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Intercultural communication.

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Will Baker, Intercultural communication, ELT Journal , 2024;, ccad040, https://doi.org/10.1093/elt/ccad040

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Intercultural communication (IC) can be defined as communication where cultural and linguistic differences are perceived as relevant to the interaction by the participants or researchers involved ( Zhu 2019 ; Baker 2022 ). In IC, participants make use of and negotiate between different cultural resources and languages in interaction, including intersecting cultural identities, communities, references, and meanings (eg nationality, ethnicity, class, profession, gender, sexuality), at a range of scales from the local, to the national, and the global. Due to its focus on linguistic and cultural practices, language learning is inevitably an intercultural process, whether or not it is explicitly recognized in teaching. The intercultural dimensions of language learning become particularly important when the focus is on developing learners’ communicative competence since that communication is typically intercultural. Indeed, the idea of culture as part of language teaching has a long history. In the nineteenth century, languages were learnt primarily through works of literature to gain a better understanding of the culture of the target language community ( Risager 2007 ). In the twentieth century, there was an emphasis on learning languages as a means of communicating across national cultural borders, often for economic or political advantage ( Jenkins 2015 ). The rapid increase in globalization at the end of the previous century and during the first decades of this century has seen a focus on learning languages for global connections and intercultural communication. This has been particularly true of English and ELT due to the role that the expansion of English language use has played in the processes of globalization ( Moran Panero 2018 ).

IC perspectives are at times used interchangeably with cross-cultural (CC) perspectives, and there are overlaps between them. However, a broad (and somewhat simplified) distinction can be made between IC and earlier CC perspectives that have been prevalent in ELT ( Scollon et al. 2012 ; Baker 2022 ). In CC approaches, communicative practices of different groups are frequently compared at the national scale with differences identified, for instance comparing different greetings in Chinese and English. This has been criticized for presenting stereotyped and essentialist characterizations of culture through reducing individuals to representations of a national culture ( Holliday 2011 ). In contrast, IC approaches investigate instances of interaction between individuals at a range of cultural levels ( Scollon et al. 2012 ). This is a crucial distinction because people in intercultural interactions typically communicate differently to how they would in intracultural (shared culture) scenarios ( Scollon et al. 2012 ). For example, English people may shake hands when meeting someone for the first time in a formal situation, and in a similar situation Thai people place their hands, palms together, in front of their face and bow their head in a wai . However, when a Thai person meets an English person, neither will expect a wai or a handshake: each realizes that their interlocutor may not be familiar with their greeting norms. Thus, a CC comparison would be unhelpful for predicting the flexibility that is usual in actual instances of intercultural communication. Nevertheless, even within IC perspectives the ‘who’, ‘how’, and ‘why’ of culture needs to be critically investigated to avoid stereotyping others. This includes acknowledging cultural groupings beyond the nation, such as ethnicity, gender, religion, sexuality, and profession ( Scollon et al. 2012 ). Most recently, transcultural communication (TC) has been proposed as a new direction in IC understanding. TC recognizes the complex ways languages, cultures, identities, and communities come together in highly diverse contemporary social settings where boundaries between languages and cultures are not easily distinguished. This includes multilingual and multicultural urban centres, international business and academia, and global social networking platforms ( Baker and Ishikawa 2021 ).

In relation to language teaching, one important insight from IC research has been that the competence needed to interact across and through cultural and linguistic borders will be an intercultural competence rather than the linguistic competence of an idealized ‘native speaker’. This has led to a core concept in language teaching, communicative competence, being expanded through the addition of intercultural dimensions. The most well-known model of this is Byram’s (1997 , 2021 ) intercultural communicative competence (ICC). ICC takes key features of communicative competence (linguistic, sociolinguistic, and discourse competence) and incorporates intercultural elements. These include skills of interpreting and relating, skills of discovery and interaction, knowledge (of own and other cultures, as well as IC), attitudes of curiosity and openness, and critical cultural awareness ( Byram 2021 : 62). ICC has been hugely influential in language teaching as a way of systematically incorporating intercultural dimensions into language teaching, assessment, and curricula ( McConachy et al. 2022 ). However, there are concerns that Byram’s conception of ICC is too focused on the national scale and does not sufficiently recognize that other cultural groupings (discussed above) may be equally or more relevant ( Holliday 2011 ; Baker 2022 ). Most significant to discussions of English and ELT is that ICC, especially in the earlier versions ( Byram 1997 : 114) that have been most influential in ELT, does not account for languages used as a lingua franca where no native speaker communities or cultures are present, as is the case in most English interactions globally ( Baker and Ishikawa 2021 ).

Intercultural awareness (ICA) represents a further expansion of IC in language teaching that builds on ICC but is specifically focused on the global use of English as a lingua franca (ELF) in diverse settings in which there are often no native speakers present (although native English speakers can, of course, also engage in IC through ELF, they are present in much smaller numbers and so are not the focus). ICA is, thus, of direct relevance to ELT due to its focus on English and ‘non-native’ multilingual English users. ICA is defined as an ‘understanding of the role culturally based forms, practices and frames of understanding can have in intercultural communication, and an ability to put these conceptions into practice in a flexible and context specific manner in communication’ ( Baker 2022 : 42). It is divided into three levels: starting from a basic understanding of culture at a simplistic and stereotyped level; to cultural awareness, similar to ICC; then the final level of intercultural or transcultural awareness in which the relationship between language, culture, and communication is approached as complex and emergent, not necessarily linked to any single community ( Baker 2022 ). In terms of teaching practices, IC-related materials and classroom activities can be tailored to the learners based on their level of ICA and the ICA levels can also be used as a framework to document progress ( Baker 2022 ).

At present, the extent to which ICC, ICA, or other intercultural elements are incorporated into ELT classroom practices is debatable. Culture and the intercultural are often tacked on as a ‘fifth skill’ ( Kramsch 1993 : 1) to be addressed only when other aspects of language and communication have been covered. Evidence suggests that teachers typically fail to teach culture or IC in a systematic or in-depth way ( Young and Sachdev 2011 ). This is not surprising given the restricted time and resources many ELT teachers face and that few assessments include aspects of IC. Additionally, teaching materials frequently cover culture and the intercultural in a simplistic and stereotyped manner ( Gray 2010 ). Furthermore, intercultural dimensions are often not part of pre-service teacher education.

Nonetheless, there are now decades’ worth of research and theory suggesting a wide variety of approaches to applying IC in language classrooms ( Risager 2007 ; Baker 2022 among many others). Shared features of these approaches include expanding communicative competence to incorporate ICC and ICA, and linked to this, replacing the native speaker with an intercultural speaker/citizen model as more appropriate and achievable for L2 learners (discussed above). Intercultural language education also involves a critical approach to language, culture, and identity that encourages learners to question taken-for-granted assumptions about national cultures, identities, languages, and the connections between them. In relation to English, rather than just Anglophone varieties and cultures, this entails recognizing its global role as a multilingua franca for intercultural and transcultural communication in diverse cultural settings. This also means centring on the cultures, and related needs and goals, of local teachers and learners, rather than imposing external teaching approaches and materials. IC is increasingly part of in-service teacher education, particularly at postgraduate levels in university courses. IC is also more frequently appearing in language teaching policy documents in diverse settings, including the United States, Europe and Southeast and East Asia ( Baker and Ishikawa 2021 ). All these factors combined underscore the growing importance of IC in ELT and the need to incorporate it more deeply and systematically into teacher education, teaching materials, classroom practices, and assessment.

