INTERNATIONAL-SURVEYING-RESEARCH-JOURNAL-ISrj-ISrJ-Vol-11-Year-2022

person has experience discovering at least two cultures, and therefore, they are more tolerant of diverse
cultures and viewpoints. Multicultural individuals may be more competent to study another culture, which is
why culture shock may not be as severe as their monocultural peers. Their multicultural capacity may allow
them to compete in intercultural circumstances and thus to do better abroad. (Nguyen, Jefferies and Rojas,
2018).
Accordingly, one of the empirical contexts for this study was an evaluation of the differences of expatriates
from Malaysia compare with respondents from other regions. Throughout Malaysia's history, migrant groups
have come to Malaysia and have radically turned the existing homogenous society into a heterogeneous one.
From the middle of the 19th century, the influx of Chinese and Indian settlers led to drastic demographic shifts,
intensely changing the mono-ethnic indigenous population into a plural society, causing no single ethnic group
in Malaysia to have an absolute majority (Andaya and Andaya, 1982). Malaysia comprises three main ethnic
groups, i.e., Malays and indigenous people made up 69.6%, Chinese 22.6%, Indians 6.8% of the total
population (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2020). According to the Malaysian Government website, the
indigenous peoples of Peninsular Malaysia are usually classified into three main groups, followed by the
indigenous population of Borneo Malaysia comprising 59 ethnic groups (Malaysia (Department of Information),
2016).
British colonial policies on "divide and rule" had resulted in the Malaysians have grown up in a plural
society with various religions and cultural backgrounds, using different languages as main languages due to
the presence of vernacular education (Ibrahim, Muslim and Buang, 2011). To date, no research was carried
out to investigate Malaysian cultural intelligence particularly to compare Malaysian expatriates with the
expatriates from other regions in the construction industry. Hence, this study sought to discover the answer to
whether growing up in a plural society will cultivate higher CQ or not.
METHODOLOGY
Participants and Sampling Strategy
The target respondents in this study would be professionals working abroad in the construction industry,
such as project managers, architects, engineers, etc. The questionnaire was designed with the first question
to confirm whether the respondents were working away from their country of origin. Demographic and cultural
intelligence data were collected from the questionnaire as tabulated in Table 1.
A web survey was adopted. The respondents were identified through LinkedIn, the world's largest
professional networ, using a non-probability sampling method, namely convenient sampling and snowball
sampling. The respondents' profile was analysed to justify whether they met the requirements as the target
respondent, and an invitation was sent to invite them to participate in the questionnaire. By using the LinkedIn
platform, personal messages could be sent to the respondents and able to request assistance from the
participants to forward the questionnaire to their friends or colleagues who met the target respondents' profile.
ISrJ Vol. 11 - 2022, Session 2022/2023 38