Antecedents And Mechanisms Of Cultural Intelligence In The Settings Of Social Media Usage

Economic globalization has brought organizations opportunities as well as challenges.Successfully managing global businesses is directly related to organization's success and continuous development in increasingly intensvie international competitions.Ample research has indicated that organization's international businesses are closely associated with expatriate's competency to deal with cross-cultural businesses,which is defined as cultural intelligence by western scholars.Cultural intelligence covers four aspects of capabilities:meta-cognitive,cognitive,motivational and behavioral.As for the conceptualization of cultural intelligence,there are still many unexplored fields since it was conceptualized by western scholars in 2003.In order to have a much clearer picture about antecedents working on the development of cultural intelligence and mechanism of cultural intelligence,the research mainly covers two parts.The first part explores antecedents influencing the development of cultural intelligence.First,given the increasing complexity and importance of international businesses,it is crucial for organizations to identify those antecedents benefiting or impairing individual's cultural intelligence.The research adopted international students as the research sample mainly because international students are regarded as future business leaders and practioners.How to develop cultural intelligence of this special group has significant current and future implications.Based on the learning situations of international students,the research focuses on the cross-cultural activities,which are regarded as indispensible parts of modern education and resources of international students' learning,aiming to explore how those activities affect the development of cultural intelligence;second,identification of personal attributes(proactive personality)is also conducive to the expansion of theoretical framework and practices of facilitating the development of cultural intelligence based on the judgment of individual characteristics;finally,with the rapid growth of information technology,social media are challenging individual's learning and cognitive process and approaches.Clarifications of interacting roles of social media usage with cross-cultural activities and proactive personality contribute to the clearer picture about social media functions in cross-cultural settings and facilitate selecting appropriate strategic methods of leveraging on social media to serve the development of cultural intelligence.The second part of this research focuses on the effects of cultural intelligence on further personal development.First of all,cross-cultural adjustment is pre-condition and prequisite for international expatriate's successful business management and healthy physiological and psychological states.Whether cultural intelligence contributes to individual's cross-cultural adjustment needs further examination out of western settings.In addition,organization's continuous development is powered by individual creativity.Whether and how cultural intelligence contributes to the development of individual creativity needs to be examined as well.Based on the above statements,the second part of this research explores how cross-cultural activities,proactive personality and social media usage contribute to the development of cultural intelligence and examines the mechanism of cultural intelligence facilitating individual creativity and cross-cultural adjustment.The research is mainly composed of three subtopics.Based on literature review,the research has raised hypothesis and collected data from surveyed questionnaire for further regression analysis with SPSS and LISERL software.In the end,the research has conducted in-depth discussions about research results,theoretical and practical implications as well as limitations and future research directions.Firstly,based on Experiential Learning Theory,the first topic explores how cross-cultural activities are conducive to the development of individual cultural intelligence through which individual creativity is fostered.In addition,the research examines how social media usage moderates the relationship between cross-cultural activities and cultural intelligence.It is found that cross-cultural activities are positively related to cultural intelligence which is significantly related to creativity.Driven by the motivation of socializing purpose,social media usage moderates the relationship between cross-cultural activities and cultural intelligence.On contrast,social media usage driven by the motivation of informational purpose has no significant moderating effect on their relationship.Secondly,within the framework of Person-Environment Fit,the second sub-research explores the mechanism of proactive personality functioning on cultural intelligence and effects of cultural intelligence on individual cross-cultural adjustment as well as the moderating effects of social media usage between proactive personality and cultural intelligence.It is found that proactive personality is positively related to cultural intelligence and two dimensions of cross-cultural adjustment wherein cultural intelligence partially mediates the relationship between proactive personality and cross-cultural academic adjustment while fully mediates the relationship between proactive personality and cross-cultural social adjustment.The result suggests that informational social media usage negatively moderates the relationship between proactive personality and cultural intelligence while socializing social media usage does no effect on their relationship.Thirdly,based on Social Cognitive Theory,the research conducts a longitudinal test examining the direct impact of social media usage on cultural intelligence and self-efficacy.It is found that social media usage(both socializing and information purposes)is positively related to cultural intelligence and self-efficacy.In addition,self-efficacy partially mediates the relationship between social media usage and cultural intelligence.After a longitudinal test,cultural intelligence is found to react to self-efficacy positively.The research has several important theoretical implications:Firstly,the research enriches theoretical studies of multicultural experiences,cultural intelligence,creativity,self-efficacy,proactive personality and cross-cultural adjustment in cross-cultural context.More specifically,the study has confirmed the important role of multicultural experiences in fostering cultural intelligence,which broadens the nomological framework of cultural intelligence.In addition,the study examines the roles of cultural intelligence in terms of developing individual creativity,self-efficacy and cross-cultural adjustment,which enriches the research literature of individual creativity,self-efficacy and cross-cultural adjustment in a cross-cultural context.Moreover,the research has explored the important approaches to develop individual creativity,cultural intelligence and cross-cultural adjustment(esp.social adjustment)and examines the role orientation of proactive personality in cross-cultural environment.Secondly.the study has expanded the application scopes of the Experiential Learning Theory,Person-Environment Fit Theory and Social Cognitive Theory by empirical tests in cross-cultural environment.Thirdly,the research has enriched the literature of social media by exploring its roles interacting with multicultural experiences and proactive personality on the development of individual cultural intelligence and self-efficacy.Furthermore,the study has extended social media research by exploiting its direct impacts on cultural intelligence and self-efficacy.Fourthly,the research has examined causal relationships between proactive personality,cultural intelligence and cross-cultural adjustment,which has filled the gaps of previous research work.Finally,the research has replicated related empirical tests with samples of international students studying at Chinese universities and extended related theories out of traditional western settings.The research also has practical implications for senior administrators,educators and individuals.Firstly,practioners should lay much emphasis on the development of cultural intelligence for international expatriate's adaptation,survival and success in cross-cultural settings.For example,in the complex foreign environment,we need to focus on developing individual's cultural intelligence through multicultural experiences and training programs in order to enhance individual creativity and self-efficacy in cross-cultural encounters.Secondly,practioners should recognize the important roles of social media in business and educational activities.For example,individuals with lower cultural intelligence should be encouraged to leverage social media for socializing with people from culturally diversified backgrounds and boosting the functions of cross-cultural contacts to improve cultural intelligence;individuals with lower self-efficacy should be encouraged to use social media to search for information and share related sources to improve cultural intelligence and thereby enhance self-efficacy.In addition,administrators should fully acknowledge the interdependence of cultural intelligence and self-efficacy in cross-cultural settings.Lastly,practioners should realize the important role of proactive personality for developing cultural intelligence and enhancing cross-cultural adjustment when they select expatriates for international businesses.Especially when social adjustment comes as the priority task for international tasks,expatriate's cultural intelligence should be improved first.In addition,the inference that overload of information from sources of social media may impair expatriate's proactivity in cross-cultural settings should be fully alerted with.