Prismatic Role of Cultural Intelligence in Transforming and Magnifying the Positive Effects of Conflict Leading to Innovation

Abstract

Conflict is inevitable at the workplace and the outcomes of the same are both positive and negative, which could pose challenges for a leader. A culturally intelligent leader has the potential to streamline conflict with innovation in an organization. Constructive conflicts can accelerate change and stimulate creativity amongst diversified work teams. The culturally intelligent leader enables to acknowledge the differences in opinions and viewpoints of a work team, thus providing a forum so as to accomplish organizational goals. Such leaders have the ability to unify different perspectives, manage conflicts and cultivate innovation in order to harness the potential of the multicultural teams. This paper brings an overview of the existing literature related to the various concepts in the presented model. The objective of this paper is to integrate the concepts of cultural intelligence (CQ), conflict and innovation so as to build a theoretical framework, which would highlight the role and essence of CQ in the international arena. Further, the outcomes can be considered by various global organizations and human resource departments to train their employees, especially expatriates and managers, to trace out and categorize conflicts in multicultural teams and manage it effectively so as to bring radical innovation in the organization.

Keywords: Cultural Intelligence, Constructive Conflict, Innovation, Global Organization, Multicultural Teams, Radical Innovation

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