Investigating the Role of Managers’ Communication Competence in Cultural Intelligence: The Case Study of Tehran Province Agricultural Bank Managers

The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of communication competence in the cultural intelligence of Tehran province Agricultural Bank managers. The study was applied in terms of purpose and mixed-methods in terms of data collection and analysis. Thematic analysis and structural equation modeling were used in the qualitative and quantitative phases, respectively. In the thematic analysis phase, 15 participants were interviewed who had been selected through snowball sampling. The dependability of the interviews was 77 percent in interviewee reviews, and test-retest reliability was 75. In the quantitative phase, a researcher-made questionnaire was distributed among 200 managers and high-ranking officials of Tehran province Agricultural Banks who had been selected through systematic random sampling. The content validity of the questionnaire was found to be 89%, while Cronbach’s alpha showed 82 percent of internal reliability. The results revealed that in order to put their communication competence into practice, managers paid special attention to individual factors such as communication skills, optimism, and respecting addressees’ values as well as organizational factors such as support from top managers, organizational capacity, organizational culture, and organizational structure. In order to put into practice their cultural intelligence, managers should pay attention to motivational factors such as the ability to interact with different cultures and behavioral factors such as behavioral intelligence. Finally, structural equation modeling showed that the communication competence of managers has a positive effect on their cultural intelligence.