Final version received July 2023

Will Baker University of Southampton, UK.

Baker , W.   2022 . Intercultural and Transcultural Awareness in Language Teaching.   Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .

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Baker , W. , and Ishikawa , T.   2021 . Transcultural Communication through Global Englishes.   Abingdon : Routledge .

Byram , M.   1997 . Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence . Bristol : Multilingual Matters .

Byram , M.   2021 . Teaching and Assessing Intercultural Communicative Competence: Revisited . Bristol : Multilingual Matters .

Gray , J.   2010 . The Construction of English: Culture, Consumerism and Promotion in the ELT Global Coursebook . Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan

Holliday , A.   2011 . Intercultural Communication and Ideology . London : Sage .

Jenkins , J.   2015 . Global Englishes: A Resource Book for Students . 3rd ed.. London : Routledge .

Kramsch , C.   1993 . Context and Culture in Language Teaching.   Oxford : Oxford University Press .

McConachy , T. , Golubeva , I. , and Wagner , M.   2022 . Intercultural Learning in Language Education and Beyond: Evolving Concepts, Perspectives and Practices.   Bristol : Multilingual Matters .

Moran Panero , S.   2018 . ‘ Global Languages and Lingua Franca Communication.’ In The Routledge Handbook of English as a Lingua Franca , edited by J.   Jenkins , W.   Baker , and M.   Dewey , 556 – 69 . Abingdon : Routledge .

Risager , K.   2007 . Language and Culture Pedagogy.   Bristol : Multilingual Matters .

Scollon , R. , Scollon , S. B. K. , and Jones , R. H.   2012 . Intercultural Communication: A Discourse Approach . 3rd ed.   Chichester : Wiley-Blackwell .

Young , T. J. , and I.   Sachdev .   2011 . ‘ Intercultural Communicative Competence: Exploring English Language Teachers’ Beliefs and Practices .’ Language Awareness   20 ( 2 ): 81 – 98 .

Zhu , H.   2019 . Exploring Intercultural Communication: Language in Action . 2nd ed. Abingdon : Routledge .

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Introductory Guide to Research in Intercultural Communication

Intercultural communication is the process by which meaning and messages are shared and interpreted between cultures. The study of intercultural communication is focused on how variance in cultural symbols, values, and behaviors affects communication interactions across cultures. It is a misnomer that intercultural communication means communication between different nations. While this is one type of cultural difference, it is important to recognize that individual nations are made up of co-cultures and there are many cases of intercultural communication that happen within a single nation and even within smaller, more local communities.

Defining Intercultural Communication

In order to define intercultural communication, it is important to first define culture and communication. Culture is how a group of people create a system of shared symbols, values, and behaviors over time in an effort to maintain social cohesion, survive, and instruct future generations. Communication is the process of sharing and interpreting meaning and information using symbols and behavior. Intercultural communication, then, involves understanding symbols, values, and behaviors as they vary by culture and how they impact communication interactions.

Historically, and especially in a generally ethnocentric American society, the need for intercultural understanding and intercultural communication had to be justified. However, in an increasingly globalized world, the study of intercultural communication by scholars, businesses, and individuals hardly requires justification — its need is nearly self-evident. Globalization makes competent intercultural communication an imperative for many individuals and businesses, resulting in an ever-growing demand for intercultural communication experts and the study of intercultural communication.

Outside this capitalistic view, the import of intercultural communication continues to be realized as well. The free exchange of ideas, concepts of liberty and human rights, and communicating our shared humanity ultimately relies upon the principles studied by scholars of intercultural communication. Additionally, with the Internet’s rise and the relative ease of travel, there is a desire to learn, to seek out information about other cultures.

It is important to note that intercultural communication is not necessarily international communication. Scholars find great interest in studying co-cultures that reside within national boundaries. For example, individuals living in the southern United States have a distinctly different culture from those living in New England. Likewise, individuals in the deaf community have a distinct culture from those who are part of hearing culture. As a final example, individuals living in rural and urban areas have noticeably different cultures. Clearly, intercultural communication applies when individuals in these examples communicate, regardless of their shared national borders and language.

As individuals study intercultural communication, the goal is to become a competent communicator in cross-cultural communication situations. This involves an understanding of each culture’s communication norms, and the ability to view the world with cultural relativism (i.e., evaluate others’ actions not by one’s own societal standards, but by the standards of that culture). To illustrate, review the following questions:

• Imagine the first business meeting between two individuals. Should they ask each other about their families? Should they immediately discuss business? How would an age difference between each individual impact this meeting? Where should this meeting take place?
• If Bob and John are friends, and Bob sees John’s wife out to dinner with a man other than John, is this something that Bob should mention to John?
• How close should two people stand when having a conversation?
• In the event of a marriage between two people who come from families with different ethnic, geographical, and/or political cultures, how are the inter-family dynamics and politics to be negotiated?

Regardless of how these questions are answered, the answers are heavily influenced by the norms of one’s own culture. In each situation, an intercultural expert is interested in the norms of each culture, where the interaction is taking place, how differences in cultural norms might affect the interaction, and much more.

Overarching Intercultural Communication Theories and Constructs

Scholars have built various theories to describe, explain, and predict intercultural communication. Over time, scholars continue to go through a process of theory building, which involves reevaluating, advancing, and refining existing theories while building new theories. The following list illustrates some of the most common theories or topics discussed in the area of intercultural communication.

Social Identity Theory : This theory is used to understand intercultural communication behaviors based on the perception of one’s membership status within a culture and the relative status of that cultural group. This theory is also used to understand the stability of one’s cultural group, cultural group status, and the ability to move between cultural groups.

Intercultural Workgroup Communication Theory : This theory discusses how cultural diversity influences workgroup communication and how that communication will affect the success of a group in achieving its goals. This theory states that factors like group composition (i.e., heterogeneous or homogeneous), cultural differences, and individual characteristics will ultimately affect the quality of the communication within the group. In turn, communication quality will impact the group’s outcome.

Cross-Cultural Adaptation Theory : As one might imagine, immigration offers a ripe opportunity for research and intercultural understanding. Cross-Cultural Adaptation Theory is used to describe, predict, and explain behaviors of immigrants as they adapt to their host culture. This theory is specifically interested in how individuals adapt to new cultures over time.

Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions : Nearly every student who takes a basic intercultural communication course will be introduced to Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions. Geert Hofstede developed six dimensions by which we can understand societal values. One of these dimensions is the power distance dimension. Power distance is the extent to which a member of a society expects that, within groups, there will be relative equality or inequality between more and less powerful members. For example, in some societies there is high power distance between a son and father, or a supervisor and supervisee. One might ask, “In my society, do I have the ability to suggest that my parent, teacher, or supervisor might be wrong?” If the answer is yes, that person is probably in a low power distance society. In a high power distance society, this would rarely be acceptable.

As a second example, another dimension is the individualism vs. collectivism dimension. This is the extent to which a society values the individual over the group or vice-versa. As one might imagine, the United States is a highly individualistic society where individual needs and achievement are often more important than the needs of the group. On the contrary, Japan is a highly collectivistic society in which the needs of the group and the achievement of the group is much more important than any individual’s needs or achievement.

