Which Competence? A Comparative Analysis of Culture-specific vs. Culture-generic Intercultural Competence Development

Abstract

This paper takes a critical look at the type of approaches that prevail in the field of intercultural competence development and the uncritical perspectives with which these views are often circulated in academia and the wider community of international business and intercultural sojourns. It is all-too-common to find papers, models and frameworks that equate intercultural competence with culture specific competence. However, such approaches can never accurately portray a culture or prepare a person to deal with people in an appropriate, flexible and adaptable manner. This paper aims to assess and weigh the benefits and disadvantages of both culture-specific and culture-generic intercultural competence development, arguing that a combined approach constitutes the most desirable compromise between feasibility of training and effectiveness of training outcomes.