Does Globalisation Improve Intercultural Competence?

Globalisation started when men left their homelands in search of economic gains in 3000 BC. Today, globalisation is ubiquitous. Seasonal foods are now available off-season. Newly launched fashion in Europe is readily available in stores the next day in Asia. Companies have access to talent and clients worldwide just by clicking the mouse.

Economic development and political exchange require global mobility. This mobility gave rise to diplomats, expatriates and economic migrants. With an increase in cross-border mobility, research has shown that individuals who have spent as little as three months abroad have seen an increase in their intercultural competence.

The most significant improvement in a person’s intercultural competence is reflecting on one’s cultural identity compared to another culture, which subsequently increases self-awareness.

Globalisation brought about massive shifts in our way of life. As such, engaging with people from other cultures has become necessary. To effectively engage, collaborate, and relate with people from different cultures, we need intercultural skills, one of which is intercultural competence. Intercultural competence was once viewed as an essential skill only for international relations. However, for organisations to expand beyond their locality, almost everyone, from the leaders to employees, needs intercultural competence to thrive.

With information easily accessible through our mobile devices, is travelling and living abroad still necessary to improve our intercultural competence? What does it mean to have intercultural competence? How does it help in engaging, collaborating, and relating to others?

To answer these questions, we will delve deeper into understanding the Intercultural Competence Framework and how globalisation shapes this competence in the individual.

Globalisation: Past vs Present

Globalisation is the interaction and integration between people, organisations, businesses, and governments brought about by trade, investments, and cultural exchange. It has rapidly increased in the past two decades. This can be seen by the ubiquitous brick-and-mortar brands of McDonald’s and Starbucks available in every city block and suburb, the e-commerce brands of Amazon and Alibaba as bookmarks on our browsers, and the devices in our pockets of Apple, Samsung, or Huawei.

Since humanity started leaving their homelands for economic gains, the world has experienced globalisation. Historians believe the first long-distance trade occurred around 3000 BC between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley in Pakistan. They traded luxury goods such as textiles, spices, and metals. Not long after, civilisations with abundant commodities established trading routes that gave them riches to expand their cities.

Fast forward a few centuries later, globalisation has seamlessly integrated into our daily lives. Brands that were once available within a country are now established across the world. Supplies for producing goods that were once locally sourced are now globally sourced at competitive prices. For example, fast fashion companies may have sourced their cotton in Kazakhstan, dyes from India, and then assembled in Cambodia before distributing them to regional warehouses worldwide. This allowed fast fashion brands to keep their prices low.

With the (almost) free flow of information on the Internet, some may say that travel is no longer necessary to learn and experience other cultures. We can access movies, music, TV shows, and various content via cloud and streaming services for a minimal fee or for free.

This begs the question… Can we develop intercultural competence in the comfort of our homes while still collaborating and working effectively with people from other parts of the world?

How Does Intercultural Competence Help?

Academics and researchers have proposed and attempted to define Intercultural Competence. Generally, Intercultural Competence consists of the individual’s knowledge, behaviours and attitudes that enable them to effectively communicate, interact and relate with people from other cultures to accomplish their goals. Intercultural Competence can help to navigate cultural complexities by

• Attaining cultural knowledge as well as reflecting upon one’s own culture
• Having the right attitude in engaging and interacting with others to achieve the best outcome for everyone
• Recognising and considering cultural nuances and group dynamics in their interactions
• Adjusting their speech and behaviours to suit the other cultures’ expectations

One common myth about people with Intercultural Competence is that they will forgo their own cultural values, norms, and beliefs to adopt another. On the contrary, research has shown that when interacting with people from another culture, one becomes more aware of one's cultural values, norms, and beliefs. With increased self-awareness, individuals become conscious of decisions made, and adjustments needed that suit them best in foreign situations.

If you wish to expand beyond your borders, having Intercultural Competence will be advantageous in accessing new markets and tapping into the global talent pool. Venturing into new markets requires having cultural knowledge, understanding cultural nuances, and having the right attitude or behaviour adjustment to be safe for your business. For example, Starbucks ventured into Vietnam, the coffee capital of Southeast Asia, but struggled to gain traction with the Vietnamese, unlike other Southeast Asian nations.

While Starbucks’ struggle is a combination of many factors, having intercultural competence early on may help the company prepare for and reduce its risk of expanding to new markets. As companies search for more significant growth in foreign markets, will our highly interconnected world and abundant accessible knowledge be sufficient to improve Intercultural Competence?

Can Globalisation Improve Intercultural
Competence?

Globalisation can aid certain aspects of developing intercultural competence, though not entirely. Intercultural competencies consist of three essential elements: Attitudes, Knowledge, and Skills.

Attitude

Attitude is a combination of emotions and beliefs towards an object, person, event or issue. Before the intercultural encounter, individuals can develop the right attitudes. Attitudes such as respect, openness, and curiosity can help one be effective without prior knowledge or adopting the other’s cultural behaviours.

Generally, psychologists have long known that attitudes are difficult to change, implying that the development of intercultural competence may only be suitable for some.

Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. Viktor E. Frankl 

Knowledge

Cultural knowledge is wide-ranging and encompasses customs, history, politics, economics, language and many more. Access to abundant knowledge on the internet allows one to find information about another culture quickly. Expatriate groups, bloggers, media companies, governments, academics and many
more have published their knowledge online and in books. They willingly share anecdotes, observations and research on various global cultures. Here are a couple of fantastic resources to start with:

• BBC Country Profiles
• SBS Cultural Atlas

With the abundance of easily accessible knowledge, you can gain relevant intercultural knowledge with limited experience. However, do bear in mind that cultural experiences are personal and relative. The experiences of a Taiwanese and an Australian businessperson can significantly differ when negotiating with a Chinese company. Knowledge obtained through study should be kept as a guide and not treated as the Bible. The development of intercultural competence requires lived experience.

Skill

Skills are the ability to practically apply knowledge in various contexts to achieve the desired outcome. Intercultural competence refers to the individual’s flexibility in adapting verbal and non-verbal communication to understand and engage with people from another culture. Other skills related to intercultural competence are empathy, perspective-taking, and deciphering
unspoken rules of another culture.

While one can read books and watch videos, these skills can only be improved with practice and the accumulation of experiences. Globalisation has made cities into cultural melting pots. Cities such as Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, London, Sydney, New York and many others contain pockets of the world’s cultures. If you live in a multicultural city, seeking out multicultural experiences and building a diverse social network will help you gain the experiences required. However, if you live in a homogenous society, the opportunities to gain intercultural experiences will be limited.

Experience without theory is blind, but theory without experience is more intellectual play. Immanuel Kant

Does Globalisation Improve Intercultural
Competence?

Globalisation touches nearly every corner of the earth. It plays a vital role in expanding businesses and developing intercultural competence among individuals. However, we must remember that intercultural competence is not a status or a certificate to be obtained. Instead, it’s a lifelong process of learning and personal development.

This post is updated from the originally published post on Culture Spark Global on 11 November 2021 and written by the same author, Ling Ling Tai.