions (such as
problem solving) with and through others. Vernon (1933) defined social
intelligence as the ability to get along with people in general, knowledge of
social matters, ease with others, empathy of others, and insights concerning
others.
A concept related to social intelligence having received a great deal of
attention in the popular as well as academic pages is emotional intelligence.
This concept, popularized by Goleman (1995) in his book, Emotional
Intelligence, refers to a person's capability to detect others' emotional states,
introspect and regulate one's own emotions, and to use emotions to enact
desired action. Salovey and Mayer (1990) describe various aspects of
emotional intelligence and they have conducted numerous studies on this
construct as well as developed a research assessment tool.
Emotional and social intelligence have become extremely popular in the past
decade and there is good support for them in the literature. A number of related
facets of intelligence have been proposed in recent years including (Gardner,
1998; Sternberg, 1997, 2000; Sternberg et al., 1999) including successful,
managerial, naturalistic, and aesthetic intelligence, among others.
What, then, might cultural intelligence add to this expansive list of
intelligences? Earley and Ang (2003) argue that social and emotional
intelligence (those facets most strongly related to cultural intelligence) are
limited by a cultural boundedness. By this it is meant that social and emotional
intelligence are meaningful within a given cultural context but they do not
necessarily apply in new cultural settings. This is due to a number of reasons.
First, the rules for social interaction within a culture are limiting and social
intelligence does not necessarily imply that a person possesses effective meta-
cognitive strategies. For example, it may be appropriate and desirable within
France for a male supervisor to compliment his female subordinate about her
clothing and appearance. Further, a given French supervisor might be able to
sense that his subordinate enjoys such compliments a great deal. As an
emotionally intelligent supervisor he may choose to compliment his sub-
ordinate when he desires her to provide customers with good service (that is,
Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 285

if she is in a positive mood, her service to customers will be improved).

However, this practice would be ill-advised in an American workplace since the
compliment might easily be misinterpreted as harassment or a proposition.
With emotional intelligence, the rules of the game (cultural) are well known
and relatively consistent. Although it is true that some employees may react
differentially to a personal compliment within France, such a compliment will
not likely be misconstrued. For a manager reassigned from Pads to Lyon, the
basic norms for behavior are still, ultimately, French. Across individuals,
the French manager must determine the likely reaction of his subordinates to a
personal compliment. However, in doing so, he again has a consistency of
reaction according to general cultural rules of interaction. Perhaps a rule he has
identified for himself is that if a woman has on a fully coordinated outfit and
that she is in a good mood that she will enjoy a compliment about her
appearance. This heuristic can be applied to various French women across
various contexts by the manager. Further, let us assume that this manager has
been very successful at using his heuristic and he is considered by his female
employees to be a very positive influence on their work and attitude.
If the French manager now is assigned to a facility for his company in San
Francisco, he needs a way of determining if his heuristic applies to Californian
women. Having ,high emotional intelligence he applies his heuristic by
assessing whether or not his new subordinate's outfit is coordinated (it is) and
if she is in a good mood (she is). He now compliments her on her personal
appearance and tells her that she really looks good to him. A few days later the
manager receives a complaint through the human resources department of
the company for putting his subordinate into an uncomfortable position.
What are lacking in this example are the meta-cognitive strategies for
determining how to develop new heuristics and rules for giving personal
compliments. A person having high social or emotional intelligence relies on
existing heuristics and cultural rules for determining how to influence others
and to assess their emotions. Unfortunately, these rules and heuristics may not
be at all appropriate in a new culture. Cultural intelligence means that a person
has meta-cognitive strategies that are employed to overcome strange new social
contexts attributable to intercultural interactions.
Second, a high social or emotional intelligence does not provide a
framework for understanding how one acquires knowledge (declarative and
procedural) used in new social settings. Cultural intelligence specifically
captures the processes through which we acquire new rules and information.
The meta-cognitive strategies central to CQ are essential when a new culture is
encountered since much of what a person must do is to look beyond their own
cultural lens to comprehend another cultural frame. In the example of the
286 E CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

