Intercultural business communication is often associated with international relations and encounters between people from different countries or national cultures. Yet cultural differences may also play a role much closer to home: between colleagues in the office and on the factory floor, across generations within a team, or between management and the board of directors.
Culture is not confined to nationality. People bring different experiences, perspectives, expectations, and ways of communicating to professional interactions. From this broader perspective, intercultural business communication competence is not a separate, specialised skill reserved for international encounters. It is an integral part of business communication competence itself.
With this understanding in mind, the following excerpts from my PhD research invite us to look beyond the financial and instrumental outcomes of business communication.
A lifelong process
Acquiring intercultural competence is not a static result of one experience, such as a stay abroad or a training course (Díaz & Moore, 2018, p. 89). It is a lifelong process that consists of expanding and refining one’s own repertoire, which can be activated in different circumstances, for different purposes, and with different effects (Blommaert, 1998, p. 13). Piller called it “a dedicated interpersonal engagement” (Piller, 2017, p. 204). Ultimately, being interculturally competent means accepting that you are ignorant, that you want to learn (Kanobana, 2012, p. 6183).
Beyond professional interests
Intercultural communication in a professional environment is usually driven by professional rather than personal interests (J. Kobayashi & Viswat, 2011). Nonetheless, intercultural business communication is essentially based on the same principles as intercultural communication in other environments. Even though experience in intercultural settings and language skills are useful in intercultural encounters and can be converted into economic gain (Piller, 2017, p. 135), they are not enough. Intentional development is required to become interculturally competent (Deardorff, 2009, p. xiii; Graf & Mertesacker, 2009, pp. 539–540; Tanaka, 2021, pp. 115–116).
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| Greet A. De Baets presenting at the International Association for Business Communication Conference in Baltimore in October 2026 | 📷 Prof. Lindsay Clark |
Beyond measurable outcomes
The need for a return on training investment, the goal-oriented nature of business communication, and the reductionist nature of intercultural business communication training (simplifying complex interpersonal competences into easily taught and measured knowledge and skills) usually culminate in training outcomes that are evaluated in terms of participant satisfaction and learning gains from the perspective of the participant and the employer, business, or organisation. Sometimes, skills are assessed through intercultural business communication tests.
Importantly, whether competence is developed by first-hand experience in another culture, reading about another culture, interacting with people from another culture, or taking part in coaching, workshops, and training courses, it is a lifelong learning process (Deardorff, 2009, p. xiii).
In addition to the process, which takes time and effort, sensitivity to the moral hazards a business communicator faces plays an important role in achieving maturity in intercultural business communication competence (Reinsch, 2022, p. 96).
| Selected and lightly adapted excerpts from the author’s doctoral dissertation: pp. 45-47. |
About Greet Publications Book Greet
Author
Greet Angèle DE BAETS, PhD
Communication Doctor
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Deardorff, D. K. (Ed.). (2009). The Sage handbook of intercultural competence. Sage Publications.
Díaz, A. R., & Moore, P. J. (2018). (Re)imagining a course in intercultural communication for the 21st century. Intercultural Communication Education, 1(3), 84–99. https://dx.doi.org/10.29140/ice.v1n3.84
Graf, A., & Mertesacker, M. (2009). Intercultural training: Six measures assessing training needs. Journal of European Industrial Training, 33(6), 539–558. https://doi.org/10.1108/03090590910974419
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Kobayashi, J., & Viswat, L. (2011). Intercultural Communication Competence in Business: Communication between Japanese and Americans. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 11(2), 1–06. https://doi.org/10.36923/jicc.v11i2.526
Piller, I. (2017). Intercultural Communication: A Critical Introduction (2nd ed.). Edinburgh University Press.
Reinsch, N. L. (2022). To Summon the Future. In J. Forman, The Business Communication Profession (1st ed., pp. 85–104). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003274421-6
Tanaka, H. (2021). Measuring Competence for Global Business: In Search of Authentic Data in Japanese Business Corporations. In G. Jacobs & S. Decock (Eds.), Good Data in Business and Professional Discourse Research and Teaching (pp. 115–139). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-61757-8_5
De Baets, G. A. (2024). Embodied learning with and from aikido: a mixed-methods investigation into teaching intercultural communication skills for the workplace. Ghent University, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent, Belgium.
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