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The purpose of this paper is to investigate how working in culturally diverse teams influences team-level cultural intelligence (CQ) development and how team-level CQ influences performance. The use of culturally diverse work teams continues to grow within organizations, however, their relationships with team-level CQ are not well understood. CQ is a set of knowledge, skills and abilities that assist in adapting to new and unfamiliar cultural environments and when interacting in culturally diverse situations. At the individual-level, CQ has been demonstrated to positively impact multicultural teams but team-level CQ has rarely been examined to understand how it is developed and whether it impacts team performance.

This research uses a quantitative methodology and a longitudinal research design to test two sets of hypotheses. Set 1 of the hypothesis tested the development of team-level CQ after working in culturally diverse teams, and Set 2 tested the influence of team-level CQ on team performance.

Data from 23 teams (86 individual participants) support the hypothesis that working in culturally diverse teams develops team-level CQ. In addition, partial support for the hypotheses that team CQ will positively influence academic performance is demonstrated.

The research contributes to the CQ literature by lifting the level of analysis from the individual to a team-level to consider team-level effects. The authors conclude that working in culturally diverse teams develops team-level CQ overtime. Once team-level CQ has been developed, the authors demonstrated a positive relationship between the motivational facet and team academic performance. Thus, when considering the influence of team-level CQ on performance, it is important to consider the relationship with each of the CQ facets. Few studies have considered how team-level CQ impacts team performance outcomes, and based on the results the authors would suggest additional research that continues to unpack the CQ construct into its constituent parts.

The results have important practical implications with respect to the development of team-level CQ. Based on the results, the authors support the use of highly culturally diverse teams in business schools for the development of skills because they provide the opportunity for team members to learn from each other. The use of CQ, CQ development and performance relationships provides important insights into how individuals, particularly students, can learn from each other when working in culturally diverse teams about other cultures and then bring this knowledge with them when working in academic teams.

As an important practical social implication, an opportunity to work in cross-cultural teams during international business studies could be considered as an “equalizer” for students who cannot afford to study abroad given the time consuming and costs aspects. So, cross-cultural teamwork could be considered in a wider extent by different business schools worldwide. Additionally, cross-cultural teamwork exposes students to intense interactions with different races and cultures during their study period and makes graduates significantly more work-ready.

This research contributes to the CQ literature by lifting the level of analysis to consider team-level effects and has important implications for the development and outcomes of team-level CQ.

This paper aims to contribute to international business research by critically analyzing and evaluating the use of the “international experience” (IE) construct within the specific context of developing cultural intelligence (CQ).

Based on 30 studies selected through a systematic literature review, the IE construct is critically analyzed and evaluated with respect to the terminology, definitions, conceptualizations and measurements used.

Findings indicate that the existing body of knowledge on the construct of IE is fragmented, uses inconsistent terminology, does not uniformly rely on any underlying conceptual frameworks and uses a variety of measures for investigating IE. Additionally, scholars have largely relied on quantitative measures of IE to explain the development of CQ, despite theoretical arguments specifying conditions and circumstances that must occur for learning and development to take place.

To move forward with using the IE construct, the authors emphasize the critical need for scholars to pay greater attention to and explicate how they define, conceptualize and measure it. Based on the identified issues, recommendations to improve future research are provided.

Although IE is frequently assumed to influence the development of CQ, contrary to conventional wisdom and some theoretical arguments, research evidence has demonstrated that the impact of IE on CQ is suggestive rather than conclusive. To understand why this may be the case, the use of the IE construct within previous research is critically analyzed and evaluated.

There is a substantial void in the understanding of the effect of talent management (TM) practices specifically targeted at females on firm performance. This paper investigates the relationship between female-focused TM and firm performance with the aim of demonstrating the importance of gender diversity in firms.

The authors developed and empirically tested a contextually embedded model using data from 103 multinational corporations in Russia to examine the effect of female-focused TM on firm performance.

The authors found an overall positive relationship between female-focused TM and firm performance. The authors’ analysis also revealed significant positive effects of female-focused talent development and talent retention, but not talent attraction, on firm performance.

This paper contributes to the vibrant TM scholarship by focusing on female-focused talent attraction, development and retention practices.

This paper aims to review the talent management literature to identify ways in which organizations can practically and effectively improve talent retention.

This paper defines talent and talent retention and explains why retaining talent is so important and why talent leave. Then, it reviews existing literature from scholarly journals and practitioner reports and identifies and discusses means by which organizations can improve their talent retention. Finally, this paper outlines some important lessons that are relevant to all organizations when considering talent retention.

The review of the talent management literature identifies four ways that organizations can improve their talent retention: developing a solid organizational culture and strong values, providing applicable and dynamic training, fostering an engaging work environment, and offering clear and suitable career advancement opportunities.

The four practical ways to effectively improve talent retention discussed in this paper demonstrate that retaining talent requires more than just a competitive salary package. Talent want to work for and stay at an organization that has similar values, provides training opportunities, fosters engagement and offers career advancement.

