Competencies, as desirable sets of behaviours in a given job provide “roundtables” for all work improvement efforts. A set of 2 + 1 competencies is suggested, addressing work improvement in recruitment, training, leadership and performance processes in intercultural work contexts. It is also suggested to move from emphasis on cultural differences to commonalities in people processes to enhance intercultural exchange in the ever globalising world of work.

Three or four personal characteristics
There has appeared a small plethora of research on performance and adaptation of individuals working in intercultural settings. This research has sparked equally vivid development of assessment instruments and today there are almost ninety single assessment tools available (Fantini, 2005). Research reviews on intercultural success tend to concur on the personal characteristics that stand out as beneficial for adaptation and performance in a wide array of intercultural work settings.

It may be summarised that, despite terminological differences, there appears to be between three to four broad personal factors important for intercultural work effectiveness. Perceptual-attitudinal factors appear in the reviews with reference to terms such as perceptual orientations, tolerance of ambiguity and cultural empathy. Secondly, social interaction and communication also appear as important preconditions of success in almost all the reviews. Thirdly, the ability to withstand stress appears as a factor enhancing intercultural adaptation or “acculturation”. The fourth category of personal factors is a heterogeneous set of personality traits exemplified with terms such as self-confidence, flexibility, respect, etc. While personal characteristics serve as useful checklists when recruiting people to intercultural work settings, they fail to provide useful leverage points for influencing the behaviour processes involved in intercultural work.

Competencies as roundtables to work improvement
The concept of competency contrasts with personal characteristics in its emphasis on behaviours performed in predefined contexts (e.g., Spencer & Spencer, 1993). Sandberg (2000) distinguishes between worker-oriented and work-oriented approaches to competence. The former views competence as composed of attributes possessed by workers, typically represented as knowledge, skills, abilities and other personal (KSAOs) attributes required for effective performance. In the latter approach, important task activities are first identified and then transformed or otherwise related to worker attributes, e.g., ability to inspire others. Here, competency is defined simply as a set of activities (behaviours and cognitions) that the individual (or workgroup) should master for adequate or superior performance in a given task, job or problem situation.

In addition to emphasis on behaviours performed in a predefined context, the competency concept underscores a multiple structure. For example, not only is it necessary to have a skill to do something, one should also possess motivation to perform the task. Or, strong motivation to do something is rarely enough to fulfil a task -- knowledge is also needed to reach a satisfactory performance level.

A potentially useful conceptual solution proposed here is to distinguish between competencies and their regulatory or “driver” processes (Nederström & Niitamo, 2010). Such driver-outcome distinction makes the still vague concept of competence more understandable. The view of competencies “driven” by underlying motivational, thinking and attitude processes offers a leverage point for work improvement efforts: change interventions can be targeted on either the driver or outcome end of a competent behaviour.

The emphasis on behaviours makes competencies the premium choice for integrated work improvement efforts. From the work organisation’s perspective, competencies indicate such valued and recognised behaviours which promote and reward in recruitment, training, leadership as well as performance management.

Competencies serve as hubs or “roundtables” for all work improvement efforts. Selection, training and development, coaching, leadership and performance management can be coordinated with a shared competency conception thus increasing manageability of planning. Workers are provided with sets of objectives with which to work towards and are clear about how they are expected to perform their tasks.

2 + 1 model of intercultural work competence
All the single but often overlapping personal characteristics in the research reviews were summarised into three broad categories of perceptual-attitudinal, interaction-communication and stress management factors. Three behavioural competencies were delineated upon these categories. The goal was to define a set of competencies vital to success in all work situations that involve a reasonable amount of intercultural exchange. This would cover anything from work accomplished in multicultural work teams to situations involving people moving to work in foreign culture environments.

Handling ambiguity-diversity appears an obvious formulation for a perceptual-attitudinal competency in intercultural work settings. Exposure to new cultures always involves perceptual challenges. Newcomers to previously unfamiliar cultures are bombarded with ambiguous stimuli and meanings upon which they must make sense. Broad perception, a tendency to look at things in an abstracting manner enables relating disparate things together and therefore increases understanding. Therefore, it is plausible to assume that broad rather than narrow perception enhances understanding and handling of ambiguity and diversity.

True cooperation
According to the reviews, social interaction and communication are the founding elements of intercultural exchange. However, it is suggested that these somewhat esoteric terms be replaced with the more common sense term of cooperation.

