Cultural Intelligence as a Core Competence of Inclusive Leadership

Abstract We live and work in a fast-paced multicultural world where change is becoming a new constant. In this context, in which racially and ethnically diverse companies are 35% more likely to perform better, inclusive leadership’s role becomes crucial. Knowing to handle and fructify diversity and inclusion (DI) is now crucial for any multicultural businesses’ expansion and development. On the other hand, cultural intelligence (CQ) refers to relating and working effectively and efficiently in culturally diverse situations. The purpose of this paper is to study and present a systematic bibliometric literature review focusing on cultural intelligence as a core enabler of inclusive leadership (IL). Our findings, rooted in the Web of Science Core Collection database and powered by VOSviewer bibliometric software, demonstrate that cultural intelligence is not only a main competence for both multinational leadership and global management but also a primary facilitator of inclusive leadership. Concretely, this research visually indicates a comprehensive direct link of the fields relating to CQ on one side and the ones related to multicultural and inclusive leadership on the other side. The bibliometric analysis is supposed to provide a solid reference for practitioners and researchers in multinational inclusive leadership’s new needed competencies