Together, Hofstede’s six dimensions give some insight into how cultures work. It is important to note that Hofstede’s dimensions have been heavily criticized due to the fact that they were developed through studying participants who were mostly educated, mostly upper-class, and mostly men. Furthermore, there is some criticism that national cultures often have such important intracultural differences that Hofstede’s dimensions can hardly be applied with accuracy to individuals or subgroups. Regardless, these dimensions are commonly taught in intercultural communication courses and are regularly used in intercultural communication research.

Linguistic Relativity (The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis) : Simply put, linguistic relativity states that the language an individual speaks affects their world view. Essentially, this theory suggests that one’s understanding of the world is socially constructed, in part, by the language that individual speaks. For example, research has supported the hypothesis that when someone speaks a language without a future tense, they are more likely to save money and take care of their health. The basis for this effect is that, without future tense, people begin to see the future and the present to have a much closer relationship, which motivates behavior in the present that will positively affect one’s future.

Approaching Intercultural Communication from a Critical Perspective

As mentioned above, intercultural communication also involves the study of cultures that exist within a larger culture and how that communication is managed, negotiated, and contested. Oftentimes, this facet of intercultural communication requires a critical lens in examining the power dynamics that exist between a culture that is reliant upon the hegemonic power structure and a culture that challenges that power structure.

In other words, scholars that employ a critical cultural perspective in intercultural communication bring to the fore the ways in which groups in power maintain a cultural hierarchy, thereby subjugating any that oppose it. Additionally, scholars also look at how marginalized groups challenge the hierarchy and maintain their culture through communication. Good examples of this perspective in action come from scholars examining white nationalist rhetoric, Black Lives Matter, the white backlash to Black Lives Matter, and the communicative practices of recent immigrant groups. The following are theories and concepts that stem from this critical perspective.

Critical Race Theory : Broadly speaking, Critical Race Theory relates to racism and how it functions in modern society. This theory posits that racism is an ordinary and common component of everyday life that is rarely overt, which makes it quite difficult to resolve or address. This theory also suggests that, because racism and racist policies support the dominant group’s advancement, few members of the dominant group are actually interested in eliminating racism and racist policies from a culture.

Co-Cultural Theory : As previously discussed, cultural groups are not always separated by national borders or languages. Co-cultural theory is used to understand conversations between members of marginalized groups and members of dominant social groups. For example, a researcher may be interested in how grade school age children who speak English as a second language navigate their relationships with teachers and fellow students who speak English as a primary language within the context of an English dominant society like the United States. Co-cultural theory could help to predict and explain the actions of this underrepresented group.

Studying Intercultural Communication

Students interested in studying intercultural communication should review individual programs to gain insight into how each program addresses the topic. In some cases, programs are highly theoretical, focusing on social-scientific research as it relates to intercultural communication. Students who graduate from a theoretical program in intercultural communication often advance to Ph.D. programs, during which time they develop social-scientific research and teach undergraduate students about the topic.

Other programs are more concerned with how intercultural communication skills can be developed for the workforce. In these programs, students will examine common business practices across cultures. It is not unusual for these programs to involve seminars abroad, which allow students to become immersed in a different culture or cultures. Intercultural communication is also an important component of both internal and external facing strategic communications for organizations, and is highly relevant to fields such as politics and diplomacy, marketing and public relations, and corporate communication/human resources. As a result, intercultural communication courses are often included in applied programs in strategic communication, global strategic communication, political communication, integrated marketing communications, and organizational communication.

Additional Resources

Prospective students who are interested in learning more about intercultural communication can review the following resources:

• Cross-Cultural Adaptation – Young Yun Kim
• Intercultural Communication – Inc.
• Intercultural Communication Skills – Skills You Need
• Social Identity Theory – SimplyPsychology
• The 6-Dimensions Model of National Culture – Geert Hofstede
• The Effect of Language on Economic Behavior: Evidence from Savings Rates, Health Behaviors, and Retirement Assets – Keith Chen
• What is Critical Race Theory – UCLA School of Public Affairs
• What You Need to Know About: Effective Intercultural Workgroup Communication Theory – Binus University

Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality pp 67–73 Cite as

Researching Intercultural Communication Education

• Fred Dervin 3 &
• Andreas Jacobsson 4  
• First Online: 26 May 2021

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This chapter delineates problems identified in research on interculturality. Since research has a major influence on teachers and teacher educators, it is essential to be aware of these problems. The authors note that there is a lack of awareness of the wide range of ideologies of interculturality available around the world and some particular ideologies dominate in research. They also argue that there is a need to be transparent about economic-political positions ‘hiding’ behind all ideologies about interculturality in research. Finally, the authors call for meaningful dialogues between scholars and educators.

• Dominating ideologies
• ‘Western’ democracy
• Economic-political positions
• Cooperation
• Silenced voices
• Decolonising

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The journal 跨文化研究论丛 (半年刊) ( Intercultural Studies Forum ), published by BFSU Press in China, represents a good attempt to try to add ‘Chinese’ knowledge to the field: https://www.bfsujournals.com/c/2019-07-18/486528.shtml

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Stam, R., & Shohat, E. (2009). Transnationalizing comparison: The uses and abuses of cross-cultural analogy. New Literary History, 40 (3), 473–499. https://doi.org/10.1353/nlh.0.0104

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Dervin, F., Jacobsson, A. (2021). Researching Intercultural Communication Education. In: Teacher Education for Critical and Reflexive Interculturality. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66337-7_8

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Article contents

Intercultural workplace communication.

• Malgorzata Lahti Malgorzata Lahti Language Center, University of Jyväskylä
•  and  Maarit Valo Maarit Valo Department of Language and Communication Studies, University of Jyväskylä
• https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190228613.013.404
• Published online: 27 July 2017

The workplace is a highly meaningful context for intercultural communication where persons who come from different countries, identify with different ethnic groups or speak different languages get to collaborate and develop relationships with one another. Needless to say, interpersonal communication in the workplace has always been a primary area of interest for intercultural communication research.

Early scholarship focused on the preparation of U.S. military personnel, diplomats, business people, and missionaries for overseas assignments. However, the increasing pluralization of the social landscape has bolstered research endeavors. These days, the scope of intercultural workplace communication inquiry comprises everyday face-to-face and technology-mediated interactions in encounters, relationships, groups, and teams in a variety of working arrangements, and across a range of public and private sector organizations worldwide. The scholarship also draws on the organizational approaches of antidiscrimination and diversity management that emerged in the United States and have subsequently been exported to and reinterpreted in workplaces around the world.

Researchers have looked into such workplace communication processes and phenomena as social categorization, stereotyping, prejudice and discrimination, conflict and its management, organizational satisfaction and identification, socialization, supportive communication, interpersonal relationship development and informal interaction, negotiation of shared workplace culture, knowledge sharing, decision-making, learning and innovation, or leadership and management. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the ways languages are used in interactions at work.

• cultural diversity
• cultural identity
• intercultural communication
• intergroup communication
• interpersonal communication
• organizational diversity
• working life groups and teams
• workplace relationships

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8.3 Intercultural Communication

Learning objectives.

• Define intercultural communication.
• List and summarize the six dialectics of intercultural communication.
• Discuss how intercultural communication affects interpersonal relationships.

It is through intercultural communication that we come to create, understand, and transform culture and identity. Intercultural communication is communication between people with differing cultural identities. One reason we should study intercultural communication is to foster greater self-awareness (Martin & Nakayama, 2010). Our thought process regarding culture is often “other focused,” meaning that the culture of the other person or group is what stands out in our perception. However, the old adage “know thyself” is appropriate, as we become more aware of our own culture by better understanding other cultures and perspectives. Intercultural communication can allow us to step outside of our comfortable, usual frame of reference and see our culture through a different lens. Additionally, as we become more self-aware, we may also become more ethical communicators as we challenge our ethnocentrism , or our tendency to view our own culture as superior to other cultures.

