Contribution of cultural intelligence to intercultural communication competency, service attentiveness, and anxiety of Thai cabin crews

Abstract

The concept of cultural intelligence (CQ) has been proposed as a set of skills that allows individuals to deal effectively with culturally diverse situations. Even though the role of CQ have been found in many contexts but only a few focuses on the benefits of CQ for service providers who have to deal regularly with foreign customers. This research will fill this research gap by studying the role of CQ in airline cabin crew members, which is the context that has never been investigated before. The objective of this study is to investigate the relationship between the level of cultural intelligence exhibited by the airline cabin crew members and the degree of anxiety they experienced when serving foreign passengers. Intercultural communication competence and service attentiveness were proposed that the contribution of CQ can be indirectly explained through these two competencies to lower job anxiety. Survey data were collected from 372 Thai airline cabin crew members who worked at a leading international airline in Thailand. The results from a partial least squares regression analysis supported that having CQ allowed the cabin crew members to develop intercultural communication competence and service attentiveness; these two competencies served as the mechanisms that explain why the cabin crew members with high CQ tended to experience lower anxiety when working on stressful international flights.