Handbuch Sprache in Organisationen

Stephan Habscheid, Andreas P. Müller, Britta Thörle, Antje Wilton, Stephan Habscheid, Andreas P. Müller, Britta Thörle, Antje Wilton

• Verlag: De Gruyter
• Jahr: 2018
• eBook-ISBN: 9783110389067
• Auflage: 1
• Thema: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Thema: Deutsch

Zwischen der "Mikroebene" sprachlichen Handelns und Interagierens auf der einen, der "Makroebene" kollektiver sprachlich-kommunikativer Praktiken und Strukturen auf der anderen Seite ist die zwischengelagerte Ebene der organisationalen Kommunikation systematisch in den Blick zu nehmen: Quer zu den verschiedenen gesellschaftlichen Institutionen, Wissens- und Handlungsfeldern legen organisationsspezifische Rationalisierungen dem Sprachgebrauch spezifische Bedingungen auf, sei es in Form von Standardisierung oder eines normativen und kalkulierten Umgangs mit sprachlicher und kultureller Diversität. Wir gehen von der Beobachtung aus, dass die mehrsprachige, interkulturelle und professionell stark ausdifferenzierte kommunikative Praxis in der heutigen Organisation zu einem Normalfall geworden ist. Mit dem Ziel einer breiten Abdeckung bezieht das Handbuch Sprache in Organisationen die Objektsprachen Deutsch, Englisch, Französisch und Spanisch und die Kulturen der jeweiligen Sprachräume ein.

VAnwendungsfelder der Organisationslinguistik

Peter Franklin/Helen Spencer-Oatey

21.Developing Intercultural Interaction Competence in Organisations

Abstract: The article opens with brief examples of the varied contexts in which professionals with expert knowledge of intercultural communication are commissioned by organisations to help improve organisational and individual performance.

The development needs that are evident in these contexts entail a broader repertoire of competencies than those generally reflected in the term intercultural communication skills, and so the next section elaborates on the concept of intercultural interaction competence (ICIC), reporting on the numerous sub-competencies which go to make up the ability to perform joint and purposeful activity effectively and appropriately across cultures.

The third section reports on approaches to developing the ICIC of members of organisations, discussing desirable framework conditions for the development intervention, its possible goals, the nature of the cognitive, affective and behavioural development outcomes which can be achieved, and the content, methods and tools available to the intercultural developer.

The article finishes with a brief consideration of the qualification profile of interculturalists engaged in this kind of work, pointing out that a multi-disciplinary background will enable interculturalists to meet a broad range of organisational and human resource development needs in the area of intercultural communication which go beyond the ‘mere’ development of communicative foreign-language skills.

1Organisational scenarios for developing intercultural interaction competence

2The concept of intercultural interaction competence

3Approaches to developing intercultural interaction competence in organisations

4The qualification profile of intercultural competence developers

5References

1Organisational scenarios for developing intercultural interaction competence

In many organisations across world, especially those with an overt performanceorientation (Javidan 2004), there is a requirement to enhance the fulfilment of an organisation’s purpose or vision by optimizing both its outputs and the processes employed to achieve them. This may be done in various ways, such as through research and development activities and advice by external consultants. A further key approach is to implement organisational development measures and, in particular, measures designed to enhance the qualification profile of individual members of the organisation.

This latter requirement is especially acutely felt in organisations working internationally, whose work settings and interactions are marked by increased and increasing linguistic and cultural complexity. Thirty-five years ago in Germany, for example, organisations practically exclusively focused on the linguistic challenge of foreign trade by providing foreign language training for their staff.

Demand for foreign language training – often now on much higher levels – still today forms a major part of organisations’ response to handling the complexity of their international activities. But, with increasing globalisation, organisations have recognised the need to enhance their international interactions by tackling the cultural complexity brought about by increased contact with diverse national, ethnic and religious cultures. Setting up sales offices and subsidiaries abroad, managing joint ventures and strategic alliances with foreign partners, and making mergers and acquisitions across the globe succeed are massively more complex tasks than the comparatively simple trading activities practised and perfected over many, many years. Increasingly, organisations are also becoming more aware of the benefit to be gained by leveraging the potential benefits of the diverse perspectives that cultural complexity brings with it. For example, major European manufacturers are increasingly setting up research and development centres in fastgrowing Asian economies not just to be closer to the customer but also to tap the innovative potential of different cultural perspectives available there.