As was noted earlier, difference matters, and studying intercultural communication can help us better negotiate our changing world. Changing economies and technologies intersect with culture in meaningful ways (Martin & Nakayama). As was noted earlier, technology has created for some a global village where vast distances are now much shorter due to new technology that make travel and communication more accessible and convenient (McLuhan, 1967). However, as the following “Getting Plugged In” box indicates, there is also a digital divide , which refers to the unequal access to technology and related skills that exists in much of the world. People in most fields will be more successful if they are prepared to work in a globalized world. Obviously, the global market sets up the need to have intercultural competence for employees who travel between locations of a multinational corporation. Perhaps less obvious may be the need for teachers to work with students who do not speak English as their first language and for police officers, lawyers, managers, and medical personnel to be able to work with people who have various cultural identities.

“Getting Plugged In”

The Digital Divide

Many people who are now college age struggle to imagine a time without cell phones and the Internet. As “digital natives” it is probably also surprising to realize the number of people who do not have access to certain technologies. The digital divide was a term that initially referred to gaps in access to computers. The term expanded to include access to the Internet since it exploded onto the technology scene and is now connected to virtually all computing (van Deursen & van Dijk, 2010). Approximately two billion people around the world now access the Internet regularly, and those who don’t face several disadvantages (Smith, 2011). Discussions of the digital divide are now turning more specifically to high-speed Internet access, and the discussion is moving beyond the physical access divide to include the skills divide, the economic opportunity divide, and the democratic divide. This divide doesn’t just exist in developing countries; it has become an increasing concern in the United States. This is relevant to cultural identities because there are already inequalities in terms of access to technology based on age, race, and class (Sylvester & McGlynn, 2010). Scholars argue that these continued gaps will only serve to exacerbate existing cultural and social inequalities. From an international perspective, the United States is falling behind other countries in terms of access to high-speed Internet. South Korea, Japan, Sweden, and Germany now all have faster average connection speeds than the United States (Smith, 2011). And Finland in 2010 became the first country in the world to declare that all its citizens have a legal right to broadband Internet access (ben-Aaron, 2010). People in rural areas in the United States are especially disconnected from broadband service, with about 11 million rural Americans unable to get the service at home. As so much of our daily lives go online, it puts those who aren’t connected at a disadvantage. From paying bills online, to interacting with government services, to applying for jobs, to taking online college classes, to researching and participating in political and social causes, the Internet connects to education, money, and politics.

• What do you think of Finland’s inclusion of broadband access as a legal right? Is this something that should be done in other countries? Why or why not?
• How does the digital divide affect the notion of the global village?
• How might limited access to technology negatively affect various nondominant groups?

Intercultural Communication: A Dialectical Approach

Intercultural communication is complicated, messy, and at times contradictory. Therefore it is not always easy to conceptualize or study. Taking a dialectical approach allows us to capture the dynamism of intercultural communication. A dialectic is a relationship between two opposing concepts that constantly push and pull one another (Martin & Nakayama, 2010). To put it another way, thinking dialectically helps us realize that our experiences often occur in between two different phenomena. This perspective is especially useful for interpersonal and intercultural communication, because when we think dialectically, we think relationally. This means we look at the relationship between aspects of intercultural communication rather than viewing them in isolation. Intercultural communication occurs as a dynamic in-betweenness that, while connected to the individuals in an encounter, goes beyond the individuals, creating something unique. Holding a dialectical perspective may be challenging for some Westerners, as it asks us to hold two contradictory ideas simultaneously, which goes against much of what we are taught in our formal education. Thinking dialectically helps us see the complexity in culture and identity because it doesn’t allow for dichotomies. Dichotomies are dualistic ways of thinking that highlight opposites, reducing the ability to see gradations that exist in between concepts. Dichotomies such as good/evil, wrong/right, objective/subjective, male/female, in-group/out-group, black/white, and so on form the basis of much of our thoughts on ethics, culture, and general philosophy, but this isn’t the only way of thinking (Marin & Nakayama, 1999). Many Eastern cultures acknowledge that the world isn’t dualistic. Rather, they accept as part of their reality that things that seem opposite are actually interdependent and complement each other. I argue that a dialectical approach is useful in studying intercultural communication because it gets us out of our comfortable and familiar ways of thinking. Since so much of understanding culture and identity is understanding ourselves, having an unfamiliar lens through which to view culture can offer us insights that our familiar lenses will not. Specifically, we can better understand intercultural communication by examining six dialectics (see Figure 8.1 “Dialectics of Intercultural Communication” ) (Martin & Nakayama, 1999).

Figure 8.1 Dialectics of Intercultural Communication

Source: Adapted from Judith N. Martin and Thomas K. Nakayama, “Thinking Dialectically about Culture and Communication,” Communication Theory 9, no. 1 (1999): 1–25.

The cultural-individual dialectic captures the interplay between patterned behaviors learned from a cultural group and individual behaviors that may be variations on or counter to those of the larger culture. This dialectic is useful because it helps us account for exceptions to cultural norms. For example, earlier we learned that the United States is said to be a low-context culture, which means that we value verbal communication as our primary, meaning-rich form of communication. Conversely, Japan is said to be a high-context culture, which means they often look for nonverbal clues like tone, silence, or what is not said for meaning. However, you can find people in the United States who intentionally put much meaning into how they say things, perhaps because they are not as comfortable speaking directly what’s on their mind. We often do this in situations where we may hurt someone’s feelings or damage a relationship. Does that mean we come from a high-context culture? Does the Japanese man who speaks more than is socially acceptable come from a low-context culture? The answer to both questions is no. Neither the behaviors of a small percentage of individuals nor occasional situational choices constitute a cultural pattern.

The personal-contextual dialectic highlights the connection between our personal patterns of and preferences for communicating and how various contexts influence the personal. In some cases, our communication patterns and preferences will stay the same across many contexts. In other cases, a context shift may lead us to alter our communication and adapt. For example, an American businesswoman may prefer to communicate with her employees in an informal and laid-back manner. When she is promoted to manage a department in her company’s office in Malaysia, she may again prefer to communicate with her new Malaysian employees the same way she did with those in the United States. In the United States, we know that there are some accepted norms that communication in work contexts is more formal than in personal contexts. However, we also know that individual managers often adapt these expectations to suit their own personal tastes. This type of managerial discretion would likely not go over as well in Malaysia where there is a greater emphasis put on power distance (Hofstede, 1991). So while the American manager may not know to adapt to the new context unless she has a high degree of intercultural communication competence, Malaysian managers would realize that this is an instance where the context likely influences communication more than personal preferences.

The differences-similarities dialectic allows us to examine how we are simultaneously similar to and different from others. As was noted earlier, it’s easy to fall into a view of intercultural communication as “other oriented” and set up dichotomies between “us” and “them.” When we overfocus on differences, we can end up polarizing groups that actually have things in common. When we overfocus on similarities, we essentialize , or reduce/overlook important variations within a group. This tendency is evident in most of the popular, and some of the academic, conversations regarding “gender differences.” The book Men Are from Mars and Women Are from Venus makes it seem like men and women aren’t even species that hail from the same planet. The media is quick to include a blurb from a research study indicating again how men and women are “wired” to communicate differently. However, the overwhelming majority of current research on gender and communication finds that while there are differences between how men and women communicate, there are far more similarities (Allen, 2011). Even the language we use to describe the genders sets up dichotomies. That’s why I suggest that my students use the term other gender instead of the commonly used opposite sex . I have a mom, a sister, and plenty of female friends, and I don’t feel like any of them are the opposite of me. Perhaps a better title for a book would be Women and Men Are Both from Earth .