French manager, he must possess a meta-cognitive strategy to determine the

significance of compliments given by men to women and how/when it is
appropriate to do so. Further, he must have a meta-cognitive strategy for
figuring out to learn more about social interactions (such as complimenting a
work colleague) in a new culture.
Third, in an organizational setting it does not make a lot of sense to speak of
intelligent action without considering the importance of personal motives and
behavioral capability. Cultural intelligence requires that a person be willing to
persevere during difficult times or having received failure feedback. Motiva-
tional states are not incorporated into traditional faceted models of intelligence.
(I would note that in Sternberg's Triarchic Model one of his subsystems,
componential sub-theory, includes a performance component that incorporates
motivational and behavioral elements to it). Successful adaptation to a new
cultural setting requires that a person must understand a culture and he must
feel motivated to engage others in the new setting. Without such motivation,
adaptation will not occur.
The behavioral element of CQ captures an individual's capability to enact
behaviors that are adaptive. It reflects a person's ability to generate appropriate
behaviors in a new cultural setting. Without this aspect of CQ, a person may be
able to cognize what is appropriate in a given culture and feel motivated to
move forward but he will be unable to do so if the appropriate response is not
in his behavioral repertoire.
One might argue that social intelligence constitutes a superordinate
characteristic under which cultural intelligence maybe classified much like
emotional intelligence is presumed to exist (Salovey & Mayer, 1990). However,
there are a number of problems with this classification. Social intelligence
without culture presumes universality of content and processes. That is, if we
do not explicitly differentiate psychological processes across cultures, we fail
to capture the impact of environment (Miller, 1997). If cultural intelligence is
subsumed within social intelligence, it follows that cultural relativism must be
rejected. That is, logically, the ways that people discover social knowledge and
practices must be invariant across cultures. This position is not supported by the
literature (e.g. Miller, 1997; Smith, Peterson et al., 1994; Triandis, 1994). Thus,
I argue that cultural intelligence is a separate form of intelligence distinct from
social intelligence.
I now turn to an application and illustration of how cultural intelligence can
be used to understand several intercultural interactions having great importance
for global organizations. In the first application, I focus on the role of cultural
intelligence in multinational teams as they evolve and work. This is followed
by an application of CQ to expatriate work assignments as a tool for managers
Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 287

to understand and predict those individuals most highly suited for overseas
assignments.

APPLICATIONS TO MULTINATIONAL TEAMS AND

INTERNATIONAL ASSIGNMENTS

Multinational Teams and Cultural Intelligence

Teams are social entities having specific qualities involving roles, rules and
structure and purpose. They involve mutual awareness and potential interaction
that can be distinguished on the basis of size, interdependence, and temporal
pattern (McGrath, 1984). Turner (1987, p. l) describes a team as one that is
psychologically meaningful for the members to which they relate themselves
subjectively for comparisons and they adopt norms and values from this group.
A person accepts membership in a group and it influences the member's
attitudes and behavior. A multinational team refers to a team consisting of
members who come from different nations and/or cultural backgrounds (Earley
& Gibson, 2002; Snow, Snell, Canney-Davison & Hambrick, 1996). It is a
collection of individuals having different national backgrounds who are
operating in an interdependent fashion for the purposes of attaining some
shared goal. The key point of course is that these individuals come from
differing cultural or national backgrounds. Why is this feature such an
important aspect of the team dynamic?
If one looks at the dynamic of team formation and integration there is a
central process that is enacted - identity formation and clarification. That is, at
the early stages of team interaction there is likely a strong search for personal
and collective identity (Brewer, 1993; Brewer & Kramer, 1985; Stryker, 1980,
1987; Stryker & Serpe, 1982; Tajfel & Turner, 1986; Turner, 1987). This search
revolves around the questions of "who am I?" and "who are we?" and it guides
much of the early dynamics of a team newly formed (Earley & Mosakowski,
2000). In my work with Mosakowski, we found that this search for personal
and collective identity was a powerful and helpful influence over the formation
of highly diverse (internationally) teams. The need to establish a common
identity within a multinational team gave rise to the formation of commonly
agreed upon goals and rules for the team that averted unnecessary conflict.
As individuals join various social entities (e.g. work team) they engage in a
categorization process to understand with whom they are working (e.g. Fiske &
Neuberg, 1990). Members classify one another into the in-group (one's self and
others who are similar with respect to some characteristic) and out-group (those
288 E CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

