Cultural intelligence and the pursuit of a global career

In this chapter we test the relationship between cultural intelligence and willingness to work abroad with the main CQ measures available in the cross-cultural and international business literature. Our study includes the Cultural Intelligence Scale (CQS) (Ang et al., 2007), the Short Form Cultural Intelligence measure (SFCQ)(Thomas et al. 2015), and the Long Form Cultural Intelligence measure (LFCQ) (Thomas et al., 2008; Thomas et al., 2012). It examines whether the three CQ measures have comparable predictive effects on willingness to go abroad. It also explores how the two most salient career anchors for global careers, namely internationalism and pure challenge, are related to the three measures of Cultural Intelligence, and thus could contribute to our understanding of individuals’ willingness to work abroad and have a global career. This chapter suggests which measures of cultural intelligence researchers should retain depending on their research purposes and invites them to justify their choice.