Intercultural Competence: Toward Global Understanding

Abstract

Globalization and its driving forces have led to attempts by both scholars and practitioners to deepen our understanding of people’s abilities and strategies to act and interact with others in global, diverse, and complex environments. Education has aimed to keep pace with global socioeconomic changes in order to educate future citizens and members of the workforce. In addition to global competence, conceptualizations of intercultural (communication) competence are widely used not only in the context of education but also in the context of work and organizations. While consensus on the conceptualization of this issue is still lacking, several attempts have been made to deepen the understanding of both the theoretical trajectory and the ongoing state of conceptualization of intercultural competence over the past decades. Emerging approaches, however, have also created some contextual imbalances, for instance, between research on higher education and vocational education and training or Western versus non-Western perspectives. This chapter discusses some of the current debates on and approaches to intercultural competence in the context of education and work.