The Relationship between Cultural Intelligence and Individual Performance in Employees of Sport and Youth General Office of East Azerbaijan Province

Cultural intelligence is one of the most efficient tools to perform tasks efficiently in environments containing diversity and imbalance. This kind of intelligence allows the person to be able to be effective in multi-cultural situations. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of this variable on the performance of employees. This study was applied according to the goal and descriptive-survey in terms of data collection. Statistical population consisted of 109 employees of Sport and Youth general office in East Azerbaijan province and sample was 90 subjects. “Individual Performance” and “Cultural Intelligence” questionnaires were used to collect data. The face and content validity of both questionnaires was confirmed by 10 experts and the reliability was calculated by Cronbach’s alpha as 0.74 for individual performance questionnaire and 0.66 for cultural intelligence questionnaire. Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Pearson correlation coefficient and Friedman test were used to analyze data. The results showed a significant and positive relationship between cultural intelligence and individual performance and also between 3 dimensions (out of 4 dimensions) of cultural intelligence (strategy, motivation and behavior) and individual performance. Priorities of these dimensions were knowledge, motivation, behavior and strategy. Cultural intelligence and its four dimensions and individual performance of all employees were satisfactory.