Intercultural Competence

Rationale for Developing Intercultural Competence in Multicultural America

For many people in multicultural America, the significance of intercultural competence is not always self-evident. Individuals will sometimes suggest that because various ethnic groups are living inside the geopolitical boundaries of the United States, they belong to a single culture, the American culture. However, there is an extensive list of cultural groups in America that share a national identity that provides unity and differing ethnic backgrounds that provide diversity. Americans are both unified and diversified, a core source of the idea of a multicultural America.

Therefore, intercultural competence is not simply a skill to be used only when traveling or receiving global visitors but a daily requirement in the United States. The social context of Americans provides constant opportunities for interaction across cultures, where a person may negotiate, collaborate, resolve conflicts, and form significant relationships with those from other cultures, whether in business, government, the military, religious organizations, health care, education, or other arenas. That is the gift of living in a multicultural society. The concomitant responsibility is to learn to interact well.

Development of the Concept of Intercultural Competence

Historically, professionals rarely suggested that intercultural competence was a basis for successful human interaction. As global mobility was building in the 1950s and civil rights thrust cultures together, few considered culture competence intrinsic to the social transformation.

When the field of intercultural communication gained influence in the 1970s, it offered a new way to think about human discourse. Intercultural communication is the interactive process of creating shared meanings between people from different cultures. This communication inevitably takes place in a cultural context, with significant psychological, relational, and physical influences. Culture is learned through communication and, in turn, reveals the individual's cultural identity to others. Humans both create and express culture by communicating.

Whereas other models of communication build on the basis of similar values and beliefs, intercultural communication more often relies on the exploration of differences, a perspective particularly useful for building intercultural competence. For instance, in many places in the United States, people succeed in job interviews because they can clearly explain their accomplishments and enumerate their valuable skills. But there are many group-oriented cultures in the United States that consider forthrightness about one's own talents to be unseemly, and such articulate, self-promoting job seekers may not be hired. Interculturally competent applicants would endeavor to know the difference and adapt appropriately. Interculturally competent interviewers would understand that they should not expect stylistic conformity.

During the 1970s and 1980s, scholars and practitioners in management, psychology, linguistics, education, and communication began developing models of intercultural competence and creating lists of necessary components of a culturally competent mind-set and skill set. Brian Spitzberg and Gabrielle Changnon have enumerated approximately 300 such components. Although no one suggests that all such attributes and skills are essential to achieve competence, there is recognition that certain components are fundamental to becoming effective across cultures. However, the breadth of this listing supports the notion that intercultural competence varies by context; not every competence is essential in every situation.

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