Abstract
Over the past 20 years, more and more organizations have begun to select and develop staff based on thoroughly assessing them on relevant competences. Competences enable individuals to show exemplary performance and to respond to new and changing organizational challenges. With job demands becoming more complex and unpredictable, job-specific knowledge quickly grows outdated. In searching for individuals with the right competences, organizations strive to attract and develop professionals who know how to adapt their approach when faced with new and unforeseen demands.1
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
The development of competency assessment in organizations is described by Jefferey S. Shippmann, Ronald A. Ash, Mariangela Battista et al. (2000) ‘The Practice of Competency Modeling’, Personnel Psychology, 53, pp. 703–40.
Popular competences assessed by companies in German-speaking regions are listed in Stefan Höft and Christof Obermann (2010) ‘Der Praxiseinsatz von Assessment Centern im deutschsprachigen Raum: Eine zeitliche Verlaufsanalyse basierend auf den Anwenderbefragungen des Arbeitskreises Assessment Center e.V. von 2001 und 2008’ (The practical use of assessment centers in German-speaking regions: a time course analysis based on the user surveys of the Arbeitskreis Assessment Center e.V. from 2001 and 2008) Wirtschaftspsychologie, 12(2), pp. 5–16.
Numerous books and articles on intercultural competence development have been published, especially in the United States and Germany. See, for example, Darla K. Deardorff (ed.) (2009) The SAGE Handbook of Intercultural Competence (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE)
Gundula Gwenn Hiller and Stefanie Vogler-Lipp (eds) (2010) Schlüsselqualifikation Interkulturelle Kompetenz an Hochschulen. Grundlagen, Konzepte, Methoden (Key qualification intercultural competence in higher education. Basics, concepts, methods) (Wiesbaden, Germany: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften)
Myron W. Lustig and Jolene Koester (2013) Intercultural Competence. Interpersonal Communication Across Cultures, 7th edition (Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson)
Matthias Otten, Alexander Scheitza and Andrea Cnyrim (eds) (2009) Interkulturelle Kompetenz im Wandel, Volume 1 and 2 (Intercultural competence in transition) (Münster, Germany: LIT Verlag). Google Books Ngram Viewer, an online tool that shows how often words have appeared in books from 1800 onwards, reveals that the use of the term ‘intercultural competence’ has steadily increased since 1990.
See Arjan Verdooren and Maarten Bremer (2012) ‘Interculturele Competentie. Bezint eer ge Begint’ (Intercultural competence. Look before you leap), in Opleiding & Ontwikkeling, Volume 5, pp. 10–14, for a related discussion of why cross-cultural knowledge alone is insufficient for intercultural effectiveness.
In his Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, Milton J. Bennett proposes six stages of development, of which the first three stages reflect an ethnocentric way of dealing with cultural differences, and the last three stages an ethno-relative approach. People in stage three, which is called minimization, downplay cultural differences and need to focus more on differences in order to develop further. See Milton J. Bennett (1993) ‘Towards Ethnorelativ-ism: A Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity’, in R. Michael Paige (ed.) Education for the Intercultural Experience, 2nd edition (Yarmouth, ME: Intercultural Press).
For insightful analyses on French management and business culture, see the landmark analysis by Philippe d’Iribarne (1989) La Logique de L’Honneur: Gestion des Entreprises et Traditions Nationales (Paris, France: Édition du Seuil)
as well as Jean-Louis Barsoux and Peter A. Lawrence (1997) French Management: Elitism in Action (New York, NY: Taylor and Francis)
Christoph Barmeyer and Stefanie von Wietersheim (2007) Business Know-How Frankreich (Heidelberg: Redline Wirtschaft)
the more recent publication by Philippe d’Iribarne (2012) Managing Corporate Values in Diverse National Cultures: The Challenge of Differences (London: Routledge).
Christopher Wolsko, Bernadette Park, Charles M. Judd and Bernd Wittenbrink (2000) ‘Framing Interethnic Ideology: Effects of Multicultural and Color-blind Perspectives on Judgments of Groups and Individuals’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 78(4), pp. 635–54.
In one definition of intercultural competence, proposed by Stefanie Rathje, the ability to identify shared group memberships, based on a differentiated view of one’s own multiple group memberships, is defined as the core of intercultural competence. See Stefanie Rathje (2007) ‘Intercultural Competence’, Journal for Language and Intercultural Communication, Volume 7(4), pp. 254–66.