The static-dynamic dialectic suggests that culture and communication change over time yet often appear to be and are experienced as stable. Although it is true that our cultural beliefs and practices are rooted in the past, we have already discussed how cultural categories that most of us assume to be stable, like race and gender, have changed dramatically in just the past fifty years. Some cultural values remain relatively consistent over time, which allows us to make some generalizations about a culture. For example, cultures have different orientations to time. The Chinese have a longer-term orientation to time than do Europeans (Lustig & Koester, 2006). This is evidenced in something that dates back as far as astrology. The Chinese zodiac is done annually (The Year of the Monkey, etc.), while European astrology was organized by month (Taurus, etc.). While this cultural orientation to time has been around for generations, as China becomes more Westernized in terms of technology, business, and commerce, it could also adopt some views on time that are more short term.

The history/past-present/future dialectic reminds us to understand that while current cultural conditions are important and that our actions now will inevitably affect our future, those conditions are not without a history. We always view history through the lens of the present. Perhaps no example is more entrenched in our past and avoided in our present as the history of slavery in the United States. Where I grew up in the Southern United States, race was something that came up frequently. The high school I attended was 30 percent minorities (mostly African American) and also had a noticeable number of white teens (mostly male) who proudly displayed Confederate flags on their clothing or vehicles.

There has been controversy over whether the Confederate flag is a symbol of hatred or a historical symbol that acknowledges the time of the Civil War.

Jim Surkamp – Confederate Rebel Flag – CC BY-NC 2.0.

I remember an instance in a history class where we were discussing slavery and the subject of repatriation, or compensation for descendants of slaves, came up. A white male student in the class proclaimed, “I’ve never owned slaves. Why should I have to care about this now?” While his statement about not owning slaves is valid, it doesn’t acknowledge that effects of slavery still linger today and that the repercussions of such a long and unjust period of our history don’t disappear over the course of a few generations.

The privileges-disadvantages dialectic captures the complex interrelation of unearned, systemic advantages and disadvantages that operate among our various identities. As was discussed earlier, our society consists of dominant and nondominant groups. Our cultures and identities have certain privileges and/or disadvantages. To understand this dialectic, we must view culture and identity through a lens of intersectionality , which asks us to acknowledge that we each have multiple cultures and identities that intersect with each other. Because our identities are complex, no one is completely privileged and no one is completely disadvantaged. For example, while we may think of a white, heterosexual male as being very privileged, he may also have a disability that leaves him without the able-bodied privilege that a Latina woman has. This is often a difficult dialectic for my students to understand, because they are quick to point out exceptions that they think challenge this notion. For example, many people like to point out Oprah Winfrey as a powerful African American woman. While she is definitely now quite privileged despite her disadvantaged identities, her trajectory isn’t the norm. When we view privilege and disadvantage at the cultural level, we cannot let individual exceptions distract from the systemic and institutionalized ways in which some people in our society are disadvantaged while others are privileged.

As these dialectics reiterate, culture and communication are complex systems that intersect with and diverge from many contexts. A better understanding of all these dialectics helps us be more critical thinkers and competent communicators in a changing world.

“Getting Critical”

Immigration, Laws, and Religion

France, like the United States, has a constitutional separation between church and state. As many countries in Europe, including France, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, and Sweden, have experienced influxes of immigrants, many of them Muslim, there have been growing tensions among immigration, laws, and religion. In 2011, France passed a law banning the wearing of a niqab (pronounced knee-cobb ), which is an Islamic facial covering worn by some women that only exposes the eyes. This law was aimed at “assimilating its Muslim population” of more than five million people and “defending French values and women’s rights” (De La Baume & Goodman, 2011). Women found wearing the veil can now be cited and fined $150 euros. Although the law went into effect in April of 2011, the first fines were issued in late September of 2011. Hind Ahmas, a woman who was fined, says she welcomes the punishment because she wants to challenge the law in the European Court of Human Rights. She also stated that she respects French laws but cannot abide by this one. Her choice to wear the veil has been met with more than a fine. She recounts how she has been denied access to banks and other public buildings and was verbally harassed by a woman on the street and then punched in the face by the woman’s husband. Another Muslim woman named Kenza Drider, who can be seen in Video Clip 8.2, announced that she will run for the presidency of France in order to challenge the law. The bill that contained the law was broadly supported by politicians and the public in France, and similar laws are already in place in Belgium and are being proposed in Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, and Switzerland (Fraser, 2011).

• Some people who support the law argue that part of integrating into Western society is showing your face. Do you agree or disagree? Why?
• Part of the argument for the law is to aid in the assimilation of Muslim immigrants into French society. What are some positives and negatives of this type of assimilation?
• Identify which of the previously discussed dialectics can be seen in this case. How do these dialectics capture the tensions involved?

Video Clip 8.2

Veiled Woman Eyes French Presidency

(click to see video)

Intercultural Communication and Relationships

Intercultural relationships are formed between people with different cultural identities and include friends, romantic partners, family, and coworkers. Intercultural relationships have benefits and drawbacks. Some of the benefits include increasing cultural knowledge, challenging previously held stereotypes, and learning new skills (Martin & Nakayama, 2010). For example, I learned about the Vietnamese New Year celebration Tet from a friend I made in graduate school. This same friend also taught me how to make some delicious Vietnamese foods that I continue to cook today. I likely would not have gained this cultural knowledge or skill without the benefits of my intercultural friendship. Intercultural relationships also present challenges, however.

The dialectics discussed earlier affect our intercultural relationships. The similarities-differences dialectic in particular may present challenges to relationship formation (Martin & Nakayama, 2010). While differences between people’s cultural identities may be obvious, it takes some effort to uncover commonalities that can form the basis of a relationship. Perceived differences in general also create anxiety and uncertainty that is not as present in intracultural relationships. Once some similarities are found, the tension within the dialectic begins to balance out and uncertainty and anxiety lessen. Negative stereotypes may also hinder progress toward relational development, especially if the individuals are not open to adjusting their preexisting beliefs. Intercultural relationships may also take more work to nurture and maintain. The benefit of increased cultural awareness is often achieved, because the relational partners explain their cultures to each other. This type of explaining requires time, effort, and patience and may be an extra burden that some are not willing to carry. Last, engaging in intercultural relationships can lead to questioning or even backlash from one’s own group. I experienced this type of backlash from my white classmates in middle school who teased me for hanging out with the African American kids on my bus. While these challenges range from mild inconveniences to more serious repercussions, they are important to be aware of. As noted earlier, intercultural relationships can take many forms. The focus of this section is on friendships and romantic relationships, but much of the following discussion can be extended to other relationship types.

Intercultural Friendships

Even within the United States, views of friendship vary based on cultural identities. Research on friendship has shown that Latinos/as value relational support and positive feedback, Asian Americans emphasize exchanges of ideas like offering feedback or asking for guidance, African Americans value respect and mutual acceptance, and European Americans value recognition of each other as individuals (Coller, 1996). Despite the differences in emphasis, research also shows that the overall definition of a close friend is similar across cultures. A close friend is thought of as someone who is helpful and nonjudgmental, who you enjoy spending time with but can also be independent, and who shares similar interests and personality traits (Lee, 2006).

