Cultural intelligence and COVID-induced virtual teams: Towards a conceptual framework for cross-cultural management studies

Abstract

This article proposes a creative approach to cultural intelligence, as an individual’s capability to function effectively under the condition of cultural diversity. Virtual team collaboration, as stimulated by the COVID-19 pandemic, constitutes a novel, culturally diverse context. We explore how cultural intelligence may shed light onto the requirements of post-COVID virtual and hybrid team collaboration. The contribution of this article to cross-cultural management studies is thus conceptual: by using the concept of cultural intelligence creatively and beyond its classic application, we exemplify a way in which cross-cultural management studies remain relevant, in an increasingly virtual world of work wherein people travel less to other countries, wherein collaboration takes place online and remotely, and wherein national cultural boundaries intersect with other cultural diversity factors.