For a classic study on the psychology of group categorization, see Henri Tajfel (1970) ‘Experiments in Intergroup Discrimination’, Scientific American, Volume 223, pp. 96–102. Numerous studies have shown how categorizing people into groups reduces our ability and willingness to see differences between members of a group.
See, for example, Henri Tajfel (ed.) (1982) Social Identity and Intergroup Relations (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press)
George A. Quattrone and Edward E. Jones (1980) ‘The Perception of Variability within In-Groups and Out-Groups: Implications for the Law of Small Numbers’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 38(1), pp. 141–52
Charles M. Judd and Bernadette Park (1988) ‘Out-Group Homogeneity: Judgments of Variability at the Individual and Group Levels’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 54(5), pp. 778–88. Overall, members of the out-group are more easily seen as homogeneous, than members of the in-group.
A meta-analysis of when and why we perceive in-groups and out-groups as homogeneous has been conducted by Brian Mullen and Li-Tze Hu (1989) ‘Perceptions of Ingroup and Outgroup Variability: A Meta-Analytic Integration’, Basic and Applied Social Psychology, Volume 10(3), pp. 233–52.
For the defining experiment on how competition leads to conflict between arbitrarily created groups, see Muzafer Sherif O. J. Harvey, B. Jack White, William R. Hood and Carolyn W. Sherif (1954/1961) Intergroup Conflict and Cooperation: The Robbers Cave Experiment (The University of Oklahoma: Norman).
The options for responding to conflict are based on Kenneth W Thomas and Ralph H. Kilmann (1974) Thomas-Kilmann Conflict Mode Instrument (Tuxedo NY: Xicom).
For more recent work on conflict behaviour, see Evert van de Vliert (1997) Complex Interpersonal Conflict Behaviour: Theoretical Frontiers (Hove, UK: Psychology Press)
Carsten K. W de Dreu and Evert van de Vliert (eds) (1997) Using Conflict in Organizations (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE).
How the Thomas and Kilmann (1974) conflict management grid can be used for reconciling seemingly opposing cultural values was first shown in the 1993 publication of Riding the Waves of Culture, by Fons Trompenaars (London: The Economist). For the revised 3rd edition, see Fons Trompenaars and Charles Hampden-Turner (2011) Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business (London: McGraw-Hill).
The concept of ego depletion was first proposed by Roy F. Baumeister, T. Heatherton, and Dianne M. Tice in their 1994 publication, Losing Control: How and Why People Fail at Self-Regulation (San Diego, CA: Academic Press).
For a more recent publication, see Roy F. Baumeister and John Tierney (2011) Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength (New York, NY: Penguin Press).
An alternative to ego depletion has been proposed by Michael Inzlicht and Brandon J. Schmeichel (2012) ‘What is Ego Depletion? Toward a Mechanistic Revision of the Resource Model of Self-Control’, Perspectives on Psychological Science, Volume 7(5), pp. 450–63.
For experiments showing the helpful effects of chocolate on self-control, see Matthew T Gailliot, Roy F. Baumeister, C. Nathan DeWall, Jon K. Maner, E. Ashby Plant, Dianne M. Tice, Lauren E. Brewer and Brandon J. Schmeichel (2007) ‘Self-Control Relies on Glucose as a Limited Energy Source: Willpower is More Than a Metaphor’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 92(2), pp. 325–36.
Individual differences in how we deal with uncertainty have been analysed by Richard M. Sorrentino and colleagues, and Lily A. Arasaratnam and colleagues. See, for example, Richard M. Sorrentino, Andrew C. H. Szeto, John B. Nezlek, Satoru Yasunaga, Sadafusa Kouhara and Yasunao Otsubo (2008) ‘Uncertainty Regulation: The Master Motive?’, in Richard M. Sorrentino and Susumu Yamaguchi (eds) Handbook of Motivation and Cognition Across Cultures (New York: Elsevier) pp. 49–70
Lily A. Arasaratnam, Smita C. Banerjee and Krzysztof Dembek (2010) ‘Sensation Seeking and the Integrated Model of Intercultural Communication Competence’, Journal of Intercultural Communication Research, Volume 39(2), pp. 69–79.
Copyright information
© 2014 Ursula Brinkmann and Oscar van Weerdenburg
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Brinkmann, U., van Weerdenburg, O. (2014). Why We Need Intercultural Competences. In: Intercultural Readiness. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137346988_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137346988_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-46719-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-34698-8
eBook Packages: Palgrave Business & Management CollectionBusiness and Management (R0)