Such increased complexity has led to still rising demand from organisations for measures to develop the intercultural interaction competence of their staff. These development needs, which those with expert knowledge of intercultural communication have the potential to satisfy as consultants, trainers and coaches, are extremely diverse, as is illustrated by the following examples taken (but disguised for reasons of confidentiality) from the recent professional practice of the present authors:

a)	a major European carmaker needs to develop the intercultural management competence of its Chinese high potentials located in China as a way of reducing its dependence on costly expatriate European managers
b)	a small, long-established, family-run manufacturing business occupying a niche in an increasingly competitive market, having bought a similar company in Scandinavia, sets up a production plant in Central Europe and now requires expert help to raise general awareness throughout the company of its increased international activity and to select and develop those with the potential to work at the international interfaces
c)	staff in a UK-based research and development subsidiary of a Chinese company are experiencing difficulties communicating with their head office and would like help in improving the situation
d)	the hitherto senior scientific officer at a large continental European multinational company needs to be prepared for his first ever expatriate assignment, which also involves taking on the challenges of his first largely managerial position involving considerable budget and personnel responsibility in the UK
e)	a New Delhi-born but largely UK-bred accountant, who, having set up a subsidiary of his Germany-based multinational company in southern India, requires intercultural support when he, his wife and his children are moved directly from India to headquarters in Germany
f)	a group of apprentices needs to be prepared for a three-week work-experience stay at one of the foreign subsidiaries of their company.

Whereas potential linguistic challenges are certainly apparent in these examples, the larger challenge was seen by the organisations involved to lie in the cultural complexity to be handled. The perceived development need was in all cases to enhance the intercultural interaction competence (ICIC) of those involved.

2The concept of intercultural interaction competence

2.1‘Intercultural interaction’ vs. ‘intercultural communication’

We choose to use the more inclusive term ‘intercultural interaction’ rather than ‘intercultural communication’ because in the organisational context it is necessary to acknowledge explicitly that the communication between people from different cultural backgrounds goes beyond ‘mere communication’ to include joint, purposeful activity pursued in the fulfilment of an organisation’s purpose. Whereas the constituents of conventional concepts of communication – the (co-)construction of content meaning and of rapport – are naturally prominent features of such joint, purposeful activity, the management of the subsequent actions and the handling of the consequences it has for the individual and the organisation are also of crucial importance. Such individual consequences may be, for example, the need to manage the personal, dual acculturative stress that results from adaptation to both an unfamiliar national culture and an unfamiliar organisational culture which may be demanded of an individual involved in cross-border organisational mergers. The organisational consequences may be, for instance, the need to handle conflicts which lead to frictional losses and a failure to achieve the organisational goals in time and on budget.

2.2‘Competence’ vs. ‘effectiveness’

What makes some individuals more successful than others in contexts marked by cultural otherness has been investigated ever since shortly after the end of World War II by scholars from various disciplines – psychology, communication studies, applied linguistics, management studies. This has led to a rich literature, especially of US provenance, about the nature of the success factors but its results are marked by terminological and conceptual confusion.

Two of the most frequently occurring terms used in the literature to describe this success are ‘effectiveness’ and ‘competence’. The former, which is often favoured by US psychologists and communication studies scholars in their writings, is important to those in organisational contexts with its strongly transactional emphasis on getting things done and achieving organisational purposes.

However, the use of the broader term ‘competence’ allows us to go beyond the element of ‘effectiveness’ as the criterion for success in intercultural settings. It can be conceptualised more readily also to include the concept of ‘appropriateness’, a familiar notion in applied linguistics and foreign language pedagogy and so crucial in intercultural contexts. What may be effective – in terms of task achievement – may not be contextually appropriate and therefore not an expression of sustainable competence because of its damage to rapport.

