The effects of cultural intelligence, psychological safety, and teamwork climate on conflict frequency in global virtual teams

This research investigates culturally sensitive management strategies to improve Global Virtual Team (GVT) performance. The purpose is to assess the relationships between four discriminate sub-dimensions of CQ, psychological safety, work climate and frequency of conflict in GVTs. It tests whether cognitive, metacognitive, motivational and/or behavioural CQ differently predict individual psychological safety, which will, in turn, affect GVT work climate and conflict frequency in multicultural GVTs. Importantly, the results of this research imply that cross-cultural awareness is often more important than any specific individual cultural knowledge (i.e., cognitive CQ). Findings identified the strong significance of motivational CQ and moderate significance of meta-cognitive cultural intelligence as antecedents to perceived psychological safety, positive work climate and reduction of perceived frequency of conflict in GVTs. Results did not show significant effects for cognitive CQ and behavioural CQ.