The causal relationships between cultural intelligence and global mindset among hr practitioners in Thailand

Abstract

This research mainly explored the causal relationships between two constructs; cultural Intelligence (CQ) and global Mindset (GM) that are important for individual and organization success in this globalized era. Besides the causal relationships between the two constructs which is the first research question, the second research questions was; “what is the CQ level of HR practitioners in Thailand?”, and the third research question was “how do age and gender influence the CQ level among HR practitioners in Thailand?”.

The research was conducted among 598 HR practitioners in Thailand who worked in the organizations that were the members of the Personnel Management Association of Thailand (PMAT), by employing the quantitative method; survey questionnaires to collect data. The two measurements, cultural intelligence scale (CQS) for the CQ and global mindset scale for the GM, were applied. Construct validity was confirmed by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA). Reliability test by Cronbach alpha was applied and showed a Cronbach alpha of CQ at the level of α = .940 and GM at the level of α = .969.

In order to answer the first research question, the causal relationships between CQ and GM were analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) using LISREL program and found that there was a causal relationship between CQ and GM of the HR practitioners in Thailand. CQ had a positive direct effect on GM with a path coefficient of 0.35, on the other hand, GM had a positive direct effect on CQ at 0.51. Squared multiple correlation for the structural equations (R2 ) revealed that CQ explained approximately 39 percent of the variation in GM while GM explained approximately 48 percent of the variation in CQ.

In order to answer the second research question concerning the CQ level of HR practitioners in Thailand, the descriptive statistics run using the SPSS program was applied. The means of each dimension of CQ and total CQ were analyzed to reveal the level of the CQ of the HR practitioners. The result of the second research question revealed that the Thai HR practitioners’ CQ level was moderate to fairly high, by comparing the mean of each CQ dimension with the highest rank of the Likert scale at 7 points. Overall, the means of CQ of HR practitioners in Thailand in this research was 4.972.

For the third research question concerning how age and gender influence the CQ level among HR practitioners in Thailand, this research question was separated into two parts. The first part was the influence between age and CQ, and the second part was the influence between gender and CQ. One-way ANOVA was utilized for age and CQ relationship analysis, while a t -test was applied to investigate whether the difference in gender had an effect on CQ. The finding revealed that age has influence only on metacognitive CQ, but gender does not have any influence on any dimension of CQ. Discussion, practical implication, limitation as well as recommendation for the future research are also presented in this paper.