who are different on the basis of the characteristic) based upon perceived
similarities and differences (Jackson, May & Whitney, 1995). The character-
istics used in making group classifications are those most salient to a person
based on their background and current work context (Hughes, 1971). Although
a single identifying characteristic may be pertinent in describing others,
multiple characteristics may be used as well. A team member might view others
based primarily on functional background and secondarily on characteristics
such as race or gender (Earley & Gibson, 2002; Hughes, 1971; Lau &
Murnighan, 1998).
The salience of identities is determined, in part, by the cultural context of the
individual actors, as expressed in their culture-related values and beliefs. A
worker from a collectivist culture tends to have a higher commitment to an
identity that reflects the interests of her in-group. If the worker's in-group is not
her organization, and especially if its interests are in potential conflict with the
organization, then control methods must present role expectations in a way that
favors evoking a subordinate identity over the competing in-group identity.
Role identity is best thought of as a product resulting from a tension between
distinctiveness and integration with the team (Brewer, 1993). Brewer argued
that these forces of remaining distinct from the team vs. integrated within it
guide people's sense of role identity. These balance points must be very
tentative considering the paradoxical instances in which workers identify with
a company but engage in hostile work actions over disputes, then re-identify
after the dispute is resolved. These same considerations serve to contextualize
cognitive representations and team mental models.
Cultural intelligence contributes to our understanding of multinational teams
through role identities in a number of ways. For example, in understanding
various intra-team interactions a thorough understanding of role identities is
needed. A high CQ person observes various interactions and determines the
dominant role identities for each team member, how these identities lead
members to interact mutually, and how the work context of the team might
make certain identities more salient than others. A high CQ person has meta-
cognitive strategies and skills for observing and comprehending the various
actions and intentions of team members. This is not to suggest that CQ is
highly correlated with team skills per se. High CQ does not necessarily imply
that a person is an effective team member. However, it seems likely that
improving one's understanding of others' role identities is likely to improve the
quality of team interactions. What I am suggesting is that high CQ enables a
keen observer to separate out culturally-derived action from other, more
idiosyncratic, actions on the part of a given team member.
Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 289

CQ provides an additional benefit for members of a multinational team.

When confronted with interpersonal difficulties, a high CQ team member is
more capable of understanding, and reacting appropriately, to situations of
conflict occurring because of cultural differences among team members.
Returning to the three facets of cultural intelligence suggests how such a
benefit is derived from high CQ. First, a person with high CQ is able to sort
culturally-derived behavior from idiosyncratic behavior as discussed above.
One of the challenges facing an expatriate working on a multinational team is
learning what actions of a colleague constitute cultural syndromes and those
that are uniquely tied to a person. Entire implicit cultural theories are derived
based on relatively few observations from a foreign culture even though it is
folly to do so. For example, an expatriate manager I worked with commented
that he thought that Germans are rude and aggressive in their interpersonal
interactions. He formed this impression on his limited experiences with two
German managers who he characterized as, " . . . brash and honest but lacking
any tact and subtlety". His experiences gained while working in a multinational
design team with these two German engineers showed him people who freely
engaged in candid and explicit criticism of various ideas presented by other
team members. A number of times a fellow team member would propose an
option for the team and one of the two Germans would bluntly state that the
idea was "stunted and misinformed". However, another German colleague
commented that this seemingly brash behavior reflects a criticism of ideas
rather than of people. That is, when Germans criticize a given proposition they
viewed this as independent of their evaluation of the person whose idea it was
in the first place. For the American expatriate, his role identity was based in the
idea presented to the group ("I am my ideas") so he took much offense with
the Germans' brutal honesty. To the German engineer, he was simply
commenting on an idea and he in no way meant this as a personal attack on the
person who generated the idea. I would suggest that a high CQ person would
be able to identify this subtlety (ideas do not equal person).
The second facet of CQ, motivation, is critical to a multinational team
member's success. There are numerous opportunities for team members to
come into conflict and to make significant mistakes and high CQ is important
if one is to overcome such adversity of circumstance. The motivation and
perseverance needed for successful interaction on a multinational team is
significant and positively related to CQ. Early on during group formation and
stabilization, members are faced with many challenges and misunderstandings
that might break the team apart. However, high CQ reflects a high personal
efficacy to engage fellow team members. It reflects several other aspects of
motivation as well including goal orientation and direction. That is, a high CQ
290 P. CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

