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Expatriates who perform poorly in their overseas assignments cost multinational enterprises billions of dollars, damage firm reputation, disrupt relationships with local nationals, and often exact a cost on expatriates’ psychological well‐being. International human resource management, which assumes the crucial responsibility of managing expatriates, should therefore be able to identify the competencies underlying effective expatriate performance, and evaluate crosscultural competence and overall effectiveness. Little research, however, is available on the role of culture in determining cross‐cultural effectiveness in expatriate‐client interactions. Moreover, it is rarely acknowledged that the customer impacts upon the effectiveness of such interactions. This paper provides a theoretical explication of the relationships between the factors of intercultural effectiveness, sociobiographical characteristics, and perceived task and contextual performance of individual managers operating in an intercultural environment. Qualitative research is conducted which, in general, demonstrates the importance of examining intercultural effectiveness from the respective cultural perspectives of the expatriate and the host country client. The findings elucidate the factors contributing to the intercultural effectiveness of Western expatriate managers operating in intercultural teams in Thailand.

Most intercultural frameworks assess intercultural competencies, but global businesses lack instruments to support the feedback loop, that is help project managers answer the question if an effective global team has been formed. The purpose of this paper is to develop and assess a new indicator for measuring the actual effectiveness of intercultural communication and collaboration at the individual and team level, the Mysore InterCultural Effectiveness (MICE) indicator.

Based on a needs analysis in global businesses, international projects, and review of existing literature, a low-touch self-report indicator was developed. A test run in several international companies with live data obtained from 154 employees helped to validate the indicator using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis.

The MICE indicator is based on two scales: first, the effectiveness in interacting and collaborating with foreign counterparts by providing an answer to the question “how I think I am with them;” and second, the satisfaction with appropriateness of communication received from foreign interlocutors and the outcome of the collaboration by answering the question “how I think they are with me.”

Empirical results indicate that the two scale/six factor model provides a good fit to the data. Using the MICE Indicator, it is now possible for project managers to effectively address shortcomings of intercultural communication skills in their international teams with the right type of intercultural training.

This study contributes to the literature by explicating why individuals become effective in performing tasks in intercultural context. Drawing from the social axioms theory and intelligence theory, this study specifically investigates and generates new insights about the role of social complexity belief and cultural intelligence (CQ) in enhancing intercultural task performance.

Two sets of studies were conducted. Study 1 was conducted in Australia (n = 222) wherein survey data were collected from employees (i.e. self-reports). In a subsequent study which was conducted in the Philippines (Study 2; n = 211), archival data were obtained from the annual performance reviews of the employees (provided by immediate supervisors) in addition to the employees' self-reports.

Results are validated in both studies that social complexity belief relates positively and significantly to intercultural task performance. Moreover, results show that social complexity belief influences overall CQ (and its cognitive and metacognitive dimensions) and in the process impacts intercultural task performance.

This study offers new insights related to intercultural task performance effectiveness. In particular, this study highlights the role of social complexity belief system. Furthermore, this study extends the nomological network of CQ by explicating how an individual's belief can relate to his/her level of CQ which then influences intercultural task performance. Aside from generating knowledge, this study also offers practical insights for human resources practitioners and for employees who are finding new ways to improve and enhance intercultural task performance.

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.

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.

As US business organizations continue to use more expatriates in international locations, the reasons for high failure rates of these assignments need to be examined. Selection and training may be the key inadequacies. Intercultural anxiety plays an important role in productive expatriate assignments. By determining personnel with lower intercultural anxiety levels, successful assignment completions should increase. Examines attributional complexity, stereotyping, ethnocentrism and acquaintance with host‐country nationals to determine the relationship of these variables to reduced intercultural anxiety. A group considering assignments to Japan, consisting of business and education executives and their families, were surveyed before and after an intensive study visit. Findings indicate that stereotyping and ethnocentrism have a negative association with decreased intercultural anxiety. Attributional complexity and acquaintances have a positive effect on reduced anxiety levels. Suggestions for organizations making expatriate selection decisions include screening potential candidates for these traits. Also provides areas for further research.

This study aims to, first, identify how service perception can differ depending on the customers’ cultural background during intercultural encounters and, second, provide useful and specific directions of more culturally competent service interaction to restaurant managers and servers in US restaurants. Effective exchanges between service providers and international customers are important to ensure the success of restaurants. While frequently and explicitly checking in on customers is common in the USA, this may not be preferable to people from different cultures.

Study 1 (n = 975) utilized a survey, and Study 2 (n = 145) used an experimental design to, first, examine cultural differences between American and Japanese participants in their preferences about restaurant servers’ check-back style and, second, examined the moderating effect of culture (i.e. American and Japanese culture) on the relationship between the servers’ check-back behavior and the evaluations of service effectiveness, emotional response and the intention to return to a restaurant.

The results showed that the frequency of a server’s visits had a positive effect on evaluations of service effectiveness, emotional response and intent to revisit for the Americans, but not for the Japanese.

This research has practical implications for restaurant managers and servers who are expected to interact with international customers. They can apply the findings of this research to examine culturally appropriate check-back styles, which are an important attribute of effectiveness in intercultural service encounters in US restaurants.

The current study indicates that providing standardized service to all customers, regardless of cultural differences, might not be ideal.

In recent years, international management research has focused on the cognitive development of managers as increasingly important in a complex and dynamic business environment. As part of what might be called a cognitive revolution in international management research, several individual difference constructs have been introduced that promise to improve upon our ability to link culture to action beyond the study of dimensions of cultural variability and inventories of cultural competence. In this paper, I review three of these ideas: multicultural personality, global mindset, and cultural intelligence. I examine their conceptual similarities and level of development, and identify five criteria that need to be satisfied for these new ideas to have utility in international management research.

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.

The construct of cultural intelligence has recently been introduced to the management literature as an individual difference that may predict effectiveness and a variety of interpersonal behavior in the global business environment. This construct has enormous potential in helping to explain effectiveness in cross-cultural interactions. However, progress has been limited by the adequacy of existing measures. In this chapter, we describe the development and preliminary validation of a web-based assessment of cultural intelligence based on our conceptualization of cultural intelligence.