CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE AND INTERPERSONAL TRUST AS DRIVERS FOR INNOVATIVE WORK AND INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT AT ORGANIZATIONS

: The main purpose of this study is to determine how cultural intelligence and interpersonal trust impact innovative work behaviour and intellectual capital development in organizations. Research conducted by various authors shows that managers with higher levels of cultural intelligence have higher levels of interpersonal trust. As a result, they are more flexible in the adoption and creation of new ideas and solutions. Most of them are not afraid to share their knowledge and experience by accepting different opinions and creating an appropriate organizational culture. It enables an opportunity to strengthen all elements of intellectual capital and facilitates the competitiveness of the organization. Cultural intelligence and interpersonal trust create opportunities for innovative behaviour in organizations by developing intellectual capital. The scientific literature presents various studies about cultural intelligence and its impact on organizational performance. Most of the studies focused on the integration of migrants into the organizations’ work. Currently, the working environment is cross-cultural, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic and considering globalization and digitalization issues. Despite the various benefits of working in a multicultural environment, there are some significant challenges organizations face, such as interpersonal trust development and cultural intelligence. The current study focused on local employees at organizations: 93 managers of higher education institutions from Latvia were interviewed. The author used qualitative and quantitative research methods for data collection and analysis. Semistructured interviews were used for data collection. The research tool was developed on the basis of scientific literature using different statements about interpersonal trust, work engagement and level of cultural intelligence. One of the significant results found during research is that managers with international experience (working or studying abroad) are more critical of working in international teams and building interpersonal trust within cross-cultural teams. This fact could be the research object in future research. The research results can be used for future research exploring factors influencing cultural intelligence development in cross-cultural organizations and its role in innovation development and intellectual capital management.

1. Introduction.The end of the last century and twenty years of this century have been marked by several crises that caused several waves of migration.At the same time, the collapse of the PSSR, the expansion of the EU and other political-economic and social processes in the countries of the world created a situation where people of different cultures work in the same organization.Several organizations have faced situations where it is necessary to find opportunities to work together to move towards achieving goals.At the same time, for more than 50 years, organizations have had to promote the development of innovation, which is also based on the development of intellectual capital, which has become one of the driving forces of the organization's competitiveness, providing opportunities to offer unique products or services.An essential prerequisite for the development of intellectual capital is also the creation of an organizational culture in which all components and elements of intellectual capital could complement one another and ensure the development of innovations.Currently, elements of intellectual capital such as cultural intelligence and trust are gaining importance.
Despite the challenges of globalization in the scientific literature, cultural intelligence has been studied mostly in the context of migration or in the context of leaders' work with migrants.Currently, as the structure of the national economy is changing, as well as in the postpandemic period and the age of digitalization, organizations are increasingly faced with the need to work in multinational teams.More and more often, teams work in a hybrid format, and therefore, people have not moved to other countries.However, when working with representatives of different cultures, organizations face new challenges, including the ability to perceive representatives of other nationalities and cultures and the traditions, values and peculiarities of business culture.
Several studies show that the diversity of people in a team contributes to the development of innovations because people with different experiences in different business environments and cultures are able to generate more ideas (Afsar et al., 2021, Ng et al., 2012).On the other hand, the collaboration of different people requires one of the basic competencies of modern day -cultural intelligence and trust development among employees.Trust enables openness and facilitates internal motivation that promotes collaboration in organizations.When employees trust one another, they are not afraid to generate ideas, to analyse information and to cooperate with colleagues and managers (Agbejule et al., 2021).At the same time, in the scientific literature, research on trust is mostly related to the PR sphere (more than 50%); in the field of management, such research accounts for 2.9% (Valentini, 2021).This shows the relevance of the research topic in the context of modern changes.The main purpose of the current study is to determine how cultural intelligence and interpersonal trust enhance innovative work behaviour and intellectual capital development in organizations.Research question: Do people with international experience accept cultural diversity in the teams, and are they able to build trust for innovative work behaviour?
