How Employees' Cultural Intelligence Influence Work Engagement In International Organizations

Employee work engagement is of great importance for boosting individual and organizational performance,thus it has been a frequently-discussed issue for organizational behavioral researchers and management professionals.A growing number of international companies and organizations have recognized the key role of cultural intelligence in enhancing job performance under cross-cultural settings,yet in research,there is lack of evidence in international organizations like the United Nations.Based on the Job Demand—Job Resource Theory,this research aims to identify how cultural intelligence of employees in international organizations influence their work engagement,and what role perceived organizational support,interpersonal relationship climate,and perceived distributive justice play in between,specifically:whether cultural intelligence has an impact on work engagement,whether this impact is mediated through perceived organizational support and interpersonal relationship climate,and whether this impact would be moderated by perceived distributive justice.A survey was designed with 5-point Likert scales,and distributed to 13 UN offices through the author's personal net-workings.In total,there were 122 valid answers collected.SPSS was used for a pre-test after which the survey was adjusted,and Smart PLS 3.0 was used to build the model and test the hypotheses.Results show that:a)Cultural intelligence has a significant positive impact on work engagement,perceived organizational support,and interpersonal relationship climate.Perceived organizational support has a significant positive impact on work engagement while relationship climate does not.b)Perceived organizational support partially mediates the relationship between cultural intelligence and work engagement,but no mediation effect is found of interpersonal relationship climate.c)Perceived distributive justice does not moderate the relationship between cultural intelligence and work engagement,which might due to the possible assumption that UN employees are motivated more by non-financial pursuits than by financial rewards.The theoretical contribution of this thesis lies in the filling of the gap for organizational behavior studies related to cultural intelligence that is specifically targeted at international organizations like the UN.Also,in the previous work engagement studies based on the Job Demand—Job Resource Theory,limited attention was given to personal resources and this research identifies an essential personal resource that has a significant impact on work engagement for international organization employees.Besides,most of the previous cross-cultural organizational behavioral studies focused more on expatriate rather than local employees whose cultural adaptability also contributes to work performance.This study gives more focus on local employees and explores the relationships between the abovementioned variables from the perspective of local employees working at various duty stations of the UN.Recommendations were made accordingly to the management of international organizations.