Unlocking the Potential of Multicultural Migrants: Cultural Brokering Scale Development and Validation

Abstract

Migrant employees have knowledge, skills, and abilities that may not be recognized by organizations or countries. Typically, they have knowledge of, identification with, and internalization of more than one culture. This allows them to support international knowledge flows and facilitate intercultural social networks by engaging in cultural brokering — the act of facilitating interactions across cultures. In a series of four studies employing qualitative and quantitative methods, we developed and validated a context-general assessment of cultural brokering. The result is a scale assessing the frequency of five cultural brokering behaviors: interpreting culturally based behavior, teaching others about a cultural group, mediating between cultures, advocating for a cultural group, and advising people across cultures. Since this scale is not limited by organizational context, it can be used to assess and leverage cultural brokering across a wide range of settings that would benefit from cultural brokering, including multinational enterprises (MNEs), international nongovernmental organization (NGOs), and intergovernmental associations.