Building cultural intelligence through supervisor support: Social exchange and subjective career success as mediators and organizational support as a moderator

This study offers a new perspective on how organizational factors influence migrant workers’ cultural intelligence (CQ) by examining a moderated mediation model of the mechanism underlying the relationship between perceived supervisor support and CQ. We tested our model using a survey on a sample of 462 migrants. We found that employees’ social exchange and subjective career success mediated the relationship between their perceptions of supervisor support and CQ. Further, perceived organizational support moderated the social exchange-CQ relationship, and this relationship was stronger among workers with perceived high organizational support than for those with perceptions of low support. We also found that the indirect effect of employees’ perceived supervisor support on CQ via social exchange was stronger for those with perceived high organizational support than for those with perceptions of low support. This study contributes to a better understanding of factors that foster migrant workers’ abilities to navigate diverse workplaces.