Intercultural Competence: Survey, Analysis, and Critical Incidents

This report examines intercultural competence through the lens of the INCA survey and critical incident analysis. The first part presents the student's survey results across six intercultural competencies: communicative awareness, knowledge discovery, respect for otherness, empathy, tolerance of ambiguity, and behavioral flexibility. The results are discussed in detail, highlighting strengths and areas for development. The second part analyzes three critical incidents, defining cultural dimensions such as power distance, masculinity, and communication styles. Each incident is examined using the dimensions of the INCA survey and supported by scholarly references, providing a comprehensive understanding of intercultural communication challenges and strategies for effective interaction. The report follows APA format and includes a chart to support the analysis.

Intercultural Competence
NAME
COURSE
DATE
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Intercultural Competence
Part 1: Intercultural Competence.
Survey and reflection summarizing your ideas.
Table 1
Intercultural
competence
Characteristic
Questions
Questions Scores
from the survey
3-4 indicates basic
level
5-7 indicates
intermediate level
8-9 indicates full
level
Communicative
Awareness
Questions 3, 12 and 18 2+3+3=8 Full
Knowledge discovery Questions 2, 8, 14 3+2+3=8 Full
Respect for otherness Questions 4,9, 16 3+3+3=9 Full
Empathy Questions 10-12 3+3+3=9 Full
Tolerance of ambiguity Questions 5,11, 15 2+3+3=8 Full
Behavioral flexibility Questions
1,7, 17
2+2+3=7
Intermediate
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Intercultural Competence
In order to answer the questions correctly, it is important to start by defining intercultural
competence and its characteristics. It is described as the ability to interact in an effectively in a
way that is acceptable to other people, especially while working in a group consisting of
members with diverse cultural orientations .Cultural in this case is used to represent all kind of
features, which include but not limited to beliefs and morals that an individual grows up with,
their nationality, their local customs, the region in which they come from, and particular
approaches and practices that dictates how they work. Intercultural competence researchers have
investigated this theory in various disciplines for example in management, education,
communication etc. (Wang, chen, liu, barkley, & wu 2020). For any person to be culturally
competent, they must show tolerance of ambiguity; to demonstrate ability to receive lack of
clarity and handle it in a constructive manner. You should also have the ability to adjust ones
behavior to be able to fit in various situations and circumstances what is known as behavioral
flexibility. Thirdly, you should also have the capability to recognize various language
convections and manipulations, foreign languages and their special effects and the ability to
discuss rules suitable for intercultural communication. This competence is defined as
communicative awareness ( Guo 2019). The other characteristic is knowledge discovery which is
basically the ability to gain new knowledge on cultural and cultural practices and be in a position
to use it in a communiqué considering constrains of time. Having respect for others also is
another characteristic of intercultural competence. In this case an individual should have the
capability to hold in high regard other peoples values, practices and customs. The last
characteristic that is considered in this regard is empathy, which is the ability to spontaneously
comprehend what other people reason and how they feel in real situations and circumstances
(Genova 2019).
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Intercultural Competence
Intercultural competence is developed in three levels. First stage is the basic stage where an
individual is ready and willing to interact and learn from other people of different cultures. In the
second level, an individual has gained an experience and training from intercultural interactions
and can start to view some of the encounters more comprehensibly and have a mental picture of
what they are likely to require while dealing with situations and purpose to develop the skills
needed. The last stage is the full competence level where the skills gained in level two have now
become spontaneous and more often ready for situations and happenstances where they can be
used in judgment and dealing with various customs and practices.
Describe your results for each of the 6 Intercultural competencies.
In my results in the table above, it shows that I am at a full competence level in tolerance of
ambiguity, communicative awareness, knowledge discovery, and respect for otherness and in
empathy except for behavioral flexibility where I am at intermediate stage as explained in earlier.
What does the data tell you?
The data indicates that I can interact effectively and in way that is acceptable with others people
especially while working in a group that have members of different cultural backgrounds. I can
have complete tolerance to ambiguity; I can full be able to establish relationships between
linguistic expressions and cultural contents and can work with various communicative
convections with my foreign colleagues. In continuation, I have full knowledge of how I can
acquire new knowledge on various cultural practices in communication considering time
constrains. I fully respect other people’s values, customs and practices and completely ready to
research and learn from every intercultural encounter. It also indicates that I fully empathize with
other people in their real life situations and I am completely able to deal with other people’s
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Intercultural Competence
feelings, wishes and way of reasoning. Lastly I am still learning to adapt my behavior to different
necessities and situations. In this case, I am beginning to view more coherently some of the
aspects of intercultural conventions that I have dealt with previously. I have a mental lists of the
kind of situations that I am likely to need to deal with and I am developing my skills to handle
them.
