Cross-Cultural Competence Development for Business Students

Abstract

In today’s global economy, cross-cultural competence, or cross-culture intelligence (CQ), has become one of the critical skills for managers of various functions within an organization. Given the increasing diversity in all companies, the value of developing cross-cultural competence for improving company performance is not limited just to multinational corporations, but extends to all organizations. Likewise, the education and training of crosscultural competence are not limited to students who major in international business. Indeed, it is a necessity for all students but certainly for all business students. Scholars across all major business functions have argued the role of crosscultural competence in enhancing business outcomes. In marketing, CQ is necessary for better understanding and adapting to the diverse customer basse. CQ training is important not only for marketing managers but also for frontline marketing employees. For example, marketing managers’ CQ facilitates organizations’ marketing strategy adaptations in the global market and export performance (Magnusson et al. 2013). Service employees’ CQ is associated with improved customer loyalty outcomes in service encounters (Paparoidamis, Tran, and Leonidou 2019). Sales professionals can also benefit from CQ training with improved adaptive sales behaviors (Delpechitre and Baker 2017). In supply chain management, CQ influences the firms’ ability to manage cross-cultural relationships among supply chain partners. For example, managers’ CQ facilitates supply chain collaboration (Asree, Gopalan, and Zain 2016). Inter-cultural negotiators are more effective in using language to reduce social distance and achieve joint gains (Kern et al. 2012). In management and human resource development, employees’ individual CQ tends to enhance their job performance in both domestic setting (Nam and Park 2019) and international assignments (e.g., Che Rose et al. 2010). In addition, managers’ CQ is associated with positive leadership styles that facilitate other employees’ job performance (MacNab 2012).