2. Literature Review.In the scientific literature, the term "intelligence" has been studied mostly in the context of emotional, social and cognitive intelligence, which is one of the most valuable resources of an individual who affects the results of individual and organizational activity (Albrecht, 2012, Cote et al., 2006, Crawford et al., 2010, Lin et al., 2012).Cultural intelligence is a "capability for successful adaptation to new cultural settings, that is, for unfamiliar settings attributable to cultural context" (Earley and Ang, 2003, p. 9).Cultural intelligence helps to adapt to an environment where an individual's previously acquired habits and behaviour model do not fit.The highest level of intelligence allows one to perceive cross-cultural differences faster and adapt to a new environment (Presbitero, 2016) People with higher cultural intelligence trust other colleagues more (Rockstuhl & Ng, 2015), while a higher level of trust promotes innovative behaviour in a team (Lee, 2008).Trust is "a shared psychological state among team members comprising willingness to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations of a specific other or others" (Fulmer & Gelfand, 2012).Trust facilitates the development of common perceptions, expectations and behaviour among employees, which encourages a positive psychological climate in organizations (Agbejule et al., 2021) when an employee recognizes the goodness, ability, and integrity of another employee and is more likely to be involved in cooperative behaviour (e.g., delegating, cocreation, brainstorming, decision making) with that employee.This behaviour facilitates productivity and goal achievement.(Morrissette & Kisamore, 2020).Trust helps to share even negative aspects and criticism (Barnett et al., 2010) and plays a crucial role in creating an environment for innovation and transparency (Jahansoozi, 2006).Trust is one of the preconditions for exchanging behaviour (Buvik & Tvedt, 2017), which promotes collaboration and knowledge sharing.The climate for trust also motivates employees to find new opportunities for collaboration and makes employees engage in change-orientated behaviours (Fainshmidt & Frazier, 2017).Cultural intelligence determines the attitude with which employees perform at an organization (Kistyanto et al., 2022).Cultural intelligence promotes knowledge sharing in the organization and, as a result, the creation of innovations (Berraies, 2020).Scientific studies confirm that cultural intelligence contributes to the innovative behaviour of individuals (Bogilovic et al., 2017;Hu et al., 2017;Leung et al., 2008;Ng et al., 2012;Ott & Michailova, 2018).Innovative behaviour is defined as "problem recognition and the generation of ideas or solutions, either novel or adopted" (Scott & Bruce, 1994, p. 581).It is a process in which new ideas are created, developed, perfected, and used in the development of the organization.Innovative behaviour also includes analysing problem situations, finding solutions, and performing challenging tasks (Tang & Werner, 2017).Dyer et al. ( 2011) determined four behavioural types that are essential for innovative behaviour: 1) questioningasking questions; 2) observingintensely observing the world and seeking new opportunities; 3) experimentingmaking experiments for finding new solutions and unique competitive advantages; 4) idea networkingdeveloping networks of employees with different experiences and different points of view.
Cultural intelligence allows the use of knowledge and experience from different cultures and ensures the creation of new ideas, approaches and solutions, promoting the development of intellectual capital.Currently, intellectual capital plays a crucial role in the transition to innovative, competitive and sustainable development.The development of intellectual capital facilitates innovation, improves the competitiveness of an organization, increases the trust of stakeholders and provides sustainable growth in the future (Alvino et al., 2021).Intellectual capital is an intangible asset that promotes the ability to innovate and create value within an organization (Dost et al., 2016;Kianto et al., 2017).There are different approaches to the classification of intellectual capital.Studies traditionally divide intellectual capital into three main components: human capital, organizational capital and relational capital.
Human capital is skills, knowledge, experience, capabilities, motivation and abilities (Buenechea-Elberdin et al., 2018;Oliveira et al., 2020), and it includes trainings and educational programmes (Murray & Palladino, 2021;Singh et al., 2019), motivational programmes and recruitment plans.Human capital and relational capital have positive impacts on innovation performance in organizations (Hanifah et al., 2022).Organizational capital includes organizational structures, processes, procedures, policies, manuals, programmes, and databases (Buenechea-Elberdin et al., 2018;Berraies et al., 2020).Organizational capital captures the knowledge within organizations, stores it and works as "knowledge infrastructure" (Ghahtarani et al., 2020).Relational capital is defined as a relationship among the organization and internal and external stakeholders (Bontis, 1998;Li et al., 2019).Relational capital involves communication among stakeholders and organizations, which influences the innovation process and, as a result, organizational performance  Section D: respondent's profile, which includes information about gender, age, education, working experience, position and international experience (10 statements).
