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This article intends to explore the Sub-Saharan African students' perceptions on their cross-cultural adaptation to the Moroccan society by probing into their adaptive strategies adopted in order to overcome day-to-day challenges as well as factors impeding their adaptation processes. To this end, three central research questions are advanced: (1) what are the factors that influence Sub-Saharan students' cross-cultural adaptation to the Moroccan society? (2) How do Sub-Saharan students perceive the role of host communication competence, host interpersonal relationship, ethnic proximity, host receptivity and personality type in facilitating or hindering their adaptation? And (3) how do they undergo their cross-cultural adaptation to the Moroccan society?

The main aim of this article is to explore African Sub-Saharan students' perceptions on their adaptation to Moroccan society as well as factors affecting their adaptive experiences. Due to the complex nature of this research, opting for mixed-methods research, the combination of both qualitative and quantitative, would best serve the objective of this study. For this purpose, qualitative methods (interviews) are used to collect non-numerical data about factors that facilitate or hinder the cross-cultural adaptation of Sub-Saharan students in Morocco in the first phase, and then quantitative methods (questionnaires) are used to collect numerical data about their perceptions of their adaptation in the Moroccan society in the second phase.

The results of the present study revealed that a large number of Sub-Saran African students are well adapted to the Moroccan culture, but with discrepant degrees. Their adaptation is mainly influenced by an array of intersected factors. Firstly, the participants showed that the more they were aware of the Moroccan culture and language, the more likely they would be able to function properly and effectively in different social settings. Secondly, it was found that establishing social ties with the host members was perceived as significant for easing their adaptation due to the cultural, emotional and academic support these ties provided. Thirdly, host receptivity was perceived as an important factor that facilitated the students' cross-cultural adaptation. With the case of some participants, host receptivity, however, hindered their adaptation because they were subject to different types of discriminatory and racist behaviours by some Moroccans. Lastly, intercultural personality traits displayed in flexibility, prior cross-cultural move and intercultural empathy were found to contribute to the students' overall functional fitness in the

This is the first research to tackle the issue of Sub-Saharan African students' cultural adaptation in Morocco.

As the P-12 student landscape continues to grow in cultural and linguistic diversity, teacher preparation programs have yet to adequately prepare teacher candidates' teaching and learning skills in meeting the academic and socio-emotional needs of diverse student demographics. This article examines teacher candidates’ cultural competence and cultural responsiveness to enhance candidates' educator preparation and stimulate candidates' personal growth development as developing culturally and linguistically responsive new teachers. While many teacher preparation programs require one multicultural or diversity education course, the authors examine a minority serving institution's integration of a cultural immersion experience for teacher candidates as one way of supporting their development as culturally and linguistically sustaining pedagogues. This paper aims at supporting school districts' need of culturally competent new teachers who have the content knowledge and pedagogy to teach and support culturally and linguistically diverse children. Recognizing this need, this qualitative analysis highlights the importance of and a need for cultural and linguistic competence among teacher candidates. Findings from this study provides a means by which universities can implement cross-cultural coursework and field-based experiences to prepare culturally responsive teacher candidates.

Skilled migrants' careers are heterogeneous, with existing theories capturing only some of their diversity and dynamic development over time and circumstance. This paper aims to draw out the multilevel (macro, meso and micro levels) influences impacting skilled migrants' careers by using the lens of the intelligent career framework. Furthermore, structuration theory captures the agency of skilled migrants facing different social structures at and across levels and explains the idiosyncratic nature of skilled migrants' careers.

Following an abductive approach, this paper examines the career influences for a sample of 41 skilled migrants in three different host countries. Individual career stories were collected through qualitative interviews. Important career influences from these narratives are categorised across the intelligent career competencies (knowing why, how and whom) at the macro, meso and micro levels.

Findings illustrate the lived reality for skilled migrants of these interrelated multilevel career influences and go some way in elucidating the heterogeneity of skilled migrants' careers and outcomes. The interplay of individual agency in responding to both facilitating and challenging social structures across the multilevels further explains the idiosyncratic nature of skilled migrants' careers and how/whether they achieve satisfying career outcomes. Some potential policy implications and options arising from these findings are suggested.