person has high efficacy to function on a diverse team and she will engage
proactively in setting goals for accomplishing various aspects of team
activities.
Finally, a high CQ team member is more readily able to provide the types of
behaviors and actions needed to maintain a productive multinational team
environment. A flexible working style that is appropriate for a variety of
different types of interactions is characteristic for the high CQ person. It is this
"cultural chameleon" and adaptation that is important for keeping up good
relations within a multinational team. Recall the mimicry research of Bargh
and Chartrand (Bargh & Chartrand, 1999; Chartrand & Bargh, 1999). This
work suggests that the effective mimicking of another person's behavior, even
if done unconsciously, results in an increased satisfaction with social
encounters. A high CQ person is often a talented mimic who can put fellow
team members at ease. Such mimicry is not merely imitation without thought
since such attempts are likely to be recognized by the recipient and viewed with
amusement or disdain. Instead, mimicry is used as a means of putting the
recipient at ease as well as facilitating interactions. Further, mimicry used in
this manner reflects a sender's desire to understand and empathize with the
recipient. Not a great deal of work has been conducted on this topic in a cross-
cultural context although a promising series of studies is being conducted by
Sanchez-Burks (2002, personal conversation) who is exploring the implications
of mimicry cross-culturally. His preliminary findings indicate that effective
cross-cultural mimics have higher quality interactions than those lacking such
mimicry skills.
My assertion is that a high CQ person is able to adapt personal behaviors to
be consistent with those of others so as to put them at ease. In cross-cultural
encounters these target actions may not already be within a person's behavioral
repertoire and so they must be newly acquired - a difficult proposition if the
actions are entirely novel or inconsistent with existing behavior. It is not simply
enough that a person is an effective actor able to control personal displays and
actions but she must be able to use the various behavioral cues provided by
others to interpret their actions and underlying motives.
In addition to general cultural norms, there are norms and rules that teams
develop to govern their own activities. High CQ means that a person can
determine these norms so as to comply with them. However, a high CQ
member does not merely react passively to these rules and practices - she uses
the existing rules as a way of furthering her personal goals. She actively
observes and analyzes both situation and general context. She promotes her
interests and goals by using the dominant cultural themes to solidify support.
Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 291

As a team member she draws upon symbolic actions to energize fellow team
members on behalf of her desired goals.

Expatriate Assignments and Cultural Intelligence

The contribution of CQ to understanding the nature of expatriate work

assignments overlaps with a number of the points that I raised in the section on
multinational teams with a few important additions.
Obviously, an expatriate must interact with local peers, supervisors, and
subordinates and adjust to new work norms, routines, ethics and standards
operating procedures that are often tacit in nature. To be successful, an
expatriate manager needs to perform not only technically but interpersonally as
well (Black, Mendenhall & Oddou, 1991) and this requires engaging in a
variety of managerial actions. A person having high CQ possesses the cognitive
maps, culturally embedded work schemas, as well as the motivation to detect
the appropriate contextual activities required of him (Earley & Ang, 2003).
An expatriate manager experiences a variety of changes as a result of an
overseas assignment. One of the more central changes experienced is a change
in the power and privilege in professional status (Black et al., 1991) as
expatriates often experience upward surges in professional status typically from
a middle-management position in the parent organization to the position of a
senior executive or managing director. A person with high CQ will more likely
be able to discern the sudden shifts in professional status and adjust her
behaviors to overcome this shift in status. There are a variety of additional work
and non-work aspects of expatriate assignments that place strong demands on
a manager. Family and spousal adjustment to a foreign assignment (Black,
Gregersen, Mendenhall & Stroh, 1999; Black et al., 1991) is especially
important for predicting expatriate adjustment and job success. A high CQ
manager is not necessarily any more capable at detecting discontent in one's
spouse nor one's family members, but he is able to select from features of the
cultural context that are most likely useful for helping his spouse adjust. This
is not merely knowing one's spouse or her preferences - he understands the
nature of the cultural environment and how it might be used to improve his
spouse's adjustment. Thus, CQ taken in this context is using the cultural
context as a way of improving family adjustment. A person having high
empathy but lacking CQ may well understand that his spouse is unhappy but he
will not be able necessarily to draw from the local environment to alleviate this
unhappiness. A high CQ person is able to use the local cultural environment
effectively to deal with spousal and family adjustment.
292 P. CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