Intercultural friendship formation may face challenges that other friendships do not. Prior intercultural experience and overcoming language barriers increase the likelihood of intercultural friendship formation (Sias et al., 2008). In some cases, previous intercultural experience, like studying abroad in college or living in a diverse place, may motivate someone to pursue intercultural friendships once they are no longer in that context. When friendships cross nationality, it may be necessary to invest more time in common understanding, due to language barriers. With sufficient motivation and language skills, communication exchanges through self-disclosure can then further relational formation. Research has shown that individuals from different countries in intercultural friendships differ in terms of the topics and depth of self-disclosure, but that as the friendship progresses, self-disclosure increases in depth and breadth (Chen & Nakazawa, 2009). Further, as people overcome initial challenges to initiating an intercultural friendship and move toward mutual self-disclosure, the relationship becomes more intimate, which helps friends work through and move beyond their cultural differences to focus on maintaining their relationship. In this sense, intercultural friendships can be just as strong and enduring as other friendships (Lee, 2006).

The potential for broadening one’s perspective and learning more about cultural identities is not always balanced, however. In some instances, members of a dominant culture may be more interested in sharing their culture with their intercultural friend than they are in learning about their friend’s culture, which illustrates how context and power influence friendships (Lee, 2006). A research study found a similar power dynamic, as European Americans in intercultural friendships stated they were open to exploring everyone’s culture but also communicated that culture wasn’t a big part of their intercultural friendships, as they just saw their friends as people. As the researcher states, “These types of responses may demonstrate that it is easiest for the group with the most socioeconomic and socio-cultural power to ignore the rules, assume they have the power as individuals to change the rules, or assume that no rules exist, since others are adapting to them rather than vice versa” (Collier, 1996). Again, intercultural friendships illustrate the complexity of culture and the importance of remaining mindful of your communication and the contexts in which it occurs.

Culture and Romantic Relationships

Romantic relationships are influenced by society and culture, and still today some people face discrimination based on who they love. Specifically, sexual orientation and race affect societal views of romantic relationships. Although the United States, as a whole, is becoming more accepting of gay and lesbian relationships, there is still a climate of prejudice and discrimination that individuals in same-gender romantic relationships must face. Despite some physical and virtual meeting places for gay and lesbian people, there are challenges for meeting and starting romantic relationships that are not experienced for most heterosexual people (Peplau & Spalding, 2000).

As we’ve already discussed, romantic relationships are likely to begin due to merely being exposed to another person at work, through a friend, and so on. But some gay and lesbian people may feel pressured into or just feel more comfortable not disclosing or displaying their sexual orientation at work or perhaps even to some family and friends, which closes off important social networks through which most romantic relationships begin. This pressure to refrain from disclosing one’s gay or lesbian sexual orientation in the workplace is not unfounded, as it is still legal in twenty-nine states (as of November 2012) to fire someone for being gay or lesbian (Human Rights Campaign, 2012). There are also some challenges faced by gay and lesbian partners regarding relationship termination. Gay and lesbian couples do not have the same legal and societal resources to manage their relationships as heterosexual couples; for example, gay and lesbian relationships are not legally recognized in most states, it is more difficult for a gay or lesbian couple to jointly own property or share custody of children than heterosexual couples, and there is little public funding for relationship counseling or couples therapy for gay and lesbian couples.

While this lack of barriers may make it easier for gay and lesbian partners to break out of an unhappy or unhealthy relationship, it could also lead couples to termination who may have been helped by the sociolegal support systems available to heterosexuals (Peplau & Spalding, 2000).

Despite these challenges, relationships between gay and lesbian people are similar in other ways to those between heterosexuals. Gay, lesbian, and heterosexual people seek similar qualities in a potential mate, and once relationships are established, all these groups experience similar degrees of relational satisfaction (Peplau & Spalding, 2000). Despite the myth that one person plays the man and one plays the woman in a relationship, gay and lesbian partners do not have set preferences in terms of gender role. In fact, research shows that while women in heterosexual relationships tend to do more of the housework, gay and lesbian couples were more likely to divide tasks so that each person has an equal share of responsibility (Peplau & Spalding, 2000). A gay or lesbian couple doesn’t necessarily constitute an intercultural relationship, but as we have already discussed, sexuality is an important part of an individual’s identity and connects to larger social and cultural systems. Keeping in mind that identity and culture are complex, we can see that gay and lesbian relationships can also be intercultural if the partners are of different racial or ethnic backgrounds.

While interracial relationships have occurred throughout history, there have been more historical taboos in the United States regarding relationships between African Americans and white people than other racial groups. Antimiscegenation laws were common in states and made it illegal for people of different racial/ethnic groups to marry. It wasn’t until 1967 that the Supreme Court ruled in the case of Loving versus Virginia , declaring these laws to be unconstitutional (Pratt, 1995). It wasn’t until 1998 and 2000, however, that South Carolina and Alabama removed such language from their state constitutions (Lovingday.org, 2011). The organization and website lovingday.org commemorates the landmark case and works to end racial prejudice through education.

Even after these changes, there were more Asian-white and Latino/a-white relationships than there were African American–white relationships (Gaines Jr. & Brennan, 2011). Having already discussed the importance of similarity in attraction to mates, it’s important to note that partners in an interracial relationship, although culturally different, tend to be similar in occupation and income. This can likely be explained by the situational influences on our relationship formation we discussed earlier—namely, that work tends to be a starting ground for many of our relationships, and we usually work with people who have similar backgrounds to us.

There has been much research on interracial couples that counters the popular notion that partners may be less satisfied in their relationships due to cultural differences. In fact, relational satisfaction isn’t significantly different for interracial partners, although the challenges they may face in finding acceptance from other people could lead to stressors that are not as strong for intracultural partners (Gaines Jr. & Brennan, 2011). Although partners in interracial relationships certainly face challenges, there are positives. For example, some mention that they’ve experienced personal growth by learning about their partner’s cultural background, which helps them gain alternative perspectives. Specifically, white people in interracial relationships have cited an awareness of and empathy for racism that still exists, which they may not have been aware of before (Gaines Jr. & Liu, 2000).

The Supreme Court ruled in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia case that states could not enforce laws banning interracial marriages.

Bahai.us – CC BY-NC 2.0.

Key Takeaways

• Studying intercultural communication, communication between people with differing cultural identities, can help us gain more self-awareness and be better able to communicate in a world with changing demographics and technologies.
• A dialectical approach to studying intercultural communication is useful because it allows us to think about culture and identity in complex ways, avoiding dichotomies and acknowledging the tensions that must be negotiated.
• Intercultural relationships face some challenges in negotiating the dialectic between similarities and differences but can also produce rewards in terms of fostering self- and other awareness.
• Why is the phrase “Know thyself” relevant to the study of intercultural communication?
• Apply at least one of the six dialectics to a recent intercultural interaction that you had. How does this dialectic help you understand or analyze the situation?
• Do some research on your state’s laws by answering the following questions: Did your state have antimiscegenation laws? If so, when were they repealed? Does your state legally recognize gay and lesbian relationships? If so, how?

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Communication in the Real World Copyright © 2016 by University of Minnesota is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Intercultural communication competence and job burnout in mnc employees: the mediation role of job stress.

