An examination of impact of immigrant entrepreneur cultural intelligence on performance during crisis

This paper integrates research from cross-cultural management and entrepreneurship to examine the interactive effects of cultural intelligence (CQ) and individual entrepreneurial orientation (IEO) on performance during times of crisis such as the Covid-19 pandemic. We argue that the various dimensions of CQ will have differential effects on performance due to the unusual circumstance. The findings indicate that contrary to expectation, knowledge CQ has negative effect on performance. However, as predicted, skills CQ was found to have positive effect on performance while meta-cognition CQ has a significant negative effect on the same during crisis. Additionally, there was evidence of significant interaction effects between the dimensions of CQ and IEO on immigrant entrepreneur performance. The implications of the study are discussed.