An expatriate manager having high CQ understands the differential

importance of her status in a new cultural and work context. As I mentioned
earlier, an expatriate often has additional status afforded by her assignment and
may enter a local work context at a position above locals. This placement often
stirs resentment among the local personnel. A high CQ expatriate is able to
discern the importance of status and how it is maintained across cultural
contexts. In some cases, power differentials may not be at all important to local
personnel and so adjustments to "ease the entry of the new boss" are largely
unnecessary. CQ reflects a capability to determine under what circumstances
power is an important issue and how to help (in cases it is important) locals
maintain face and status.
CQ reflects an additional capability of an individual that may interfere with
an expatriate's success, namely what Baumeister (Baumeister, 1986;
Baumeister & Scher, 1988) refers to as self-defeating behavior. One way in
which individuals can be clumsy in cross-cultural contexts is in their attempts
to build rapport, trust, empathy, etc. For example, ingratiation may be used as
a way of building relationships but such an approach may be culturally
inappropriate. Ashford and her colleagues have discussed a variety of ways that
feedback seeking is used for political ends in organizations (Ashford &
Cummings, 1983; Ashford & Tsui, 1991) and this, again, may represent the
type of self-defeating actions that Baumeister documents. Although feedback-
seeking may be viewed in American work culture as proactive and desirable in
many ways, such an approach may convey lack of confidence or ineptitude
in other cultures for which a person in a management position is expected to the
a confident expert. As I discussed earlier, mimicry may fall into a self-defeating
category as well if it is enacted without thought or subtlety. A person having
high CQ is able to avoid these types of self-defeating and inappropriate social
tactics whereas they are a common trap for those low in CQ.
Individuals possessing high levels of CQ have a greater chance of
succeeding in expatriate positions than those with lower levels of CQ.
However, the link of CQ to an expatriate's success is influenced by a number
of important contextual variables as well including various work and non-work
variables such as family situation, company headquarters location relative to
the subsidiary unit, host culture distance from that of the expatriate, etc. Under
some circumstances, such as good socialization tactics practiced by home and
host nations, a person with low CQ can adjust well and succeed in an expatriate
work context. Likewise, in difficult circumstances moderating influences such
as family demands may mean that even a person having high CQ does not
perform well.
Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 293

SUMMARY AND EXTENSIONS

In this chapter I have presented a framework for cultural intelligence based on
my work with Ang Soon (Earley & Ang, 2003). Our approach suggests that the
type of intelligence conceptualized in an intercultural context consists of three
general facets - cognitive, motivational and behavioral - operating at three
levels of specificity including universals, culture-specific and idiosyncratic to
the individual. In this chapter, I have used this framework to explore how CQ
might be used to understand and predict those individuals in an international
work context (multinational team, expatriate work assignment) who are most
likely to be effective.
This model of cultural intelligence focuses on a person's capability to adapt
to new cultural circumstances and it is a superset of existing approaches of
faceted intelligence such as emotional or social intelligence. A central
limitation of existing models that is overcome by cultural intelligence is the
understanding of how people adjust and interact in new cultural circumstances
for which their preconceptions and behavioral habits may be altogether
inappropriate or conflicting. An expatriate manager inevitably judges and reacts
to a new cultural work setting in terms of his own cultural background - how
can he do anything but this? This is not to suggest that our personal cultural
backgrounds dominate our world view or volition to act independently of it.
However, the cultural lens that we use for evaluating new situations plays a
significant role in our choice of responses. In the case of intra-cultural social or
emotional intelligence, these potential responses are likely to be drawn from a
culturally-appropriate repertoire. In an intercultural encounter, there is no
necessity that my responses will even approximate appropriate behavior in the
target culture. As I discussed earlier in the chapter, there are a number of
anecdotal cases of managers having high emotional intelligence in their own
culture who flounder when transplanted to another one. Not only do the skills,
cues and responses differ in many cases, but a person's personal reinforcement
history (based on success in one's own culture) may make it difficult for a
person having high emotional intelligence (as one example) to change his
approach to understanding others. That is, if I am reinforced that I am a
sensitive and caring person who is attentive to others' feelings then it is not
likely that I will change my personal style of high sensitivity across cultural
boundaries. My prior reinforcement history will constrain my subsequent
actions regardless of their appropriateness in a new cultural context. To worsen
matters, outcomes that I view currently as reinforcing (and I use to interpret the
effectiveness of my actions) may well lead me astray in a new culture as they
may mean something very different. An American working in Thailand may
294 P. CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

