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Although engineering doctoral students are at the forefront of discovery and innovation and have great potential for establishing partnerships to address engineering challenges crossing national borders, there are few studies of their intercultural competency. The purpose of this study is to identify factors that are associated with intercultural competency – the ability to work effectively in multicultural environments.

The intercultural competency levels of 390 engineering doctoral students were measured by using the Miville–Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale-Short Form (MGUDS-S). Data were analyzed using ordinary linear squares regression. Results are considered descriptive, rather than causal.

Results show that female engineering doctoral students are more likely to score higher on the MGUDS-S than male engineering doctoral students. Proficiency in multiple languages and previous work- or volunteer-related travel experiences are positively associated with doctoral students’ intercultural competency.

As internationalization of engineering research and innovation continues to expand, findings suggest that providing students with more opportunities and support for work- or volunteer-related travel and opportunities for learning new languages may help facilitate the development of intercultural competency and students’ willingness to engage in long-term international professional opportunities and research partnerships.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact that the level of individuals' intercultural competencies has on their satisfaction, trust and affective commitment and assessment of their work team.

An intercultural competencies classification system is developed in which the cognitive, affective and behavioural intercultural competencies predicted to impact upon individuals' responses toward, and assessments of, their work team are identified. The results of quantitative survey research providing support for the classification system are subsequently described.

Competencies identified as being related to individuals' responses toward, and assessments of, their work team include cognitive complexity, goal orientation, dissimilarity openness, tolerance for ambiguity and emotion, and conflict management skills.

The research provides sound evidence for the important role that intercultural competence plays in facilitating positive individual level outcomes which it is theorised will lead to positive team level outcomes.

The key contribution of the research is the development of an intercultural competencies classification system which ties together in a single but multifaceted framework the intercultural competencies required for employees working in culturally diverse teams.

This article aims to suggest implementing an integrated approach – named intercultural engineering – at university level. Engineering today often takes place across cultures, locations and organizations. As a result, many companies have included cross-cultural training activities into their internal human resource development program. However, current practice neglects the engineering context and might enable sophisticated stereotyping.

This article presents the case of a German bachelor study program in International Industrial Engineering and the theoretical foundations of its design.

Engineering education needs to move beyond simplistic comparative cross-cultural management theory. It needs to acknowledge cultural complexity in engineering through an integrated development of competencies for utilizing the benefits of cultural diversity.

The contribution of this article lies in providing a practical example of how to develop integrated competencies for cultural diversity in engineering, as based on latest theory.

Based on a review of multiple literatures, a comprehensive content domain of essential intercultural competencies for effective global leaders is presented. This domain is then used to guide the development of the Global Competencies Inventory (GCI), a 160-item self-report measure that assesses the degree to which individuals possess the intercultural competencies that are associated with global leader effectiveness. Using sample sizes ranging from several hundred to nearly 9,000 subjects, evidence from several studies is presented showing the GCI to have convergent validity, predictive validity, and freedom from demographic and ethnic subgroup biases. Implications for theory and future research are also discussed.

Research on expatriation and global leadership has been characterized by wide variations in defining what constitutes intercultural competence. Greater progress can be achieved if a comprehensive definition of the intercultural competence domain can be established, particularly with regard to the specific context of global leadership. This paper aims to focus on the issues.

The authors conduct an extensive review of the global leadership and expatriation literatures, integrating and synthesizing prior theoretical and empirical efforts to develop a comprehensive domain definition for intercultural competence in the context of global leadership.

The domain of intercultural competence in the context of global leadership comprised three dimensions – perception management, relationship management and self management. Each dimension is characterized by facets that further delineate aspects of intercultural competence.

The domain definition of intercultural competence for global leadership appears to be well supported in prior theoretical and empirical work focusing on expatriation and global leadership; however that work was fragmented in nature. A test of the comprehensive model, i.e. all three dimensions and 17 facets, is called for, as well as the validation of an instrument that measures them.

The paper integrates and synthesizes the extensive body of theoretical and empirical work related to intercultural competence and clearly establishes the content domain, thereby enhancing the efficacy of future theoretical and empirical efforts.

Based on the necessity for universities through the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic to switch to online teaching from one day to the other, this study aims to show how a combination of different online teaching approaches makes it possible to activate reflection as an enabler of intercultural competency development even though real experience, interaction and exchange elements could not be implemented as usual.

This study is based on insights on experiential learning using intercultural competence development through the mechanism of reflection in combination with findings from on- and offline learning settings and informal learning processes. Adapting Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning cycle, this study presents an online course design for an undergraduate course in intercultural competencies. This study delineates an assessment of the course based on student evaluation results and excerpts of student essays.

