The study by Stefan Remhof, Marjaana Gunkel, and Christopher Schlägel, “Working in the‘global village’: The influence of cultural intelligence on the intention to work abroad”, deals withthe growing importance of international mobility in the context of increasingly global activities of companies. Because careers are becoming international and boundaryless, motivational processes leading to the development of intentions to strive for such careersneed to be better understood, as companies seek to identify the best talent. Usingthe lens of social cognitive theory and the concept of cultural intelligence (CQ),this study aims to shed light on these processes by examining the influence of languageskills, international experience and networks abroad on the intention to workabroad. The authors also study the moderating role of cultural distance in their sampleof 518 German business students. They find that cultural intelligence acts as a mediatorfor the relationships between language skills and the intention to work abroad, asdoes international experience and the intention to work abroad. Cultural distance mediatestwo of the four dimensions of cultural intelligence, namely, metacognitive CQ
and cognitive CQ. Individuals with higher levels of metacognitive CQ develop boththe intention to work in a culturally distant, as well as in a culturally less-distant country,whereas higher levels of cognitive CQ result in a stronger intention to workabroad in a more-distant culture. Further, networks abroad have a direct influence on the intention to work abroad, but all four facets of CQ have a positive influence onthis dependent variable. The results of this study may be of particular relevance to recruitmentand selection processes, as well as to the mentoring processes of expatriatestaff.