Cultural Intelligence Versus Artificial Intelligence: Which Works Better for Organisational Leadership in Multinational Companies (MNCs)?

Multinational organisations are facing challenges in attaining and retaining international workforce. The text analyses the role of intercultural competence among organisational leaders in the context of advancements in artificial intelligence tools. Current literature shows a research gap on the levels of cultural intelligence (CQ) of AI models, capable of decision-making in organisational environment. The goal is to analyse whether natural human intelligence, as in cultural intelligence (CQ), or artificial intelligence (AI) models, is more appropriate for leadership decisions in multinational organisations. Research methods are a comparative analysis of literary sources and expert evaluation analysis. The analyses draw similarities and differences between the two and discuss which one is better for management tasks. Results show that AI has very limited cultural awareness and lacks the capabilities of natural cultural intelligence (CQ) both according to literature comparison and experts’ ratings. Artificial intelligence is only applicable successfully to certain operations in talent acquisition, but tasks need to be finalised by culturally competent human managers. AI also has limitations during decision-making in culturally diverse contexts, a process which requires substantial metacognitive, motivational, and behavioural competence, according to CQ theory. The current state of AI models allows only proper knowledge acquisition in the cognitive component of CQ. The paper suggests that there is a potential for increasing the CQ of AI models, and this could be useful for international talent management.