Cultural intelligence and mindfulness in two French banks operating in the US environment

Introduction

The ability to successfully navigate cross-cultural interactions is increasingly sought after by multi-national corporations and domestic organizations alike, given increasing diversity of workforce within and across countries. Recent research in this cross-cultural ability has focused on the construct of cultural intelligence, commonly referred to as "CQ", a multi-dimensional construct that can be broadly defined as an ability to assess an unfamiliar cultural environment and adapt oneself for success in that environment. CQ is a relatively recent construct grounded in multiple loci of the intelligence framework (Sternberg and Detterman, 1986). The seminal CQ research can be attributed to the work of Earley and Ang (2003), who defined CQ within a three-construct model - cognitive, motivational and behavioral - and argued for the role of CQ in predicting performance success. The fast-developing CQ research has identified numerous outcomes related to the cross-cultural adaptability (Ang and Van Dyne, 2008; Huff, 2013; Ng et al. , 2012). This paper is an attempt to extend the still evolving CQ research by first exploring the literature on the nature of CQ constructs, especially Thomas' (2006) "mindfulness" construct in his CQ model, and then examining how a more fully developed mindfulness construct from the literature may be useful in interpreting a case situated set of cultural interactions of executives from two French banking institutions that operate in the USA. Of special interest in this paper are three sub-components in the expanded "mindfulness" construct - empathy, open-mindedness and using all senses. The potential of these three sub-components and their relationships to CQ cognition and CQ behavior constructs are examined in the literature review and the case sections of the paper. Following the case examination, a discussion section relates specific case findings to Thomas' (2006) CQ model and then points to direction for further research effort. Implications of these emergent findings are also included in the paper.

Literature review

Earley and Ang's (2003) CQ model was the first to call attention to the potential role of CQ in mitigating challenges of the cross-cultural differences. Since that pioneering effort, a range of studies, including many from Ang and colleagues (Ang and Van Dyne, 2008; Ang and Inkpen, 2008; Ang et al. , 2006) have showed the applicability of CQ in various organizational settings....