What processes do academics undertake in an international teaching experience that reveal their cultural intelligence?

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to understand the processes undertaken by accounting academics during an international teaching experience that reveal their cultural intelligence (CQ) levels. We employ an ethnographic approach with confirmatory data collection involving five triangulated sources. Our findings indicate supportive and culturally sensitive strategies, active participation in the host environment, the importance of intrinsic motivation, and the ability to appropriately adjust behaviour are associated with higher levels of CQ. Furthermore, the ability to engage local actors and embrace local culture and people were found to be important capabilities of academics who possessed higher levels of CQ.

KEYWORDS:

• Cultural intelligence
• cross-cultural competencies
• transnational education
• accounting academics
• international teaching

Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge the editors and the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and guidance. The authors would also like to thank participants at the following conferences for their helpful comments: Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand (AFAANZ) Annual Conference, the European Accounting Association (EAA) Annual Congress and the British Accounting and Finance Association (BAFA) Accounting Education Special Interest Group.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Pettigrew (1997, p. 338) defines process as ‘a sequence of individual and collective events, actions, and activities unfolding over time in context’.

2 The length of the short-term international teaching trips was not specified.

3 However, it should be noted that we were interested in understanding the way each participant contextualised their teaching materials for delivery in the host country.

4 The focus group guide is available from the corresponding author on request.

5 The rating of high, average and low CQ levels are based on the only known study of CQ levels for accounting academics (Tharapos et al., 2019). To this extent, these categorisations may not be reflective of a more general population.

6 Wanderlust is defined as ‘a strong, innate desire to rove or travel about’ (Dictionary.com, 2020).