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Intercultural competence
Edited by Michael J. Morley and Jean-Luc Cerdin
Intercultural competence is increasingly necessary in today's global workplace as collaborative and coordinating demands increasingly stretch leaders' capacities to perceive, interpret and act in ways that achieve organizational goals. Since the early 1990s, an increasing number of scholars have been studying effective global leaders and attempting to delineate the competencies that are critical to their success. Reviews of this literature ([5] Bird and Osland, 2004; [38] Jokinen, 2005; [53] Mendenhall, 2001; [56] Mendenhall and Osland, 2002a, [100] b; [67] Osland, 2008; [69] Osland et al. , n.d., in press) find that social scientists have delineated over fifty competencies that influence global leadership effectiveness; however, many of these competencies overlap conceptually and are often separated only by semantic differences ([38] Jokinen, 2005; [67] Osland, 2008).
Greater clarity can be brought to the study of global leadership by delineating the specific content domain of constructs identified as essential to it. Progress in delineating the relationship of intercultural competence to global leadership effectiveness and performance is presently hampered due to varying conceptualizations of the content domain of intercultural competence, particularly with regard to the context of global leadership. In this paper, we will review the empirical findings from the global leadership and expatriation literatures related to intercultural competence and present a comprehensive formulation of intercultural competence.
Defining intercultural competence and global leadership
Perhaps because it has been widely addressed across a range of disciplines - from psychology to international management to education, to name a few - intercultural competency has been broadly defined as the ability to function effectively in another culture (see [24] Dinges and Baldwin, 1996; [28] Gertsen, 1990). As [20] Deardorff (2004) notes, there is widespread disparity in delineating what specifically comprises intercultural competence. In their review of literature, [15] Chen and Starosta (1996) point out that it is often described as involving affective, cognitive and behavioral perspectives. [49] Leiba-O'Sullivan (1999) further distinguishes between stable and dynamic competencies, noting that the former are stable and enduring, while the latter are more susceptible to development through training. Dynamic competencies are also highly context- and task-dependent. Within this paper we retain the broad definition and define the relevant content domain in terms of stable competencies, which are...