Cultural intelligence and language proficiency: do they substitute or complement each other in predicting adjustment?

Cultural intelligence (CQ) is an important predictor of cultural adjustment for global managers. Surprisingly, less is known of the role of language proficiency. Since both CQ and language proficiency tap at individuals’ resources for adjustment, it raises the question of how similar or different the two constructs are. That is, does language proficiency substitute or complement CQ in predicting cultural adjustment? We conducted a meta-analysis to address this question. Specifically, we asked: 1) how closely are CQ and language proficiency related? 2) How much common variance versus unique variance do CQ and language proficiency contribute to cultural adjustment outcomes? Meta-analytic results based on 19 studies with 4,317 individuals from more than 40 countries show that language proficiency complements more than it substitutes CQ. Different adjustment outcomes and language proficiency measures yield interesting differences in patterns of findings. We discuss these findings and their implications for future research.