We thus use the term ‘competence’ rather than ‘effectiveness’ in the phrase ‘intercultural interaction competence’ to refer to the ability to act and communicate (verbally and non-verbally) both effectively and appropriately in joint, purposeful activity with people from other cultural groups. It also encompasses the ability to handle the psychological demands and dynamic outcomes of such interchanges.

However, if the goal is to promote the abilities of people working at the intercultural interfaces of organisations, this conceptualization, though academically adequate, is scarcely fit for purpose. In short, the conceptualisation does not tell us what people need in order for them to ‘do’ intercultural interaction well or better – which is, after all, the key objective when organisations seek to improve the performance of their people.

It is thus clearly necessary to unpack the term ‘intercultural interaction competence’ so that the interculturalist can determine the aims, content and methods of his/her development intervention. What does ‘competence’ consist of?

2.3Intercultural interaction competence

Psychologists and communication scholars have attempted to characterise ICIC through numerous empirical studies. In a six-page overview table, Dinges/Baldwin (1996) list the purpose, design, method, subjects and results of 22 such studies published from 1985 to 1993. Other scholars, such as Arasaratnam/Doerfel (2005), Hammer (1989) and Spitzberg (1989), have undertaken similar, more or less comprehensive reviews. As Spencer-Oatey/Franklin (2009, 57) comment:

The various lists of such empirically derived factors yield a somewhat diffuse but intuitively plausible picture of the components of ICIC. Open-mindedness, non-judgmentalness (sometimesreferred to as interaction posture), empathy, tolerance for ambiguity, flexibility in thinking and behaviour, self-awareness, knowledge of one’s own and other cultures, resilience to stress, and communication or message skills (including foreign language proficiency, although this is less frequently mentioned) are among the components which are identified as playing an important role in the creation of appropriateness and effectiveness in intercultural interaction.

The numerous studies, which can be seen as contributing individual stones to an overall mosaic, have led to attempts to reflect the insights through conceptual frameworks. Notable examples are the frameworks generated by Ting-Toomey (1999) with its components ‘knowledge blocks’, ‘mindfulness’ and ‘communications skills’; by Chen/Starosta (2005) with its components ‘personal attributes’, ‘communication skills’, ‘psychological adaptation’ and ‘cultural awareness’ and by Gudykunst (2004) with its more classically psychological components ‘motivation’, ‘knowledge’ and ‘skills’.

These sub-competencies are also obvious to a certain extent in the more theoretical frameworks generated in the field of foreign language pedagogy by Byram (1997), and by Prechtl/Davidson Lund (2007) and especially in those developed by scholars and consultants working in the field of international management such as Kühlmann/Stahl (1998), Stahl (2001), Leslie et al. (2002), Earley/Ang (2003) and Schneider/Barsoux (2003).

The multidisciplinary framework presented by Spencer-Oatey/Franklin (2009) is eclectic in drawing on the insights from all of these approaches.

Tab. 1: Spencer-Oatey and Franklin’s (2009) Framework of Intercultural Interaction Competencies.

Message communication competencies (Spencer-Oatey/Franklin 2009, 83)
Message attuning	Picks up meaning from indirect signals such as paralanguage (e.g., intonation, speaking volume and speed, pausing) and non-verbal communication (e.g., eye contact and other elements of body language), and uses these signals to draw inferences about people’s message meanings
Active listening	Does not assume understanding – checks and clarifies the meaning of words and phrases, and tests own understanding
Building of shared knowledge	Discloses and elicits key information, including the intentions and broader context as to why something is said or requested, in order to help build trust and mutual understanding and to reduce uncertainty
Linguistic accommodation	Adapts use of language (e.g., choice of words, speed of delivery, clarity of pronunciation, use of colloquial expressions) to the proficiency level of the recipient(s)
Information structuring and highlighting	Structures and highlights information b...

Inhaltsverzeichnis

• Cover
• Titelseite
• Impressum
• Inhalt
• Sprache in Organisationen
• I Organisationale Interaktionstypen und kommunikative Gattungen
• II Organisationale Rationalisierung von Sprache und Kommunikation
• III Kommunikative Konstruktion organisationaler Identität
• IV Forschungsrichtungen
• V Anwendungsfelder der Organisationslinguistik
• Register