By considering multilevel themes that influence skilled migrants' career capital, the authors were able to better explain the complex, relational and idiosyncratic shaping of their individual careers. As such, the framework informs and guides individuals, practitioners and organisations seeking to facilitate skilled migrants' careers.

In the study of expatriation and expatriate adaptation, there are limited studies that focus on issues faced by expatriates working in foreign countries with very distinct cultures. This study aims to explore this idea through the experiences of western expatriates working in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA). Two research questions were posed to examine the cross-cultural issues and challenges faced by expatriates in the KSA, as well as the role of cross-cultural training in expatriate adjustment.

The study was guided by an interpretivism paradigm through a qualitative method by using a semi-structured in-depth interview approach. Interviews were conducted among 12 expatriates from the USA and UK who are currently working in KSA.

A coding technique and theoretical thematic analysis was conducted to analyze the data. The results of this study highlighted three key themes that had a considerable influence on expatriates’ adjustment, in particular: culture shock, lack of pre-departure training and the demand for an extensive cross-cultural training.

It is acknowledged that the existence of sub-cultures within the KSA would expose the respondents to varying cultural values within the community. Thus, future studies within a similar context should consider the influence of intra-cultural variations.

The findings of the study emphasized on the importance understanding the cultural gap between home and host country and the individual cultural awareness of the expatriate. It calls attention to the need for a tailored and extensive pre-departure, cross-cultural training and a collaborative effort between employees’ and managers to improve expatriates’ motivation and retention.

Though there is broad agreement on the beneficial impact of diversity in management and leadership roles, much of the innovative capacity of an organization is realized at the unit level in working teams. Recent research points to cultural diversity having an especially significant impact on innovation team performance. The reports also highlight the need for the optimal team operating principles to derive maximum benefit. To prepare such innovation teams for success, it is valuable to understand the dynamics of team diversity at the project level and the underlying barriers and opportunities presented.

This paper reviews the literature and case studies on cultural inputs to ideation and innovation, assessing team diversity through readily available instruments and the deployment of the science of team science (SciTS) principles in innovation teams.

The key learnings include the importance of establishing communication standards, SciTS principles, team assessment of thinking styles and the utility of cultural awareness instruments.

Diversity provides a creative advantage for innovation teams. However, team dynamics play an important role in maximizing these advantages, and cross-cultural competence of team members is required. Deployment of appropriate assessment tools and team methodologies enhances the likelihood of successful outcomes including in remote team settings.

Literature from diverse functional areas is summarized including the science of team science, organizational management, diversity and inclusion methodologies and ethnocultural dynamics. It provides pointers for the optimal formation and operating principles with highly culturally diverse teams.

The purpose of this case study is to explore to what extent US university undergraduates participating in a research abroad program through US–Taiwan Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) developed intercultural awareness and cross-cultural adaptability skills. It also suggests additional program design features to enhance students' international experiences.

To better understand participants' experiences in the PIRE program, this study adopts a mixed-methods approach. Demographic questionnaires, pre- and postsurveys, observational field notes and individual interviews were conducted for data collection and analysis.

Students perceived the experience abroad to improve their intercultural awareness and skills such as openness to cultural differences, coping with challenges abroad and effectively working in diverse teams. Specifically, quantitative findings reflected group gains in the areas of flexibility/openness and perceptual acuity, whereas qualitative findings indicated growth in students' emotional resilience and personal autonomy.

Additional data collection methods, such as pre-/postinstruments or a longitudinal study would provide a more comprehensive assessment of the impact of education abroad on students' intercultural learning.

Evaluation of programs and outcomes can help identify areas to maximize student learning and assess the value of education abroad.

This is original research and makes a contribution to education abroad programs in postsecondary education.

This paper aims to explore how and why salespeople enhance or hinder long-term business-to-business (B2B) customer relationships at the interpersonal level by considering self-disclosure and relational cost and reward evaluations.