receive a smile from a Thai colleague after performing some action and
interpret it as an indication of Thai approval and contentment even though this
may be an incorrect assessment. I interpret a smile as approval and
reaffirmation of my action. This smile has a reinforcing significance in
American culture and so my inappropriate behavior may be displayed again
(likelihood of display increases). Thus, for a person having emotional or social
intelligence, cognitive strategies used in determining a person's emotional state
are culture-bound and may lead to a perpetuation of culturally inappropriate
actions.
A related, but potentially more controversial, issue might be addressed at this
point in the chapter. If we can talk about the cultural intelligence of individuals,
might this construct be applied to societies as well? Are some cultures more
culturally intelligent than others? It is premature to argue strongly for such a
position but there are a number of reasons that one might expect societies to
differ in their members' general level of CQ. Take, for example, cultures that
differ with regard to Hall's (1976) dimension of high vs. low context. In a high
context culture, people are sensitive to others' situation as they behave. It is not
what is said as much as how and when it is said and who says it. In a low
context culture, actions and intentions are viewed as straightforward and tied to
what is actually done and said. Does this suggest that context is correlated with
a country-level assessment of CQ? Are people coming from a high context
culture higher in CQ (on average) than those from a low context culture?
It might be suggested that people coming from a high context culture are
higher in CQ than are people coming from a low context culture. However, the
relationship may not be nearly so simple since a cultural pattern such as high
vs. low context may be tied to the specifics of the culture itself. That is,
high context people may have very elaborate and sensitive ways of determining
the significance of a given context from their own culture but this does not
necessarily imply that they possess general meta-cognitive strategies that can
be used in other cultures. From a practical example, does a person from Japan
have (on average) a higher CQ than someone from the United States? Is a
Japanese expatriate more likely to succeed at adjusting to a new culture than an
American?
A related cultural pattern is Witkin and Berry's (Witkin & Berry, 1975;
Witkin & Goodenough, 1976) concept of field independence/dependence (and
its individual-level counterpart of psychological differentiation). This distinc-
tion is related to the concept of tight vs. loose cultures, or social pressures
pertaining to conformity and socio-cultural stratification. In tight societies
intense pressure is put on the individual to conform. In loose societies there are
few such pressures, allowing self-control to operate. Field independent
Redefining Interactions Across Cultures and Organizations 295

societies can be differentiated from field dependent ones on the basis of: family
structure (nuclear vs. extended respectively), social structure (egalitarian vs.
hierarchical-stratified), and social relation patterns (reserved-fragmented vs.
mutual dependence-integrate).
As with high vs. low context, it might be argued that field dependent cultures
exhibit high levels of CQ. In field dependent (or tight) cultures, there is great
pressure to conform to existing rules and norms and this, of course, necessitates
that one knows what those rules are and what conformity entails. Without a
keen awareness of what are the prevailing norms a person may well commit
various social atrocities. However, the argument of culture-specificity must
again be raised. In a field dependent culture with strong conformity influences,
do the successful members of the culture have an enhanced capability of
determining prevailing social norms or simply a well-learned assessment of the
existing practices?
What about pluralistic vs. homogeneous cultures? Perhaps the necessity of
interacting across community and sub-cultures within a diverse nation (such as
the United States) gives rise to more opportunity to develop CQ than in a highly
homogeneous culture such as Japan. If true, would this suggest that as the
European Union moves toward various forms of unification that the average
level of CQ will rise for its citizenry? At this juncture, I would suggest that
creating a CQ-like construct at the societal level of analysis is provocative but
such a translation will not be a trivial one.
The incidence of intercultural encounters in the business world is increasing
exponentially; so are the failures. In this chapter I have presented a framework
to help researchers better understand why cultural encounters unfold as they do.
Despite the important developments in the field of intelligence within
psychology, there continues to be a cultural-boundedness that has plagued the
field for quite sometime. Berry warned of the cultural relativism of intelligence
research three decades ago yet it is only now that a framework is offered that
explicitly deals with such boundaries.

NOTES

1. Cultural intelligence is a construct that I developed with my colleague, Ang Soon

of Nanyang Business School, and this chapter owes a great debt to our joint work on this
topic. For a more complete elaboration of the construct the interested reader is referred
to our book (Earley & Ang, 2003). In addition, I am indebted to the members of the
Cultural Intelligence working group at Nanyang Business School who have stimulated
my thinking in this area a great deal with special thanks to Chay Hoon Lee, Klaus
Templer, Joo-Seng Tan and Roy Yong-Joo Chua. Whereas our book emphasizes the
296 E CHRISTOPHER EARLEY

construct itself and its measurement, m y emphasis in this chapter is on the implication
of cultural intelligence for intemational organizations.
2. This section is modified from Earley and Ang (2003, chap. 3).

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