Cultural Intelligence

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Cultural Intelligence


TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Introduction: Culture and Intelligence Defined 3
2. The concept of cultural intelligence 7
3. The effect of Globalisation on CQ 8
4. Aspects of Cultural Intelligence 10
5. Developing and Enhancing Cultural Intelligence 12
6. Profiles of Cultural Intelligence 14
7. Business benefits of Cultural Intelligence 16
8. Conclusion 18
9. References 19


1. Introduction: Culture and Intelligence Defined

"Managing and leading people, with various cultural backgrounds, require "cultural intelligence", which in a global setting is a management challenge in the new millennium".

All individuals have something psychologists call "personality" which is made up of traits, that influences the way we think, feel and behave and make us unique.   Traits are a group of characteristics and consist of a variety of individual attributes, including aspects of temperament, behaviours, and thought process, needs, motives and values.   An individual's personality is permanent and stable, and is the manner in which an individual reacts and interacts with others.   There are a number of factors that affect and influence personality.   The factors affecting personality (Gerber et al, 1999:54) is depicted in Figure 1 below.   An important contributor is culture.

Figure 1: Factors affecting personality

Similarly organisations also have personality, but that which is defined as culture.   Culture is an integral part of our everyday lives and is encompassed in our beliefs, values, shared patterns of behaviours, and it gives meaning to our lives.   Du Brin (1997:232) defines organisational culture as a system of shared values and beliefs that influence worker behaviour.   Organisational culture is found in the way employees act towards each other and the external environment and is reflective in "the way we do things around here".   Organisational culture forms the basis of the social environment of an organisation.   In...