INTRODUCTION Confict is a double-edged sword which, if handled with diligence, can contribute towards building an effective team or organization. Leaders have always played a crucial role in steering the teams so as to accomplish organizational goals. Cultural intelligence (CQ) in a leader enables him/ her to understand different perspectives in a multicultural team and further fltering the best ideas, which can be used in a constructive way inside the organization. Management of confict and building a unifed team can be challenging at times. A culturally intelligent leader is able to interact with people or individuals from diverse backgrounds, which builds a leaders confict-resolution ability (Ramirez, 2010). CQ helps to select the most appropriate strategy so as to resolve differences and overcome resistance resulting into boosting creativity and cultivating innovation. Thus, a culturally intelligent leader has the potential to transform the negative effects into positive and streamline the same with innovation (Dogra & Dixit, 2017). Dynamic nature of the organization and the turbulent environment has led to the emergence of heterogeneous teams, rise of differences and end number of complexities associated with procedures and norms to carry routine task and accomplish organizational goals. The role of a leader has become more crucial in a global organization whereby he/she is required to balance out challenges and transform the same into opportunities. Some scholars have tried to highlight the signifcance of CQ in context to the rise of global complexities and competition and thus have linked the same with leadership competence. The advantage of CQ is countless and it has been said to transform the leadership in totality (James B. Box, 2015). Leader CQ proves to play a pivotal role in infuencing the performance of the multicultural team by catalysing the rate of innovation adoption (Groves & Feyerherm, 2011). The relationship between confict and innovation has been studied by a few scholars (Baquatayan, 2014) but the link between Leader CQ along with confict and innovation is yet to be explored (Dogra & Dixit, 2017). The attempt in this paper has been made to interlink the three concepts in order to study their relationship. The primary objective of this study is to advance and expand the existing theories related to CQ, confict and innovation. This work would PRISMATIC ROLE OF CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE IN TRANSFORMING AND MAGNIFYING THE POSITIVE EFFECTS OF CONFLICT LEADING TO INNOVATION Aditi Sharma Dogra*, Varsha Dixit** * Research Scholar, Gautam Buddha University, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. Email: adysharma.sharma@gmail.com ** Assistant Professor, Gautam Buddha University, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India. Email: varsha@gbu.ac.in Abstract Confict is inevitable at the workplace and the outcomes of the same are both positive and negative, which could pose challenges for a leader. A culturally intelligent leader has the potential to streamline confict with innovation in an organization. Constructive conficts can accelerate change and stimulate creativity amongst diversifed work teams. The culturally intelligent leader enables to acknowledge the differences in opinions and viewpoints of a work team, thus providing a forum so as to accomplish organizational goals. Such leaders have the ability to unify different perspectives, manage conficts and cultivate innovation in order to harness the potential of the multicultural teams. This paper brings an overview of the existing literature related to the various concepts in the presented model. The objective of this paper is to integrate the concepts of cultural intelligence (CQ), confict and innovation so as to build a theoretical framework, which would highlight the role and essence of CQ in the international arena. Further, the outcomes can be considered by various global organizations and human resource departments to train their employees, especially expatriates and managers, to trace out and categorize conficts in multicultural teams and manage it effectively so as to bring radical innovation in the organization. Keywords: Cultural Intelligence, Constructive Confict, Innovation, Global Organization, Multicultural Teams, Radical Innovation Journal of Organisation & Human Behaviour 8 (2 & 3) 2019, 01-08 http://publishingindia.com/johb/