countries. Most attention from global governance players is paid to the child labour issues only, the reason for this focus on the put is simple, and they supped to representing the interest of global institutions and their respective members. The change in the primary object of social sustainability form institutional role to buyer-supplier has implications both for understanding the sources of threats and for developing strategies to enhance social performance.
2.7
Cultural IntelligenceCulture continues to be recognized as an essential parameter highlighting differences in the value system of the organization (Hofstede, 2010). “Cultural values reflect subjective cognitions of shared social or personal cultural orientations attached to managers’ mental programs” (Caprar et al., 2015). Cultural Intelligence(CQ) is a multidimensional construct that is composed of four dimensions: meta-cognition, cognition, motivation, and behaviour (Ang et al., 2007). Cultural intelligence capabilities of a firm are particularly concern and strategically important for international business in the light of current globalisation challenge (Ang and Inkpen, 2008).
According to (Awan et al., 2018a),the role of cultural cognition in a managerial decision related to governing inter-firm relationships is increasingly growing in sustainability literature. They argue that cultural intelligence stands as cognitive governance structure providing a way of how to set boundaries of knowledge, motivation and awareness of partner cultures and how to organise its governance to improve social sustainability.
Cultural intelligence (CQ) “is a system for understanding and extending cooperative norms in the cross-cultural interaction that allows management to function efficiently and take advantage” (Awan and Kraslawski, 2017).
Cultural learning of foreign partner reflects a firm dynamic learning capability, how a firm creates and delivers value to its customers and mechanism employed to capture a share of that value. Cultural intelligence provides a strong norm for learning from foreign buyers, which can provide benefit necessarily depends on implementation for achieving success in buyer-supplier relationships. Thus, motivational CQ provides insights into the variable influencing human behaviour. Thus, cultural intelligence capability of supplier firm should be able to reduce conflict and potential disputes because the firm has behaviour and motivational cultural intelligence, through Selecting appropriate verbal and nonverbal communications styles for coordination is a critical source of truth that could be developed through conveying flexibility and adaptability in a relationship. It is proposed that behavioural and motivational CQ takes an outreaching approach and emphasise adapting and developing quality communications with cross-country partner aimed at enhancing knowledge acquiring and use this knowledge for stabilising relations and reduce the conflicts.
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2.7.1 Metacognitive and Cognitive CQ
Meta-cognition(MEC)is defined as the individual ability to process knowledge that leads to control over cognition and understand cultural knowledge (Ang et al., 2015). It is concentrated in the ability to awareness and consciousness of cultural cues during interaction with people from another cultural background (Ang and Inkpen, 2008).
Metacognitive enable individual in cultural domains to increase intercultural adaptability.
These capabilities enable the individual to apply an appropriate knowledge to drive novel and useful ideas and strategies before, during and after cross-culture interaction for the joint planning situation and problem to suit the real-time situation. When sustainability initiatives are organized collaboratively, export manufacturer’ deals with culturally diverse partners and CQ becomes important in handling, and coping conflicts and disputes arise from interaction with different partners.
Cognition CQ “is competency-based individual knowledgeability of cultural environments, including a legal, economic and social system of different cultures as well as the norms and values of these cultures” (Ang et al., 2007). However, many existing studies concentrated on single or two facets of cultural intelligence; the present study concentrated on the concept of cultural intelligence moderation between relational governance and sustainability commitment. CQ capability makes the employee more effective in working across culture teams. We argued accordingly that when buyer firm shares tacit knowledge resources to the supplier, it makes supplier firm to adapt, understand and coordinate more with the buyer firm and transform these resources to enhance social sustainability performance. These capabilities guide an individual to integrate a sense of oneself and the ability to use that knowledge to respond to challenges.
