The Impact of Intercultural Competence in International Business Essay

This essay delves into the significance of intercultural competence within the realm of international business, highlighting the impact of globalization on organizational culture and employee dynamics. It explores key concepts such as intercultural competence, which encompasses the ability to effectively interact with diverse teams and navigate cultural differences. The essay examines core dimensions of intercultural competence, including attitude, knowledge, and skills, while also addressing potential barriers like ethnocentrism, stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. It elucidates various strategies for cultivating intercultural competence, such as developing an intercultural mindset, honing intercultural skillsets, and fostering intercultural sensitivity, ultimately emphasizing the importance of these competencies for business expansion and fostering a positive, inclusive work environment.

International business
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Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................3
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................4
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INTRODUCTION
Globalisation has highly impacted organisational culture. It has enabled working with
people of different background, caste and creed by creating a diversified culture. Besides that,
there is great positive impact on employee efficiency as well. They are able to work in team and
attain goals and objectives. However, in present times, every business is trying to gain
competitive advantage in industry. Moreover, there are various trends as well which have
emerged in culture.
MAIN BODY
As said by Kuźmińska-Haberla (2018), intercultural competence means range of
competencies which allow functioning with multi-cultural and diversified teams and people. It
helps in understanding culture of other people, creating relationships with them and working to
attain common goals. Some of the important competences in this are team cooperation,
leadership and sharing of knowledge. Culture plays an important role in shaping business
environment. This is because it involves people of varied castes and creeds to work together.
Moll (2012), stated that there are three core dimensions of intercultural competence
namely, attitude, knowledge and skills. These all enable understanding culture of each other and
having open communication with them. The importance of these competences in business is that
they help in developing new products and trading with foreign clients. In order to expand in
other countries, business must have diversified work force. This is because it enables
understanding culture of that nation and needs of the people as well. Along with that, skills and
knowledge are shared by staff by working in team. Having competent employees with diversified
culture creates a positive environment. This results in employee retention and creating a good
reputation in market. Besides that, it increases ability to adapt and work in new culture and as
well as their efficiency. They like to interact with co-workers and promote culture. It leads to
shaping values, attitude and behaviour towards others. Employees who are open minded are able
to gain competence quickly because they easily accept and learn new knowledge.
On other hand as Spencer-Oatey and Franklin (2012), said that there are some staff who are
close minded and not able to learn knowledge quickly. So, it leads to discrimination as their
perception is changed towards others. They try to distance themselves from others and do not
like to communicate and develop relationship. Furthermore, they show negative attitude and
behaviour and are not able to adapt to new environment.
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But as critiqued by Sycara, Gelfand and Abbe (2013), if culture shapes values, ethics,
attitude and behaviour of different people then it leads to misperceptions, conflicts and issues to
understand each other and develop mutual understanding. Furthermore, there are several barriers
as well in interculture competence in international business. They are ethnocentrism,
stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination. Here, ethnocentrism means belief on one’s own
cultural norms, ethics and values. So, it leads to thinking that their culture is superior than others.
This hampers their behaviour and perception. However, stereotype refers to as distorted view of
ethnic group and race. In this, there is no information obtained about it which further leads to
counteract them. As per Wolff and Borzikowsky (2018), prejudice is negative attitude towards
other cultural groups. This results in acting as a barrier in intercultural communication.
Discrimination means to treat others on basis of race, sex and gender. Thus, these all are barriers
which hamper intercultural competence. So, it is necessary to maintain and develop an effective
communication in business so that all people are comfortable to interact with each other. Also,
they are able to understand culture, respect values and have positive attitude towards it.
As elucidated by
Moll (2012), intercultural competence is gained in three ways. Here, the first way is by
developing intercultural mindset. In this cultural differences must be recognised and solved.
Moreover, all employee must maintain positive attitude towards others. It is done by possessing
cultural awareness and knowledge. The second way is intercultural skillset. Here, people must
have ability to use learning framework to determine misunderstood areas. They should select
appropriate behaviour accordingly. It includes empathy and relationship building skills. The last
way is intercultural sensitivity. This refers to having capability to identify cultural difference in
specified way. This includes open mind and tolerance of ambiguity. So, these all are ways by
which intercultural competence is gained in international business.
CONCLUSION
Hereby, it is summarised that intercultural competence is important for business as it allows
in expanding in new markets and creating positive culture. The core dimensions of intercultural
competence are attitude, knowledge and skills. There are certain barriers as well such as
ethnocentrism, stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination.
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REFERENCES
Books and journals
Kuźmińska-Haberla, A., 2018 INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCE IN INTERNATIONAL
BUSINESS OPERATIONS.
Moll, M., 2012. Communicating Meaning. In The Quintessence of Intercultural Business
Communication (pp. 35-54). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.
Spencer-Oatey, H. and Franklin, P., 2012. What is culture. A compilation of quotations.
GlobalPAD Core Concepts, pp.1-22.
Sycara, K., Gelfand, M. and Abbe, A. eds., 2013. Models for intercultural collaboration and
negotiation. New York, NY, USA: Springer.
Wolff, F. and Borzikowsky, C., 2018. Intercultural competence by international experiences? An
investigation of the impact of educational stays abroad on intercultural competence and
its facets. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 49(3), pp.488-514.
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