Contribution of cultural intelligence to quality of working relationship and job burnout : the case of Thai cabin crew members belonging to a national minority group

Abstract

Nowadays, the leading national airlines of many countries have expanded their international routes worldwide. Although these airlines generally recruit their workforce from their home country to work on the cabin crew team, their international expansion requires them to have foreign crew members from the countries where they have expanded their flight routes. However, despite the benefits of having foreign crew members on the team, many national airlines tend to have a policy of hiring a small proportion of foreign crew members, thereby making these foreign crew members a cultural minority group on the team. The perception of belonging to the cultural minority group in the team could negatively affect team relationships, thereby resulting in lower group commitment, lower task contribution, less frequent communication, and a higher perception of discrimination. This problem is detrimental to the airline company because it can be counterproductive to the overall performance of the crew team. Therefore, it is crucial to investigate some of the personal characteristics of cabin crew members from cultural minority groups that can promote their work relationships with other team members from the cultural majority group. This research focuses on the role of the cultural intelligence (CQ). The objective of this study is to explore the effect of CQ on the quality of team relationships and burnout of Thai cabin crew members who are the cultural minority group in non-Thai airlines. In addition, this study focuses on the mediating roles of the team process to explain the negative relationship between CQ and job burnout. Data were obtained by a questionnaire survey of 320 Thai cabin crew members working for 7 international airlines. Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) was used as a tool to analyze the data. The results provide the evidence that CQ is associated with the relationship conflict, trust, and knowledge sharing. The results indicated that minority cabin crew members with high CQ tended to experience lower relationship conflict, demonstrate high level of trust, and engage more in knowledge sharing with their team members from foreign cultures than those who have low CQ. Lower relationship conflict and higher trust also reduced burnout that Thai cabin crew members experienced. The results also showed that CQ has direct effect on lower burnout. The results from this study provided extra evidence about the important of CQ in the area of working relationships among cabin crew cross-cultural team, particularly the team members who belong to a cultural minority group. As CQ was found to be one of the qualities of individuals from a cultural minority group that helped them to develop positive perceptions when working with colleagues belonging to a cultural majority group, CQ should be considered as one of the major qualifications of candidates that airline companies may consider when recruiting cabin crew members from other countries. Moreover, the airline companies should provide CQ as a mandatory training to both of their local and foreign cabin crew members.

Keywords: Cabin Crew, Cross-Cultural Team, Cultural Intelligence, Relationship Conflict, Trust, Knowledge-sharing, Job Burnou