• 1 Research Institute of Social Development, Southwest University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
• 2 Faculty of International Studies, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China
• 3 School of Social Work, Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, United States

This study examined the relationship between intercultural communication competence (ICC) and job burnout, as well as the mediating effects of job stress, using data collected from employees ( n  = 1,064) from a Chinese multinational corporation in Brunei. Through regression analysis and mediation effect tests, we found that ICC was negatively associated with job burnout (β = −0.19, p  < 0.001) and job stress (β = −0.08, p  < 0.001). Job stress was positively associated with job burnout (β = 0.65, p  < 0.001). Job stress played a partial mediating role between ICC and job burnout. The total effect of ICC on job burnout was −0.19, the direct effect was −0.14, and the indirect effect of ICC via job stress was −0.05. The findings call for ICC training for employees in multinational corporations.

1 Introduction

Over the past 50 years, Southeast Asian economies have transformed from primarily agrarian societies toward more modern industrial states ( Benson and Yukongdi, 2005 ). The Southeast Asian region involves the following countries: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, East Timor, and Vietnam ( De Cieri and Bardoel, 2009 ). Inevitably, countries in this region are interrelated with China in various ways, especially in economic and cultural aspects. Nevertheless, the remarkable growth of the Chinese economy has generated a high rate of employee turnover in Asia, especially in Asian multinational firms ( Zheng and Lamond, 2010 ). However, studies explaining the occupational status of employees in this region are quite limited compared to European- or American-based multinational corporations (MNCs).

Company H is located in Brunei and headquartered in China. In 2022, the company experienced a high turnover rate, reaching 20.8%, while the turnover rates of other subsidiaries were less than 4% within Chinese borders. If employees show high resignation intentions with high frequency, the company will suffer from monetary, reputational, and opportunity losses ( Black and Mendenhall, 1989 ; Graf, 2004 ; Okpara et al., 2021 ). This shows researchers’ interest in employees’ stability, its antecedents, and its outcome.

According to the Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China, the annual non-financial direct overseas investment of Chinese enterprises in the countries along the Belt and Road (B&R) initiative reached 141.05 billion yuan (20.97 billion US dollars) in 2022. 1 The Southeast Asian region is the main target investment region, including Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Brunei (see Footnote 1). By the end of 2021, more than 11,000 enterprises had been established in B&R countries, accounting for a quarter of China’s total overseas enterprises. 2 Total registered overseas subsidiary corporations with parent companies set up in China reached 48,828 on April 13, 2023. 3 In the meantime, an increasing number of laborers have been expatriated. For example, in 2022, Chinese enterprises assigned 259,000 laborers abroad, and 543,000 laborers stayed abroad at the end of the year. 4 In addition, according to a thorough statistical analysis of the average overseas assets and income of China’s top 100 multinational companies from 2011 to 2022, Zhang (2023) found that their average assets increased from 32.5 billion Yuan (approximately 4.75 billion US dollars) in 2011 to 107.5 billion Yuan (approximately 15.72 billion US dollars) in 2022, a sharp rise of 230.8%; the average revenue of the top 100 MNCs increased from 31 billion Yuan (approximately 4.53 billion US dollars) in 2011 to 77.9 billion Yuan (approximately 11.39 billion US dollars) in 2022, a notable increase of 151.3%. It means the past 10 years have witnessed a booming development of Chinese multinational companies.

Company H is one of the top 100 Chinese MNCs. Despite its large investment scale (3.45 billion US dollars) and assets (6.83 billion US dollars), its turnover rate reached 20.1% in 2022, which is quintuple as much as domestic companies (3.9%). Thus, it is urgent to investigate the employees’ occupational status.

Job burnout turns out to be strongly and positively correlated with turnover intentions ( Houkes et al., 2001 ; Mor Barak et al., 2001 ; Kim and Stoner, 2008 ; Choi et al., 2012 ; Ran et al., 2020 ). While a large body of empirical research lays emphasis on job burnout within one single country, such as social workers ( Huang et al., 2021 , 2022 ), healthcare staff ( Ran et al., 2020 ), teachers ( Azeem and Nazir, 2008 ), and other working areas (e.g., telecom, IT, business, corporate, and sports) ( Maslach and Jackson, 1984 ; Maslach and Schaufeli, 1993 ; Maslach, 2006 ), burnout research has expanded beyond its original borders and is expanding internationally ( Maslach et al., 2001 ; Sweileh, 2020 ). However, there are limited studies aiming at employees’ job burnout among joint ventures and MNCs overseas and under intercultural backgrounds, especially in Chinese-based firms. With the rapid growth of foreign investment from Chinese enterprises, it is prudent to investigate the staff’s job burnout status with an eye on their cross-cultural competence.

Hence, to fill the literature gap, this study selected a Chinese MNC (Company H) located in Brunei, a Southeast Asian country, along the Belt and Road initiative, using a questionnaire to empirically investigate employees’ job burnout status, the relationship between intercultural communication competence and job burnout, as well as the mediating role of job stress.

2 Literature review, theory, and conceptual framework

2.1 job burnout.

Job burnout is a psychological syndrome that indicates a prolonged reaction to workplace stressors, and it mainly refers to the chronic strain that is attributed to an incongruence, or misfit, between the employee and the job ( Maslach, 2003 , p. 189). It includes three key dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism, and a sense of inefficacy. Since Maslach and Jackson (1981) developed the concept and measurement tools for job burnout, the trajectory of burnout research has dealt with people’s real experiences in the workplace, which led to a comprehensive understanding of the context and outcomes of this phenomenon as well as intervention strategies. For example, burnout researchers have focused more on job context, such as job demands and resources ( Bakker et al., 2014 ; Huang et al., 2021 ; Xie et al., 2021 ), and social support ( Kahn et al., 2006 ; Xie et al., 2022 ), than on individual variables such as personality ( Maslach, 2003 ). As for its outcomes, burnout is strongly and positively associated with turnover and plays a negative role in employees’ occupational performance ( Randall and Scott, 1988 ; Rahim and Cosby, 2016 ; Wu et al., 2019 ). For MNCs, employees’ engagement is essential for the smooth running of the overseas business, either expatriates or local staff ( Kumar and Pansari, 2014 ; Rodrigues da Costa et al., 2019 ).

2.2 Intercultural communication competence, job stress, and burnout

Despite the inescapability of cross-cultural communication in the daily work of MNC workers, little is known about how their intercultural communication competence affects burnout. Intercultural communication is often defined as “communication between people from different national cultures, and many scholars limit it to face-to-face communication” ( Gudykunst, 2002 , p. 179). Since Hall (1959) laid the foundation of the intercultural communication research area, much progress has been made, and one of the prominent subjects of interest to researchers is intercultural communication competence ( Arasaratnam and Doerfel, 2005 ). ICC remains an important focus of intercultural scholars and practitioners ( Martin, 2015 ) and is involved in the practical application of intercultural communication in situations such as pluricultural classroom ( Holmes, 2006 ), training ( Kupka et al., 2008 ), sojourning ( Jackson, 2009 ), expatriates ( Peltokorpi, 2010 ; Wilczewski et al., 2018 ), and participating in daily intercultural interactions in an increasingly multicultural society ( Taylor and Osland, 2012 ; Balakrishnan et al., 2021 ). In multicultural groups, many, if not all, obstacles can be traced to the diverse cultural contexts of group members, such as cultural diversity and relational, communication, and cultural orientation differences ( Matveev and Milter, 2004 ; Izogo and Mpinganjira, 2020 ). Abundant studies have proved that intercultural communication competence affects performance within multicultural teams ( Matveev and Nelson, 2004 ; Abugre and Debrah, 2019 ) and expatriates’ adaptation and adjustment ( Brein and David, 1971 ; Abugre, 2018 ), which is vital for MNC sustainable operation. Overall, competency in intercultural interactions has become a necessity for individuals to succeed in a multicultural environment.

