The Effect of Cultural Intelligence on Employees’ Job Performance in Welfare Organization (the Case of Isfahan's Welfare Organization)

Nowadays, people in all over the world experience increasingly diverse contexts. In this situation, which is characterized by cultural diversity, people, particularly in work place, are in need of some skills to work effectively. Cultural Intelligence (CQ) provides employees, managers, and organizations with the capabilities to cope with multi-cultural situations that engage them in cross-cultural interactions and helps them to perform effectively in culturally diverse work places. CQ has been classified into four categories: Metacognitive intelligence, Cognitive intelligence, Motivational intelligence, and Behavioral intelligence. The concept of CQ is proposed in terms of intercultural communications and is mostly related to Job Performance (JP). JP is related to activities that are expected of employees and how well those activities are executed. Performance is an important criterion for organizational outcomes and success. Performance is defined as a behavior. However, it can be non-observable, such as solutions and decisions. This research is based on a quantitative analysis of 193 questioners. SPSS and Amos software were utilized for analyzing data. Before we distributed the full scale survey, we conducted a pilot survey to check and revise the measurement items of the study. This study adopts the concept of CQ from Earley and Ang (2004) and JP from Campbell, McCloy, Oppler, & Sager (1993). This framework consists of four categories (Metacognitive intelligence, Cognitive intelligence, Motivational intelligence, and Behavioral intelligence) for CQ and four categories (Responsibility, Intra Organizational Relations, Achievement Motivation, and Interactions with Clients) for JP. The importance of "Cultural intelligence" factor in State Welfare Organization of Iran, is rooted in the goals that are declared in its statute. According to the statute of the organization, providing support for families in need, giving diverse services to children, and provision of preventative, medical, and rehabilitation facilities for the physically and intellectually disabled people are some of its organizational purposes. Hence, the clients of Welfare organization are so much different in comparison to those of other organizations. The clients in Isfahan belong to different part of the country, because Isfahan is one of the most immigrant-welcoming cities in Iran. Not only these clients have different situations, needs, and abilities, but a considerable part of them, belong to ethnical and religious minorities. Descriptive statistics were used for checking the demographic and other characteristics of employees in Isfahan's welfare organization. Most of the measurement items for this study were adopted from the previous literatures. In order to conduct the survey, we used a 5-point Likert scale, ranging from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly Agree". Discussion of Results and The Iranian society is replacing a mechanical integrity with an organic one. Compared to a few decades ago, Iranians interact and communicate with people that belong to diverse cultural background. The migration process has a very effective role in this issue. According to our findings, it appears that metacognitive cultural intelligence (through the improvement of communication management), cognitive cultural intelligence (via respecting clients), motivational cultural intelligence (by means of motivating to intercultural relationships), and behavioral cultural intelligence (by way of increasing adaption) all have positive effects on employees’ job performance in Isfahan's Welfare Organization. However, CQ and JP do not have a considerable difference in terms of sex, education, and length of experience.