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Abstract
Cultural intelligence (CQ) has emerged as a popular construct for understanding and dealing with the problems of cross-cultural adjustment and cross-cultural communication that transnational corporations face. In this article, we critique the discursive moves through which CQ is presented as a competitively advantageous tool for global organizations, deconstruct its theorization and measurement, and discuss its role in perpetuating transnational hegemony. This article thus exposes the implicit relationship between academic knowledge production and transnational organizational practice that maximizes profits while simultaneously downplaying transnational globalization's oppressive consequences such as job vulnerability, unemployment, and exploitation.
Acknowledgments
We would like to express our thanks to Dr. Shiv Ganesh and the three anonymous reviewers for their extensive comments on the manuscript. An earlier version of this manuscript received the 2011 Top Paper Award from the Critical and Cultural Studies Division of the National Communication Association.
Notes
1. Neoliberalism describes the opening up of markets to foreign capital, goods, and services, with minimum intervention on the part of the state (Harvey, Citation2005). Minimization of the role of the state facilitates the reduction of trade barriers and state-based subsidies, opening up new global markets for TNCs (Dutta, Citation2011). Trade liberalization accomplished through structural adjustment programs has concentrated wealth in the hands of the richest, simultaneously producing dramatic global inequities and further impoverishment of the poor both in the global North and the global South (Dutta, Citation2011; Harvey, Citation2005).