This enables the manager to carefully observe what is going one’s mind and the minds of others. In other words, meta-cognitive and cognitive capabilities acquired from the firm may lead to developing more knowledge, which then triggered the behavioural changes that required a supplier firm for improving their social sustainability. People with high Metacognitive capability are able to control their thought process. The CQ dimensions emphasize openness to change and independent actions and favouring change (Awan, 2019). Relational governance is more effective for situations involving joint decision making and working together. When suppliers perceive non-cooperative initiatives in solving differences, then use of culture metacognitive can deal with these differences and prevent the detrimental outcomes in exchange relationships. On the contrary, the firm has accumulated more knowledge and consequently firm ability to uses these resources for the effective implementation of sustainability initiatives, lead to improving commitment towards sustainability.
2.7.2 Behavioural and Motivational CQ
Behavioural CQ is “the capability to exhibit appropriate verbal and nonverbal actions when interacting with people from different cultures” (Ang et al., 2007). Behavioural
“CQ refers to the action aspect of the contract” (Ang et al., 2007). Behavioural CQ thus refers to as “capability to exhibit appropriate verbal and non-verbal behaviour when
2.7 Cultural Intelligence 45 interacting with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds” (Ng & Earley, 2006). It includes a person able to adopt behaviours, how to use gestures, tones, facial expression, and appropriate communication styles (Ang et al., 2007).
The motivational aspects of “CQ represent managers capability to involves in learning about cultural knowledge and direct energy and functioning effectively in a situation characterised by cultural differences” (Ang et al., 2015). In this situation, motivational CQ may play an important role in conflict handling as a constructive solution. A high level of “motivational CQ reflects individual have high interest and are more confident when interacting with culturally diverse situations” (Ang et al., 2007). Motivational CQ dimension refers to the mental capacity to put the effort in adjusting and adapting to various cultural settings (Ng and Earley, 2006). The intact behavioural CQ allows managers to engage in more rich communication and can use language that synthesises observations and ideas about their lives, make them capable of managing and allowing to shift their communication style from negative appraisals to positive appraisal, thus creating a relational bond. Previous research has shown that metacognitive and behaviour CQ build idiosyncratic benefits to succeed in cross-cultural settings (Sahin and Gürbüz, 2014).
For example, some culture emphasises equality and collective decision making regardless of their function. In this cultural, people are often uncomfortable with the unknown and unpredictable outcome. For example, the implementation of relational governance often lies with the managers. In case, for example, if the person responsible for the coordination team of the supplier firm is change and a new manager assume the responsibilities. In this situation, the client (partner firm) may likely find it difficult to coordinate. This could increase the risk to achieve desired results, resulting in high cost and conflict may arise due to coordination style. It expected that cultural intelligence is important and can be hugely beneficial to plan and improve the decision-making and effectiveness of relational governance. However, if flexibility, adaptability and accommodating partner point of view will be perceived as sincere efforts, and results in more support provided by the buyer. Inter-firm communications may improve firm learning and reduce the cost of training. Thus, we expect managers of the firms involves the supply chain management relations can handle contract governance, which enables them to effectively comply with the contracts and resolve conflicting situations with their cultural intelligence capacities.
The Culturally Intelligent managers prefer to adjust behaviour to one’s specific culture, flexible behaviour, and compromising, cooperative styles and might adopt the different norms and values of the partner culture to interact more effectively.
Some culture emphasises equality and collective decision making regardless of their function. In some culture, particularly many cultures are high in uncertainty avoidance.
In this cultural, people are often uncomfortable with the unknown and unpredictable outcome. For example, the implementation of relational governance often lies with the managers. In case, for example, if the person responsible for the coordination team of the supplier firm is change and a new manager assume the responsibilities. In this situation,
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it is likely that the client (partner firm) may find it difficult to coordinate. This could increase the risk to achieve desired results, resulting in high cost and conflict may arise due to coordination style. It is expected that cultural intelligence is important and can be hugely beneficial to plan and improve the decision-making and effectiveness of relational governance. Firms with higher cultural intelligence capabilities may adopt relational governance with more social sustainability goals by extending their existing proficiencies in formalising sustainability commitment and improve performance. It is suggested that, if firms create a relational governance mechanism with their customers that support cooperative behaviour, it is likely to promote sustainable social performance through the development of sustainability commitment. Therefore, the interfirm relational governance appears to be a crucial driver for commitment to sustainability for social sustainability performance.