Just as you spent hours crafting your resume, combing job listings, and navigating visas and contract agreements, you must also take the time to evaluate and develop your cultural competence. In short, developing your cultural competence helps you develop the mutual understanding and human relationships that are necessary for achieving your professional goals.

1. Developing Cultural
Competence for
Employment Abroad
Angel Elizabeth Byars and Imick McCray-Lutfi
Northeastern University
August 2019

2. This presentation was developed to be used in conjunction with the two-week mini-
MOOC entitled, “Culturally Competent for Employment Abroad” developed by the
authors of this presentation.
As Open Educational Resources (OER) emphasize the need to retain, reuse, revise,
remix, and redistribute, many of the slides found in this presentation have been created
from parts of other OER. Notations are used when the authors of this presentation
reference others’ ideas. Any accidental misrepresentation of the original authors’ ideas
rests with the authors of this presentation.

3. This presentation is designed from a general perspective of culture and other defining
terms, to a more specific perspective of cultural competence in relation to working
abroad. For those familiar with the terminology of surrounding cultural competence, you
may wish to only skim the first half of this presentation before moving on to the last half.

4. DEFINITION OF TERMS
an introduction

5. CULTURE
culture- Learned traditions, principles, and guides of behavior that are shared
among members of a particular group.
Codes of behavior, values, norms, beliefs, customs, communications, or “the
way we do things here.” Art, music, food, literature, and clothing are all
visible aspects of culture.
Ethnic groups have cultures.
Businesses have cultures.
Neighborhoods have cultures.
It is dynamic and changes over time.
There is diversity within cultures.
Each person is a member of many cultures!
slide credit: Dr. Vivian Stith-Williams from the Virginia Department of Education

6. ICEBERG CONCEPT OF CULTURE
The Iceberg Concept of Culture was originally developed by Weaver (1986).
Just as an iceberg has a visible section above the waterline and a larger,
invisible section below the water line, so culture has some aspects that are
observable and others that can only be suspected, imagined, or intuited. Also
like an iceberg, the part of culture that is visible (observable behavior) is only
a small part of a much bigger whole.
slide credit: Pacific Education: What’s up with Culture
slide credit: Dr. Vivian Stith-Williams from the Virginia Department of Education

7. easy to see
difficult to see
slide credit: Pacific Education: What’s up with Culture

8. Can you correctly place each cultural feature
on the iceberg?
language
pride
self-concept
core values
food
beauty ideals literature
fine arts
concept of justice
gender roles
dress
concepts of cleanliness
slide credit: Pacific Education: What’s up with Culture

9. easy to see
difficult to see
slide credit: Pacific Education: What’s up with Culture

10. CULTURE continued
On the one hand, culture is what makes us all human in a general sense. Every
culture, past and present, has had to decide how to satisfactorily solve common
human problems and concerns. Some universal categories of human activity that have
been addressed for millennia by all cultures are:
• political power and the exercise of leadership in governance
• concepts of justice, fairness, punishment, and right conduct
• child raising and traditional processes of acculturation
• economic organization and division of labor
• rites of passage (life cycle celebrations), rituals, and ceremonies
• expression and style in the graphic and performing arts
• food preferences and rules concerning consumption
• etcS
slide credit: Pacific Education: What’s up with Culture

11. CULTURE continued
When you move abroad for employment, you will be confronted with different
aspects of culture, some of which you may have anticipated and even planned
for, others that you may not have. To have a happy and successful life abroad,
both professionally and personally, you will need to know how to respond in
various cultural situations.

12. CULTURE continued
You will want to avoid ethnocentrism, naive-realism, and stereotyping.
There are two attitudes or approaches that you can consciously cultivate to
avoid ethnocentrism and stereotyping, and which will prove beneficial to your
adaptation. They are ethnorelativism and using a cultural generalization as a
step toward understanding the individuals you meet abroad.
slide credit: Pacific Education: What’s up with Culture

13. CULTURE continued
Ethnorelativism, unlike ethnocentrism, is the assumption that cultures can only
be understood relative to one another, and that a particular behavior can only
be understood within a cultural context.
A cultural generalization, unlike a stereotype, is a categorization of the
predominant tendencies in a cultural group; in other words, the tendency of the
majority of people to hold certain values and beliefs and engage in certain
pattern of behavior. This can be a useful way of managing information and
generally anticipating how people will think and behave. However, the people
you meet in a particular culture may not fit the generalizations you have about
the culture, or they may fit some but not others. To avoid stereotyping, it is
necessary to test your generalizations against the actual behavior and values of
those you are encountering in the culture.
slide credit: Pacific Education: What’s up with Culture

14. DEFINITIONS continued
cultural competency- The integration and transformation of knowledge about
individuals and groups of people into specific standards, policies, practices,
and attitudes used in appropriate cultural settings to increase the quality of
services, thereby producing better outcomes.
cultural proficiency- knowing how to learn and teach about different groups in
ways that acknowledge and honor all people and groups they represent
slide credit: Dr. Vivian Stith-Williams from the Virginia Department of Education

