Are culturally intelligent professionals more committed to organizations? : Examining Chinese expatriation in Belt & Road Countries

The main purpose of this study is to explore the relationships between cultural intelligence (CQ) and organizational commitment in Belt & Road area, with critical consideration given to the moderating effect of cultural distance (CD) on the commensurate relationships. We examined a dataset of 390 international professionals on Chinese cross-border projects in Belt & Road countries. Findings indicate that cognitive CQ has an inverted U-shaped relationship with organizational commitment, while motivational CQ has a positive linear relationship with organizational commitment, and cultural distance moderates the relationships between CQ and commitment such that negative or positive moderation occur contingent on whether the optimal CQ level is reached. Our results suggest the need for identifying an inflection point of individuals’ CQ level to differentiate between the increasing and decreasing trend of organizational commitment in view of the effect of cultural distance. This may help enabling multinationals to leverage expatriates with different levels of CQ to stay committed in multi-cultural environments along the Belt & Road countries.