Leader cultural intelligence and transformational leadership behaviors as antecedents of organizational diversity management practice

Despite the anticipated increase in the diversity of the U.S. workforce (U.S. Census, 2010; Theodorakopoulos & Budhwar, 2015) and the widely recognized role that leaders play in the effective management of today's diverse workforce (e.g., Kalev, Dobbin, & Kelly, 2006; Boekhorst, 2015; Ng & Sears, 2012), surprisingly little empirical work has examined how a leader's own perceptions and beliefs about diversity might impact the organization's effectiveness in this domain (MacNab & Worthley, 2012). This study uses the construct of cultural intelligence applied to Chief Human Resource Officers (CHROs) as the focal leader to probe this question. Applying the broad framework of upper echelons theory, a theoretically-grounded model was developed and is the first model to integrate cultural intelligence and transformational leadership as determinants of diversity management practices. Using this framework, a study was then conducted that established empirical support for the hypothesis that CHRO cultural intelligence plays a significant role in the establishment of diversity management practices. Specifically, my findings show that organizations with more culturally intelligent CHROs have a greater number of diversity management practices in place, and report greater use of the individual focused dimensions of transformational leadership behaviors - individualized consideration and intellectual stimulation -- to presumably influence peer TMT members toward decisions to establish these practices. This helps to explain prior counter-intuitive findings that the presence of a CHRO as a functional member of the organization's TMT does not significantly predict diversity management practices (Graham et al., 2017). Drawing on findings from the present study, it seems that the inclusion of a CHRO on the TMT is important but insufficient. Cultural intelligence of the individual CHRO also matters.