Data from interviews (N = 47) with B2B sales professionals were analyzed, focusing on the shift of the phases in long-term B2B customer relationships.

Long-term B2B customer relationships evolve at the interpersonal level through a process of continuous relational cost and reward evaluation, self-disclosure and business disclosure in three phases: becoming business partners, collaborative partners and collaborative and personal partners. The reward evaluations progress from being business related to including even more relational benefits. Disclosure progresses through general business disclosure and general self-disclosure; strategic business disclosure and personal life self-disclosure; and synergistic business disclosure and private self-disclosure.

The long-term B2B customer relationships could be studied at the interpersonal level from the customer’s perspective. Self-disclosure could be studied in cross-cultural settings as well as gender differences should be considered in future studies. Business and social penetration theory could be applied to investigate different types of relationships and other professional relationships, such as those between employers and employees. It would be important to test whether the business-related and self-disclosure subtypes apply to the development of other types of professional relationships or whether other disclosure subtypes exist. The authors recommend exploring salespeople’s and customers’ privacy management strategies in multiple communication channels.

Managers may apply the results of this study in their customer relationship management and sales training.

The findings outline a contextual extension of social penetration theory.

In today's global business environment, international assignments have become integral part of employee's job profile. Adaptation to a different cultural environment plays a role in affecting employee's performance. In such a situation, cultural intelligence plays an important role. In order to sustain in a diverse work setting, a global organization entails managers who are sensitive to different cultural requirements. Factors affecting cultural intelligence have been a major area of study. However, studies relating short-term foreign trips and their role on four aspect of cultural intelligence are lacking. Therefore, present study was undertaken to know role of foreign visits in affecting cultural intelligence among professionals of diverse background.

The present study is a primary study conducted for a sample of 120 respondents divided into two groups. One group comprised professionals having experience of foreign visits while other group comprised professionals who had not visited a foreign country. We use Levene’s Test for equality of variances was applied to assess the difference of variation of cultural intelligence between two different groups of respondents.

The results revealed that short-term trips play a significant role in affecting metacognitive, cognitive and motivational components of cultural intelligence. However, behavior cultural intelligence is not affected by short-term trips significantly.

Outcome of present research forms basis for future studies that can be conducted linking long-term trips and culture intelligence. This study is practically useful for improving cultural intelligence of professionals to enhance their success and effectiveness in international assignments.

The study adds novelty to the field of cultural intelligence as prior studies were lacking in relating role of short-term trips on four different components of cultural intelligence.

This qualitative research set out to understand what teachers’ assessments were of the context of teaching as it relates to the curriculum, and what they consider appropriate for an optimal teaching and learning experience in a university English language teaching (ELT) context.

Qualitative data were deemed required to understand the effects and understanding teachers had of the ELT curriculum as it played out in their teaching context. Focus group interviews and observations were the main method for data generation.

The context has a bearing on the ongoing development of teachers’ intercultural sensitivity (IS) frames and how they address IS over time in their context of teaching as it pertains to curriculum.

This is an original research paper which gives insight to knowledge about the relationship between ELT, curriculum and culture.

The purpose of this qualitative study is to examine the effects of expatriation on the development of career capital among the partners of expatriates.

The study draws on in-depth interviews with 30 Finnish partners of expatriates.

The results reflect the various learning experiences reported by partners of expatriates that developed their career capital during expatriation. The learning experiences related to the experience of living abroad itself and to the specific activities undertaken when abroad. The extent to which partners developed knowing-why, knowing-how and knowing-whom career capital was found to partly reflect their situation abroad as stay-at-home partners or as employees in less-demanding or more-demanding jobs. Though the experiences were developmental for all partners as have been reported among expatriates, the authors also identified several aspects in which partners' experiences differed from the typical developmental experiences of expatriates.

The results also highlight the influence of initiative, an active role and career self-management skills in partners' career capital development.

This paper advances the understanding of how expatriation affects expatriate partners' career capital, a topic that has not previously been studied in-depth.