Communicating across cultures

Abstract

Expatriate assignments requiring interactions across cultural and linguistic boundaries are challenging. Expatriate failures have been ascribed to a lack of cross-cultural competence (CC) and cultural intelligence (CQ). While CC and CQ frameworks indicate characteristics needed for successful intercultural interaction, they provide little information about language proficiency and its interactions with cultural competences. We present a framework for evaluating the influence of different levels of proficiency in language and culture as well as the consequences of the interaction of these types of proficiency.