What Does ‘Having Close Friends from Abroad’ Mean for the Intercultural Competencies: A New View on the Antecedents of Cultural Intelligence

Miroslav Jurásek and Petr Wawrosz ()
Additional contact information
Miroslav Jurásek: Faculty of Economics and Management, Department of Economic Theories, Czech University of Life Science, 16500 Prague, Czech Republic
Petr Wawrosz: Faculty of Economics and Management, Department of Economic Theories, Czech University of Life Science, 16500 Prague, Czech Republic

Social Sciences, 2024, vol. 13, issue 11, 1-16

Abstract: The study analyzes the impact of intercultural friendship on cultural intelligence (CQ), which is defined as an individual’s ability to operate effectively in a new intercultural environment. Two hypotheses were tested using an online questionnaire completed in the autumn of 2022 by 358 university students from a private university in Prague, Czech Republic. The participants represented 26 countries, with the majority being Czech nationals. The hypotheses were as follows: (1) overall cultural intelligence, and (2) all its components (metacognitive, cognitive, motivational, and behavioral) would be higher or lower depending on whether individuals had close social ties, operationalized by the binary variable “intercultural friendship”. The first hypothesis was confirmed. However, the second hypothesis was only supported for the motivational and cognitive facets of CQ. Our results indicate that CQ is fundamentally a relational construct, developing primarily through contact with members of other cultures. Contextual factors, such as language skills, travel to foreign countries, residence abroad, and the frequency of intercultural contacts, create situational prerequisites for establishing closer intercultural relationships. However, they do not contribute directly to the development of intercultural skills but rather do so indirectly through these relationships.

Keywords: cultural intelligence (CQ); intercultural/cross-cultural friendship; CQ theories; antecedents of CQ (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: A B N P Y80 Z00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/13/11/569/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/13/11/569/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jscscx:v:13:y:2024:i:11:p:569-:d:1505310

Access Statistics for this article

Social Sciences is currently edited by Ms. Yvonne Chu

More articles in Social Sciences from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().