Intercultural competence

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Intercultural competence

• And its implementation in organizational contexts

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Individual, internal dimension
Individual external dimension
Organizational external dimension
Organizationalinternal dimension
Society
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Individual, internal dimension

• The ability of the individual to act competently
  within the framework of the multicultural
  organization in relation to issues where
  culture is made relevant to the situation.

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Individual, external dimension

• The ability of the individual to act in an
  interculturally competent way in cultural
  environments that are different from ones own
• Traditionally the research focus of main-stream
  intercultural competence research

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Organizational internal perspective

• The ability of the organization to handle
  cultural diversity, involves organizational
  culture, structure, management, strategies,
  collaboration, distribution of work, recruitment
  procedures etc. This dimension includes the
  concept of diversity management.

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Organizational external dimension

• The ability of the organization to act in an
  interculturally competent way when performing
  on the global arena

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Concept of the Intercultural speaker ( the
intercultural mediator)

• It is through social interaction that the
  individual draws on existing knowledge, has
  attitudes which sustain sensitivity to others,
  and operates skills of discourse and
  interpretation while managing dysfunctions that
  arise in interaction with others. They may be
  called upon to act as a mediator between members
  of different origins and identities.
• It is this function of establishing
  relationships, managing dysfunctions and
  mediating that distinguishes an intercultural
  speaker from other speakers and makes him or her
  different from a native speaker.
• Michael Byram

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Definition of ICC Michael Byram

• Attitudes curiosity, an openness, readiness to
  suspend disbelief about other cultures and belief
  about ones own (savoir être)
• Knowledge of social groups and pracices in ones
  own and in ones interlocutors country, and of
  the general processes of societal and individual
  interaction

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Definition of ICC Michael Byram

• Skills of interpreting and relating ability to
  interpret a document or event from another
  culture, to explain it and relate it to documents
  from ones own (savoir comprendre)
• Skills of discovery and interaction. Ability to
  acquire new knowledge of a culture and cultural
  practices and the ability to operate knowledge,
  attitudes and skills under the constraints of
  real-time communication and interaction
  (savoir-apprendre/faire)

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Model of ICC Michael Byram

• Critical cultural awareness / political
  education an ability to evaluate critically and
  on the basis of explicit criteria, perspectives,
  practices and products in ones own and other
  cultures and countries (savoir sengager)

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Main features Old ideas of culture

• Bounded small scale entity
• Defined characteristics (checklist)
• Unchanging, in balanced equilibrium or
  self-reproducing
• Underlying system of shared meanings authentic
  culture
• Identical, homogeneous individuals
• Susan Wright The Politicization of Culture in
  Anthropology Today, Februrary 1998.

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Main features New ideas of culture

• Cultural identities dynamic, fluid, and
  constructed situationally
• Culture is an active process of meaning making
  and contestation over definitions, including
  itself
• People, differently positioned in social
  relations and processes of domination, use
  economic and institutional resources available to
  them to try and make their definitions of a
  situation stick, prevent others definitions
  from being heard, and to garner the material
  outcome
• Susan Wright The Politicization of Culture in
  Anthropology Today, Februrary 1998.

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Illustration of ICC - 2 case stories
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Process of acquiring ICC through travelling

• Involves relocation - disorientation
  uprootedness (Murphy-Lejeune)
• Prerequisites curiosity, tolerance, flexibility
• the adapton capital boosts the mobility capital

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Ethnographic techniques

• An alternative to acquisition of a set of
  cultural facts
• learning ethnographically
• Epistemological and subjective awareness
• Practical skills of participant observation (to
  lurk and soak)

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learning ethnographically

• what we seek to find out in terms of the
  meanings, norms and patterns of others worlds
• What impact this seeking has on learners in terms
  of, first of all, their conceptualisation of self
  and other, and second, on their reflexive
  knowledge of social and cultural practices

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• Ethnography is continuous with ordinary life.
  Much of what we seek to find out in ethnography
  is knowledge that others already have. Our
  ability to learn ethnographically is an extension
  of what every human being must do, that is learn
  the meanings, norms, patterns of a way of life
  (Hymes 1980 98)

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Acquisition of the acquisition of ICC as
travelling

• A place in-between
• Being in motion rather than static
• Ethnographic approach helps the student to
  analyse and reflect on being in-between
• (Roberts)