15. DEFINITIONS continued
ethnicity- groups in which members share a cultural heritage from one
generation to another; one’s geographical origin, group image and a sense of
identity derived from contemporary cultural patterns and a sense of history.
Many people have multiple ethnicities.
race- a classification system based on physical characteristics and generalized
conceptions of skin color; a political and social construct that is most often
important in societies with a history of oppressing specific groups
racial identity- one’s sense of group identity or affiliation and association with
others who possess the same racial heritage
slide credit: Dr. Vivian Stith-Williams from the Virginia Department of Education

16. CULTURAL
COMPETENCE
in detail

17. CULTURAL COMPETENCE
There are many ways to talk about, view, and measure cultural competence.
For example, education administrators may talk about cultural competence in
reference to a teacher’s multicultural classroom so that each student can
learn in a safe and respectful environment. Health administrators may be
concerned about cultural competence as health practitioners interact with
patients from many different cultures. Employees venturing abroad for work
may be concerned about cultural competence as they begin to intimately work
in a foreign culture.
This presentation focuses on the latter concern for cultural competence:
working abroad.

18. Just as you spent hours crafting your resume, combing
job listings, and navigating visas and contract
agreements, you must also take the time to evaluate
and develop your cultural competence.
In short, developing your cultural competence helps
you develop the mutual understanding and human
relationships that are necessary for achieving your
professional goals.
CULTURAL COMPETENCE
slide credit: Louise Rasmussen: Cross cultural competence: Engage people from any culture

19. While it is important to be aware of the cultural nuances of the specific culture
you are entering, and that requires research on your own or through job
training, increasing your culture-general competence, rather than your culture-
specific competence, increases your likelihood of success in any culture, rather
than just one.
CULTURAL COMPETENCE
slide credit: Louise Rasmussen: Cross cultural competence: Engage people from any culture

20. Davies, Zaugg, and Tateishi (2014)
Exploring the difficulties in measuring cultural dispositions, authors Davies,
Zaugg, and Tateishi (2014) create a cultural competency test to help prepare
engineering students to work in a multicultural setting. Though not explicitly
about developing cultural competency to work abroad, this study shines light
on both the importance of developing cultural competence in any field as well
as the difficulty in measuring such a thing.
slide credit: Davies, Zaugg, and Tateishi (2014)

21. Davies, Zaugg, and Tateishi (2014)
According to Davies et al., cross-cultural dispositions fall within the affective
domain. These cultural attitudes are made up of several subcomponents or
aspects, which, taken as a whole, make up or determine one’s cultural
disposition. They list the subcomponents as:
Cultural appreciation
Cultural openness
Cultural flexibility
Global exploration
Cultural equality
Global Citizenship
slide credit: Davies, Zaugg, and Tateishi (2014)

22. Davies, Zaugg, and Tateishi (2014)
Cultural Appreciation: Appreciates and respects cultural differences (e.g.,
differences in language, social rules, political systems, arts, music, etc.)
Cultural Openness: Recognizes cultural differences from a perspective
different from one’s own cultural norms
Cultural Flexibility: Tolerates and flexibly deals with cultural differences
without being emotionally distressed
Global Exploration: Desires to learn about different cultures, events, and
social issues of the world
Cultural Equality: Views all cultures without prejudice, stereotypes, and
discrimination, interacting with people from any culture as equals in social
status
Global Citizenship: Desires to help or work with people from different
countries to solve cross-cultural or global problems
slide credit: Davies, Zaugg, and Tateishi (2014)

23. Rasmussen and Sieck (2015)
Louise J. Rasmussen and Winston R. Sieck’s (2015) academic article “Culture-
general competence: Evidence from a cognitive field study of professional
who work in many cultures” is a cognitive field research study exploring the
culture-general competencies that culturally competent people have while
working in a foreign country. To collect their data, the researchers
interviewed twenty professionals with experience working abroad,
hypothesizing what competencies appeared most important for these
successful professionals.
slide credit: Rasmussen and Sieck (2015)

24. Rasmussen and Sieck (2015)
After reviewing the extensive literature concerning cultural competency and
conducting empirical research, Rasmussen and Sieck (2015) found twelve
competencies emerge from the data. You can find them on the following slide.
slide credit: Rasmussen and Sieck (2015)

25. Rasmussen and Sieck (2015)
Competency
Maintains a mission orientation
Manages attitudes toward culture
Understand self in cultural context
Copes with cultural surprises
Takes perspective of others in intercultural interactions
Develops cultural explanations of behavior
Engages in disciplined self-presentation
Plans intercultural communications
Acts with limited cultural knowledge
Is self-directed in learning about cultures
Develops reliable information sources
Reflects and seeks feedback on intercultural encounters
Competency Domain
Diplomatic mindset
Cultural reasoning
Intercultural interaction
Cultural learning
slide credit: Rasmussen and Sieck (2015)

26. No matter if you find yourself in Japan, Bolivia,
Germany, Jordan, or anywhere else in the world for
work (or pleasure) having a high degree of cultural
competence will make you more successful, capable,
and confident wile interacting with others while
abroad.
CULTURAL COMPETENCE

27. THANKS!
If you would like to learn more,
consider enrolling in the free, two-
week mini-MOOC entitled “Culturally
Competent for Employment Abroad.”

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