What is Social Intelligence

Globalization has expanded the domain of human capital requirements. Besides the traditional human capital requirements of technical knowledge and skills, the experience and skills associated with working in culturally diverse settings are becoming increasingly important (Tran, 2008). This additional human capital dimension—cosmopolitan human capital—is the focus of this chapter and the reason to study cultural intelligence, because they are so inextricably interlinked. Cosmopolitan human capital as a conceptualization has been expanded to include cosmopolitan human capital so as to include international experiences and cultural intelligence capabilities. Tomasello (2001) has argued that culture is what, in large part, separates human from animal intelligence. Tomasello (2001) states that humans have evolved as they have in part because of their cultural adaptions, which in turn develop from their ability even in infancy from about nine months onward to understand others as intentional agents. As such, the purpose of the chapter includes the foundation of cultural intelligence as it relates to human capital, and it concludes with recommendations on how to assess and evaluate whether an organization possesses human capital. The chapter will also assist organizations with evaluating whether they are equipped with developing human capital for competitive advantages based on 11 different types of intelligence.