Cooperation summarises the same critical elements while molding them into goal-oriented form. “True” cooperation may be evaluated by observing performance in three sub-processes of cooperation: creating and maintaining contacts, advising and supporting others and, serving and listening to other people (Nederström & Niitamo, 2010). These sub-processes can be used to differentiate between different intercultural work settings. For example, contact creation may be of pronounced importance in international business while advisory processes may be high in demand within aid and assistance type of work. Division of cooperation into such sub-processes also allows differentiating between individuals’ resources and drawbacks and to target change efforts accordingly.

Coping with stress through interaction with others
The third broad competency concerns people who are moving to new cultural work and living environments. Moving to live and work in another culture will almost invariably cause at least some emotional stress. The more distance to one’s own cultural environment, the more stress may be expected.

The classical term “culture shock” was introduced by Kalervo Oberg in describing experiences of people moving to live and work in foreign countries (Oberg, 1960). Accordingly, culture shock is precipitated by the anxiety that results from losing familiar signs and symbols of social intercourse. Oberg went so far as to name culture shock an occupational disease consisting of sequential phases along sojourns to foreign culture environments.

The studies and reviews on personal factors in predicting acculturation speak of “low stress” individuals. The problem is that “ability to withstand stress” is not an established construct in general psychology - very few such people really exist. Of course, when HR professionals speak of stress tolerance they have in mind a particular set of stressors in a given target job, e.g., operative time pressures, health and security risks or interpersonal conflicts. But instead of an esoteric personal characteristic, a much more fruitful approach is to focus on the ways people tend to cope with stress (Folkman & Lazarus, 1980).

Coping with stress can be said to comprise five styles: direct action, interaction with others, rational analysis and planning, detachment from the stressor and focusing on self. It is proposed that interaction with others, i.e., asking for, and accepting support from others, emerges as a prime means of dealing with stress in intercultural living contexts. The fact that all of the newcomer’s activities, particularly in the beginning phase, depend on interaction with host culture representatives would make interaction a critically important way of coping with stress for sojourners to foreign cultures.

Towards common sense concepts in intercultural exchange
Anthropological and popular concepts that emphasise cultural differences have dominated the discussion on intercultural exchange. The empirical research tradition of acculturation originates from the experiences of westerners sojourning to “exotic” cultures. The “us and them” mentality that emanates from Europe’s colonial times still echoes in these studies. Instead of facilitating true intercultural exchange, such an approach carries the risk of really erecting glass walls between members of different cultures, thus resulting in an aquarium-like situation between members of the observer and observed culture.

What is proposed here is a change of perspective to common sense, or if you will, socio-psychological concepts that draw upon universality of the human condition. With emphasis on commonalities in people from all cultures, this perspective should be more functional in enhancing intercultural exchange. Perhaps cultural differences are not as profound, exclusive, dichotomous and dramatic as has been thought previously.

Developmental psychologists talk about ”bicognition” as a natural strand in human development and they view, for example, bilingualism as an asset or competency rather than a problem (Ramirez & Castaneda, 1974). In the same vein, biculturalism theory (LaFromboise et al., 1993) lays out the notion of being able to function competently within two cultures, without loss of original cultural identity or feelings of having to choose one culture over another. The theory rejects many of the dichotomies implicit in previous conceptualisations of acculturation and intercultural exchange.

References
Fantini, A.E. (2006). 87 Assessment tools of intercultural competence [Electronic version]. Brattleboro, VT: School for International Training. http://www.sit.edu/publications/docs/feil_appendix_f.pdf

Folkman, S & Lazarus, R. (1980). An analysis of coping in a middle-aged community sample. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 21, 219-239.

LaFromboise, T., Coleman, H.L.K & Gerton, J. (1993). Psychological impact of biculturalism: Evidence and theory. Psychological Bulletin, 14, 395-419.

Nederström, M. & Niitamo, P. (2010). Construction and validation of a work personality inventory. http://tuta.tkk.fi/en/library/collections/reports/#user_content_workpsychology

Oberg, K. (1960). Culture shock: adjustment to new cultural environments. Practical Anthropology, 7, 177-182.

Ramirez, M. & Castaneda, A. (1974). Cultural democracy, bicognitive development, and education. New York: Academic Press.

Sandberg, J. (2000). Understanding human competence at work: An interpretative approach. Academy of Management Journal 43, 1, 9-25.
Spencer, L.M., & Spencer, S.M. (1993). Competence at work. New York: John Wiley.

Petteri Niitamo currently serves as an adjunct professor of competencies at Aalto University with campuses in Helsinki and Singapore. He is also the author of the multilingual WOPI competence development system www.wopi.net. The present article can be downloaded in full length at this website.