This study demonstrates how the acquisition of important future skills such as reflection skills can be successfully mastered by combining different online teaching approaches. This study also shows that Kolb’s (1984) experiential learning cycle continues to yield critical benefits when adapted it to the “new reality.”

This study provides a case study on how business schools can deal with special challenges in courses where competencies are taught, which are usually developed through real experiences or informal learning. An application to other types of experiential learning activities is considered valuable. It is useful to further adopt elements in a post-COVID-19 teaching environment. Especially using apps as described can contribute to make learning more tailored to each student. As such, this paper contributes to the body of research on the importance of reflection skills in an educational and virtual context.

The leaders of the future will have to lead with intercultural competence and with the ability to facilitate this development of competence in others. The development of skills in undergraduate students to meet this challenge is paramount to the establishment of effective leadership for the future. Within this study, researchers address the challenge by quantitatively examining intercultural competency outcomes students derive from leadership-based study abroad experiences. For five years, researchers utilized a pre-post intercultural competency survey of student participants in a leadership education study abroad program in Zambia, Africa. Using the Intercultural Effectiveness Scale (IES), data was analyzed for seventy-eight students who participated in this five-week study abroad course. The results demonstrate statistically significant growth on students’ intercultural competency across all ten measures of dimensions and sub-scales. Recommendations provide a framework for leadership educators to employ pedagogies that influence intercultural development within study abroad as a means of developing global leadership in their students.

Training designs are critical to the success of intercultural training programmes. A common typology for classifying intercultural training designs distinguishes among the following dimensions: experiential discovery versus didactic expository and culture‐specific versus culture‐general training. The purpose of this paper is to assess different intercultural training designs referring to this typology. First, a concept of intercultural competence is developed. Based on this concept experiential training designs are favoured as they allow to train the cognitive, affective and behavioural component of intercultural competencies. In the second part of the paper an empirical study in the USA and Germany is conducted in order to assess whether the degree of intercultural competencies differs between the two nations. As no considerable differences can be identified the benefit of culture‐general training is discussed. Significant skills to be focused on in intercultural training are described and specific measures for pre‐assessment devices in intercultural training are presented.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the human capital (HC) expatriates require and develop during an international assignment (IA) to work effectively and live contentedly in a host country.

Qualitative research entailing interviews with 78 expatriates and repatriates across the globe, investigating the competencies they developed and the HC they gained during their IAs.

Five interrelated competence clusters were derived: cultural competence (CC); interpersonal competence; intrapersonal competence; global business competence; global leadership competence, each containing competencies crucial for expatriate success.

This study relied on self-reports by expatriates and repatriates. Future research should also include senior/line managers and chief human resource officers from a range of organizations across the world to gather their assessments on the competencies and HC of expatriates and repatriates.

Line/HR managers can use the designed “Expatriate/Repatriate Human Capital model” to assess an individual's overall readiness and capacity to perform effectively in a foreign country and culture and consecutively identify and select the right candidates to undertake IAs.

This paper contributes to the literature by presenting a HC model called the “Expatriate and Repatriate Human Capital Model; the body of competence”. The model identifies and defines the competencies/knowledge, skills, abilities and other characteristics (KSAOs) required for intercultural effectiveness and expatriate success and serves as a tool for the selection, training, development and performance evaluation of expatriates and repatriates, in order to aid the accomplishment of individual and organizational objectives.

Canadian postsecondary institutions are increasing their emphasis on internationalization, sending many students abroad and welcoming students from far and wide onto their campuses. Also, Canadian organizations and multinational corporations have an increasingly diverse workforce. These trends require postsecondary institutions to prepare students adequately for this global village of the 21st century. At the University of Victoria’s (UVic’s) Co-operative Education Program and Career Services, we have created a strategy to help develop global ready graduates using a framework derived from Earley and Ang’s work on cultural intelligence (Earley & Ang, 2003). Cultural intelligence (CQ) is defined as an individual’s capability to function and manage effectively in culturally diverse settings (Ang & Van Dyne, 2008). A recently completed research project to measure the development of cultural intelligence of students participating in the UVic’s CANEU-COOP program formed the impetus for developing this CQ strategy (McRae, Ramji, Lu, & Lesperance, 2016). The strategy involves a framework that includes curriculum for inbound international students, outbound work-integrated learning (WIL) students, and all students preparing to work in diverse workplaces. In addition to developing specific curricula for these audiences, the strategy includes tools to assess the intercultural competencies that students gain during their WIL experiences, as well as helping students use these competencies to transition to the 21st century global village. This strategy and the Intercultural Competency Development Curriculum (ICDC) are discussed in this chapter.