A Likert scale was used for sections A, B, and C, where 1 was "Absolutely agree", 2 was "Agree", 3 was "Difficult to answer", 4 was "Disagree" and 5 was "Absolutely disagree".Positive formulation for all statements is used (e.g., "I like", "I do").
Respondents were selected from educational and research organizations as organizations with multicultural teams and international experience.The author interviewed 93 managers (top and middle management) of these organizations using a developed research tool.
The independent variable analysis was performed using the SPSS program.Independent variable analysis was used to compare the opinions of groups of respondents.In case of revealing a significant pattern (p<0.05), the hypothesis that the statement has a significant difference for respondents of compared groups.For the analysis, the author compared the answers from four groups of respondents using the Mann-Whitney U test method.
4. Results.Analysing the respondents' profile, it can be concluded that 85.1% of the respondents were women and 14.9% were men.This distribution of respondents can be explained by the situation, which is characteristic of the education sector in Latvia, where the largest proportion are representatives of the female family.Most respondents had higher education: 26.6% had a bachelor's degree, 43.6% had a master's degree, and 18.1% had a doctoral degree.Considering the selected group of respondents, the age distribution is even, except for respondents younger than 30 years and older than 60 years: 17% -30-34 years old; 11.7% -35-39 years old; 14.9% -40-44 years old; 12.8% -45-49 years; 16% -50-54 years old; and 9.6% -55-59 years old.A total of 69.1% of respondents had experience working with or in an international team.At the same time, only 30.9% of respondents indicated that they had lived or worked abroad.More than half (58.5%) of the respondents regularly travel abroad on business trips.Based on the analysis of the respondents' profile and the respondents' international experience, the author compared the obtained results in four groups: • respondents with work experience in international teams; • respondents without work experience in international teams; • respondents who lived/worked abroad; • respondents who did not live/work abroad.Sources: developed by the author.
The results of the Mann-Whitney U test (Table 2) on having life/studies experience abroad show a significant difference (where p ≤ 0.05) between variables in ten cases: • Metacognitive cultural intelligence statements: "I consciously use knowledge about cross-cultural differences in communication with representatives of different cultures" (U = 500.5;p = 0.000) and "I try to adapt my cultural knowledge to people whose culture I am not familiar with and with whom I communicate" (U = 691.0;p = 0.018).
• Cognitive cultural intelligence statements: "I know the culture and religion of other countries" (U = 590.0;p = 0.002), "I know marriage traditions in other cultures" (U = 629.0;p = 0.007), "I know the art of other countries" (U = 490.0;p = 0.000), and "I know the norms of nonverbal language expression of other countries" (U = 647.5;p = 0.012).
• Motivational cultural intelligence: "I like to communicate with representatives of different cultures" (U = 676.5;p = 0.014), "I am confident that I can communicate freely with people whose culture I do not know" (U = 648.5;p = 0.009).
• Behavioural cultural intelligence: "I change the form of expression of verbal communication (e.g., tone) when required by cross-cultural communication" (U = 610.5;p = 0.003), "I change the way I communicate nonverbally when necessary for successful cross-cultural communication" (U = 693.5;p = 0.028).
The results of the Mann-Whitney U test (Table 3) on having working experience in international teams show differences (where p ≤ 0.05) between variables in all cases, except two: "I check information about different cultures before communicating with people from different cultures" and "I would like to live in a country whose culture I am not familiar with".Comparing two groups of statements and answers to these questions, the author can suppose that respondents prefer to make decisions about other cultures on the basis of verified information.