The stand-alone scholarly conversations on host-country nationals (HCNs) and cultural intelligence (CQ) have developed over decades but have remained distant from each other. This paper aims to bridge them and explain why such a link can offer an initial understanding of HCNs’ CQ and yield new insights that could enrich and extend existing knowledge in the two literature streams.

This conceptual paper establishes a set of arguments that explain why and how the scholarly conversations on HCNs and CQ can be bridged. The authors supplement these arguments with three specific avenues for research that can guide new scholarly inquiry. Each avenue is accompanied with specific research questions that the authors find promising for generating new insights into issues related to HCNs’ CQ.

The two scholarly conversations that the authors link are strong, vibrant and mature. Each has yielded substantial conceptual and theoretical insights and produced rich empirical evidence. They have, however, remained relatively separate from each other. To bring them together, the authors propose three avenues by considering the role of HCNs’ CQ: in their cultural adjustment, for knowledge sharing and when supporting expatriates. The authors outline the implications of such studies for HCNs’ careers, performance and well-being, for the subsidiaries that constitute their immediate work environment and, for multinational corporations as HCNs’ broader organizational settings.

CQ is an important enabler of effective intercultural interactions in culturally diverse settings, precisely the types of encounters that HCNs have with their expatriate colleagues. Surprisingly, the HCN literature has not crossed paths with CQ research in a substantial manner. The authors rectify this by establishing that bridging the two conversations is meaningful and has a high potential for deepening the understanding of HCNs’ CQ as an under-researched but important phenomenon.

The purpose of this paper is to critically examine the literature on the relationship between international experience (IE) and cultural intelligence (CQ) development, and advocate for the utilization of theory to explain this relationship.

On the basis of the premise that CQ can be developed through IE, the authors review existing empirical research in regards to this relationship. The authors conducted a search of the main business, education, and psychology databases for articles published from 2003, the year when the CQ construct was introduced, through 2017. The search focused on studies where CQ was tested as a dependent variable or as a mediator between IE and a dependent variable, and resulted in 15 empirical articles and three book chapters.

A critical analysis of the relationship between IE and CQ reveals considerable variation and inconsistencies among findings within the extant empirical literature. The authors argue that this is mainly because most studies fail to apply a theory to explain the link between these two constructs. The authors draw from social learning theory (SLT) to illustrate how it can be utilized to detail the relationship between IE and CQ development. The authors also suggest how future research can advance the understanding of this relationship, and outline the implications of such examinations for practice.

While substantive knowledge has been generated to understand CQ as an antecedent, the authors investigate CQ development as the dependent variable. The critical review of this literature identifies a specific weakness within previous research and the authors offer a way to resolve it. SLT, which views learning as being affected by both observation and experience, and includes attention, retention, and participative reproduction, is one potentially powerful tool that can explain why and how IE can lead to CQ development. This is a far more fine- grained and detailed approach to understanding and explaining the relationship between the two constructs than provided by previous studies.

Over the past few decades, examinations of emerging economies (EEs) have received increasing attention in international business (IB) research. This article takes a critical stance on some of the re-occurring shortcomings of that research.

The authors conducted a critical literature review of 493 articles on EEs that have been published in five top-tier IB academic journals in the period 2010–2020. True to the nature of a critical literature review, the authors judge and question some of the practices that have impeded knowledge accumulation.

The authors found a recurring lack of definitional clarity and contextualization, as well as overgeneralized inferences from findings. The authors provide recommendations on how to address these weaknesses and a checklist to guide future IB research on EEs.

The authors question and problematize what they see as dominant but undesirable practices when conducting EE research. The actionable directions for addressing uncovered issues and checklist to guide future research in this area that the authors offer are rather bold and unambiguous.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a comprehensive overview of the key risks and challenges of Short-Term Study Abroad (STSA), so higher education practitioners and global mobility providers can design effective and safe STSA programmes. The Institute of International Education defines STSA as programmes of up to eight weeks in length, with this standard now widely accepted by both practitioners and scholars (Iskhakova and Bradly, 2022).

This study draws from a comprehensive review of STSA risks literature, cases of published “incidents”, “safety practices”, “risk lists” and examples by global mobility professionals. The paper also draws upon the extensive practical experiences that the authors have acquired through their management of risks while delivering numerous STSA international business programmes for undergraduate students across seven different global destinations (India, USA, UAE, Russia, Croatia, Slovenia and Vietnam).

Through the analysis, the authors identify 42 types of risks and challenges that may be encountered in the delivery of STSA programmes that we group into 12 categories.

The results serve as an effective guide for planning, designing and delivering effective and safe STSA programmes for global mobility practitioners worldwide. The authors also provide an agenda and specific directions for future research on the topic to global mobility scholars.

For those designing STSA programmes, an in-depth understanding of the nature and range of risks during study tours is needed, including how to ensure in-country experiences are safe for all participants while achieving the intended learning outcomes.