The effect of cultural intelligence on career competencies and customer-oriented service behaviors

This study investigates the effect of cultural intelligence on career competencies and customer-oriented service behaviors. In the literature, studies suggest that individual factors as important determinants or precursors of customer-oriented service behaviors and career competencies. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate one of the individual factors called as a cultural intelligence which is expected to affect employee’s customer-oriented service behaviors and career competencies. For this purpose, 306 employees who are working in five-star international hotels in Istanbul participated in the study. In this respect descriptive statistics, independent samples t-tests, confirmatory factor analysis, and the structural equation modelling applied to the data obtained from employees in hotel establishments. Based on the findings, significant relationships have been observed between cultural intelligence and career competencies. However, cultural intelligence is found out to have effect on employee’s role prescribed customer-oriented and extra role customer-oriented service behaviors. In addition, employee’s customer-oriented service behaviors differ to the degree of cultural intelligence scores.