Do you agree with the results? Why/ why not? Explain your answer in detail.
I agree with these results because I find the unexpected and unfamiliar an enjoyable challenge.
For example when I was joining college, I didn’t know what to expect and I was curious and
eager to join and meet new friends. Being a class representative, I always want to resolve various
challenges in a way that will appeal to as many classmates as possible. Being a leader in the
college, I am always alert to the diverse ways in which misunderstanding might arise and I am
always be ready to seek clarification and sometimes I find myself requesting my classmates to
agree on how they will use certain expressions for everyone to understand what they mean. Also
I go an extra mile to find out about the likely values, customs and practices of my college mates
and carefully note them. I have found myself adopting a firm but suave stance over points of
principle on which you disagree with and often concern careful not to hurt others’ feelings or
infringe their system of values. Finally, I am more prepared for the need to respond and adapt to
the demands of unfamiliar.
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Intercultural Competence
Part 2: Critical Incidents
A critical incident technique in culture can be defined as is a description that demonstrates a
misapprehension between two or more people from different cultural backgrounds depending on
the values and beliefs that they share (Jacobs 2019). Generally people will interpret other people
behavior and term it wrong or right depending on their own cultural biasness. There are various
cultural dimensions that vary across different cultures. They include:
Power distance
This refers to the way in which power is distributed and the extent to which the less powerful
accept that power is distributed unequally. In other words, people in some cultures admit a
higher level of unequally distributed power than do people in other cultures ( Huang & Scrotts
2019). In his paper, he compared Chinese and Western cultures and concluded that no culture is
better or worse than others. THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF INCIDENT 6
Masculinity
This is the worth that a culture places on being competitive and assertive. In different cultures,
different behaviors certain behaviors or rehearses may be extensively recognized as either
feminine or masculine, regardless of whether they are embraced by women or by men. In this
case masculinity does not depict of sexual orientation. Rebecca Merkin in her publication delved
in the relationship between masculinity and competitive facework and cultural femininity and
accommodating facework and steamrolling facework, work life balances and sexual harassment
(Merkin 2018). THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF INCIDENT 7
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Intercultural Competence
Communication: Formal and Informal
Formal communication is the passing of information officially through defined channels while
informal communication occurs casually an unofficially and it occurs spontaneously between
two or more persons without following the set official rules, procedures, structure, formalities or
chain of command. These forms of communication are completely different across various
cultures. Kimberley Barker and other authors in (Barker et.al 2017) expressed the importance of
cross-cultural communication competence in every action in organizations, societies, and nations
globally. They expressed that employers cannot under value universal business communication
and cultural competencies in order to avoid cross-cultural misunderstandings which tricky and
explosive in the worst case scenarios. THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF INCIDENT 8
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Intercultural Competence
References
Wang, j., chen, c., liu, y., barkley, d., & wu, c. C. (2020). Intercultural competences and job
satisfaction of expatriates: the mediating effect of positive psychological well-being.
International journal of organizational innovation, 12(3).
Guo, Q. (2019). Competency in Globalization and Intercultural Communication. The Wiley
Handbook of Global Workplace Learning, 277-299.
Genova, M. (2019). Intercultural and Civic Education–Good Practices. Професионално
образование, 21(2), 185-199.
Jacobs, R. L. (2019). Critical Incident Technique. In Work Analysis in the Knowledge Economy
(pp. 129-143). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Yang, H. (2019). On Hofstede’s Two Cultural Dimensions: Individualism-Collectivism and
Power Distance.
Huang, S. S., & Crotts, J. (2019). Relationships between Hofstede's cultural dimensions and
tourist satisfaction: A cross-country cross-sample examination. Tourism management, 72,
232-241.
Merkin, R. S. (2018). Masculinity-Femininity Applied to Cooperative and Competitive
Facework. In Saving Face in Business (pp. 137-164). Palgrave Macmillan, New York.
Barker, K., Day, C. R., Day, D. L., Kujava, E. R., Otwori, J., Ruscitto, R. A., ... & Xu, T. (2017).
Global Communication and Cross-Cultural Competence: Twenty-First Century Micro-
Case Studies. Global Advances in Business Communication, 6(1), 5.
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