Mean values in all cases are higher for respondents without international experience.This means that respondents without such experience are more flexible and readier in adjusting their knowledge and behaviour to cross-cultural environments.Sources: developed by the author.
The results of the Mann-Whitney U test (Table 4) show a difference in only one statement in all groups: "I make an effort ("make an emotional investment") in building relationships with colleagues".Respondents without international experience (living/studying abroad and working in international teams) put more effort into developing strong relationships with colleagues than people who have such experience.
Test results by living/studying abroad show differences in three statements: "I am looking for new ideas, methods and tools" (U = 720.0;p = 0.028), "I always try to find new ways to solve problems" (U = 667.5;p = 0.012), and "I inspire colleagues to generate new ideas" (U = 721.0;p = 0.049).Test results by working experience in international teams show significant differences in four statements: "I am looking for new ideas, methods and tools" (U =693.0; p = 0.021), "I inspire colleagues to generate new ideas" (U = 628.5;p = 0.008), "I am involved in the implementation of new ideas" (U = 617.5;p = 0.003), and "I am involved in the creation of new products/services" (U = 566.0;p = 0.002).Mean values in all cases are higher for those respondents who have no international experience.This means that people without such experience are more open to looking for new solutions and put more effort into new idea generation and implementation.Ключові слова: культурний інтелект; інноваційна поведінка; інтелектуальний капітал; довіра.
. Initially, cultural intelligence was divided into three components according to the classification offered by Earley & Ang (2003): cognitive, motivational, and behavioural.Later, Ang et al. (2007) supplemented this classification with another componentmetacognitive.Metacognitive cultural intelligence indicates personal conscious cultural awareness and general knowledge of other cultures (Lee et al., 2018).Metacognitive cultural intelligence helps an individual perceive other cultures, behavioural norms and traditions, going beyond usual behaviour and existing knowledge.It helps to be more flexible and open and to adapt faster in a new environment.Cognitive cultural intelligence is knowledge about norms, practices, and conventions in other countries that persons acquire while studying or working in cross-cultural environments (Ang et al., 2007).It allows us to see differences in cultures.Motivational cultural intelligence is related to a person's willingness to discover other cultures (Afsar et al., 2021).Behavioural cultural intelligence determines a person's ability to use various behavioural norms (verbal and nonverbal) in interactions with representatives of different cultures (Ott & Michailova, 2018).
(Koranteng & Wiafe, 2019, Vatamanescu et al., 2020).Through communication, employees can develop new ideas and promote innovation in organizations.Despite technological development and digital transformation, human capital development is still a challenge for organizations.Recently, organizations have switched to hybrid work or remote work, which opens new opportunities for the development of a team and the attraction of human resources.Organizations recruit people worldwide, which brings benefits and problems.One of the problems is the management of the team because of cross-cultural differences.Members of the team have different beliefs, values, and traditions, and they have different behaviour models dealing with other cultures.By building trust among employees and developing strong relational capital at the organization, it is possible to benefit from multinational teams and increase the competitiveness of the organization.3. Methodology and research methods.The author used qualitative and quantitative research methods for data collection and analysis.For data collection as a research tool, a structured survey was used.The survey was developed using research tools and qualifications used in studies conducted by Ang et al. (2007), McAllister (1995) and De Jong & Den Hartog (2010).The survey consists of 4 sections.Section A: statements about cultural intelligence (Ang et al., 2007) -18 statements: • metacognitive (4 items); • cognitive (5 items); • motivational (4 items); • behavioural (5 items).Section B: statements about interpersonal trust (McAllister, 1995) -10 statements: • affective-based trust (5 items); • cognition-based trust (5 items).Section C: innovative work behaviour (De Jong & Den Hartog, 2010) -9 statements.

Table 1 .
Statements in the survey (sections A-C) Sources: developed by the author based on Ang et al. (2007), McAllister (1995) and De Jong & Den Hartog (2010).

Table 1 .
Mann-Whitney U test analysis of respondents' cultural intelligence according to their international experience

Table 3 .
Mann-Whitney U test analysis of respondents' interpersonal trust according to their international experience