Research On Cultural Intelligence,Conflict Management Style And Team Performance Of Expatriates

In recent years,economic globalization has developed rapidly,multinational corporations have gradually become an inevitable choice for Chinese companies to carry out international operations.When Chinese enterprises operate and develop in the global market,they must need to send certain national personnel to better achieve their corporate goals.Therefore,an intercultural team composed of Chinese corporate expatriates and local employees in the host country came into being.Because team members have different cognitive and comprehension skills for different cultures,there will be some differences in thinking patterns and behavior patterns.In the face of cross-cultural conflicts,different conflict management styles are often adopted,which have an impact on team performance.This paper focuses on how the cultural intelligence level of expatriates will affect team performance and whether it will be mediated by conflict management styles.The significance of team presence is to achieve high efficiency,but sometimes conflicts within cross-cultural teams can reduce team efficiency and impact team performance.Therefore,this paper further studies how the choice of cross-cultural conflict management style affects the relationship between cultural intelligence and team performance.In the definition of variables,cultural intelligence is divided into four dimensions: meta-cognition,cognition,motivation and behavior.The conflict management styles are mainly divided into cooperative style and competitive style.And team performance mainly reflects the work results at the team level.This article selects Malaysia as a source of data for Chinese companies' expatriates.There are three main reasons: First,Malaysia,as an important node country of the“Belt and Road”,has a relatively early harvest,which makes Malaysia an important country for Chinese enterprises to develop Southeast Asian markets.Second,I went to Malaysia for an internship for two months in 2018.I distributed paper questionnaires to expatriates of Chinese-funded enterprises in Malaysia through field research,and collected a lot of first-hand data,which laid a solid foundation for the empirical analysis of this article.Third,Malaysia is a multi-cultural andmulti-ethnic country composed of Malay native culture,Chinese culture and Indian culture.It is representative of the host country of multiculturalism.Based on the literature analysis of relevant theoretical results at home and abroad,this paper proposes six research hypothesis and a theoretical model.This study identifies a questionnaire for measuring background information and three variables,and empirically studies the relationship between cultural intelligence,conflict management style,and team performance of expatriates.This paper used SPSS 22.0statistical software to verify the reliability and validity of the sample data,conducted descriptive statistical analysis,correlation analysis between variables and linear regression analysis to verify the proposed research hypothesis.The results of data analysis show that among the expatriates of Chinese enterprises in Malaysia,the higher the cultural intelligence,the more inclined they are to choose a cooperative conflict management style in the face of internal team conflicts,thus positively affecting team performance.However,the relationship between cultural intelligence and competitive conflict management is not significant,and the competitive conflict management method does not play a mediating role between cultural intelligence and team performance.The reason will be discussed in the main body.According to the research conclusions,Chinese enterprises should conduct cultural intelligence tests on candidates before conducting personnel assignments,select expatriates who can better adapt to the cross-cultural environment,and train them to improve their capabilities of cross-cultural conflict management.When there is a conflict within the team,the enterprise manager should encourage the expatriates to choose a cooperative conflict management style,and discuss with the team members in a sincere manner to effectively resolve conflict events and ensure team performance.Finally,the paper has certain limitations in research methods,such as scale measurements,and sample diversity and representation.Future research can consider different forms of research in other countries and teams,increase the types of conflict management styles,and build a more complete relationship model to provide a theoretical basis for the development of Chinese expatriate practices.