As for the studies on intercultural communication competence and burnout, scholars seldom tested their relationship among MNC employees or expatriates, as most of them chose health and human service areas, such as nurses and healthcare providers. Ulrey and Amason (2001) found a negative association between healthcare providers’ intercultural communication effectiveness and their levels of anxiety in a survey of the employees of a large healthcare system, which included two hospitals and four clinics. Lee et al. (2022) conducted a survey on 146 nurses working in the operating room (OR) in South Korea and verified that communication competence was adversely associated with burnout among OR nurses after controlling for other factors related to burnout. Babin et al. (2012) examined burnout from a communication perspective and found communication competence will predict the extent to which participants report experiencing job burnout. For burnout researchers, the emphasis is on the context of the job environment, such as workload demands and social support from colleagues ( Maslach, 2003 ). Intercultural communication can be deemed as one of the demands and resources of multinational company jobs, which requires attention in the burnout research field.

In contrast to the paucity of literature connecting ICC to job burnout, a large body of literature exists that explores the relationship between job stress and burnout across a variety of work-related contexts (e.g., Innstrand et al., 2004 ; Leung et al., 2011 ; Silbiger and Pines, 2014 ; Mullen et al., 2018 ; Freitas et al., 2023 ). Stress can be defined as “a nonspecific response of the body to any demand” ( Seyle, 1983 , p. 127). The concept of stress has also been extended to the context of work. Parker and DeCotiis (1983 , p. 165) defined job stress as “feeling of a person who is required to deviate from normal or self-desired functioning in the workplace as the result of opportunities, constraints, or demands relating to potentially important work-related outcomes.” Stressful working environments may generate physical, psychological, and professional consequences for individuals. For physical consequences, one may suffer from physical injuries, cardiovascular disease, and high blood pressure ( Mohammad Mosadeghrad, 2014 ), or even severe, premature death and disability along with chronic suffering from job stress ( Quick and Henderson, 2016 ). For psychological impact, constant stress may lead to depression ( Freudenberger, 1989 ; Liu et al., 2012 ; Shen et al., 2014 ) and anxiety ( Nyssen et al., 2003 ; Mark and Smith, 2012 ). For professional aspect, job satisfaction ( Dartey-Baah et al., 2020 ), organizational commitment ( Wong et al., 2021 ), and job burnout are common symptoms due to job stress. Abundant research has found that job stress is the antecedent of burnout ( Nyssen et al., 2003 ; Leung et al., 2010 ; Li et al., 2015 ; Luo et al., 2016 ; Mnif and Rebai, 2022 ; Freitas et al., 2023 ).

Intercultural communication can be a stressor for employees in pluricultural working settings. Job stressors are varied in different aspects, from relational labor and emotional labor to work duties such as interpersonal conflicts and a lack of training or competency. In particular, the misfit or fit between an employee’s job demands and his or her ability to meet such demands is a critical issue in determining whether stressors will trigger a stress response ( Mullen et al., 2018 ). Intercultural research has shown that communicating with people from different cultures is one trigger that often brings anxiety and stress ( Olaniran, 1993 ; Redmond and Bunyi, 1993 ; Gilstrap et al., 2019 ). Similarly, some scholars find that intercultural communication contributes to stress for healthcare providers ( Kreps and Kunimoto, 1994 ; Schott and Henley, 1996 ). This is also the case for employees working in MNCs or being expatriated ( Silbiger and Pines, 2014 ; Wilczewski et al., 2018 ).

2.3 Conceptual framework

Overall, empirical research on the relationship among intercultural communication competence, job stress, and job burnout among Chinese MNC workers is still lacking. Thus, this study constructs a model of the relationship between Chinese MNC employees’ intercultural communication competence, job stress, and job burnout (see Figure 1 ), proposing the following hypotheses:

Figure 1 . Conceptual model of intercultural communication competence, job stress, and job burnout.

H1: Intercultural communication competence is negatively associated with job burnout.

H2: Job stress is positively related to job burnout.

H3: Job stress plays a mediating role between intercultural communication competence and job burnout.

3.1 Data and sample

The data for the present study were collected from an anonymous survey administered to employees from Company H in Brunei Darussalam, a Southeast Asian country along the Belt and Road Initiative. Company H is an energy-based enterprise and a subsidiary of a large private enterprise in China. In 2017, the company built a refining and chemical joint venture with the Brunei government to make the best use of Brunei’s rich oil and gas resources and superior investment environment to implement international production capacity cooperation. Currently, there are approximately 1,000 Chinese employees and 500 local employees in Company H.

The official invitation to participate in the survey was sent to all employees in Company H on November 30, 2022. Two reminders to participants were spread the first week and second week via Company H’s official email and enterprise WeChat group. The online survey was conducted via the Wenjuanxing Platform in both Chinese and English versions, which was verified by all the authors and the English speakers in the Human Resource Department from Company H. On December 14, 2022, a total of 1,064 employees responded to the survey, and all the data were complete and valid, including Chinese, Bruneian, and Malaysian employees. The response rate of the survey was 70.9%. For ethical issues, all participants were informed that their participation was in an anonymous and voluntary way and that they could choose to stop the survey at any time.

3.2 Measures

3.2.1 job burnout.

The Maslach Burnout Inventory (MBI) is the most authoritative and commonly used scale for job burnout ( Maslach and Jackson, 1981 ; Maslach and Jackson, 1986 ). The MBI-GS (Maslach Burnout Inventory-General Survey) was designed in 1996 by Maslach, Jackson, and Leiter and was applied to occupational groups other than human services and education, such as customer service, maintenance, manufacturing, management, and most other professions. The MBI-GS addresses three dimensions: exhaustion, cynicism, and professional efficacy. Exhaustion measures feelings of being overextended and exhausted by one’s work. Cynicism measures an indifference or a distant attitude toward work. Professional efficacy measures satisfaction with past and present accomplishments, and it explicitly assesses an individual’s expectations of continued effectiveness at work if they are not effective at work.

In 2002, Professor Li Chaoping was authorized by the developer of the questionnaire, Professor Michael Leiter, to revise the MBI-GS in China. The results show that the inventory has good reliability and validity in China ( Li and Shi, 2003 ; Zhong et al., 2009 ). Thus, this study adopted the Chinese version of MBI-GS for Chinese employees and used the original English version for Bruneian employees. The scale consists of 15 items, and responses to items in MBI-GS range from 0 (never) to 6 (every day). We reversed the item scores in the personal accomplishment subscale so that higher scores indicated greater burnout. The higher the total score, the more severe the job burnout. In this research, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the job burnout scale was 0.90.

3.2.2 Job stress

The Simple Occupational Stress Inventory (SOSI) uses nine items to measure the level of occupational stress from two perspectives: time stress and anxiety stress. SOSI is an abbreviated version of the Parker and DeCotiis (1983) Occupational Stress Questionnaire, revised by Jamal and Baba (1992) . There are 13 items in the original scale, and SOSI is simplified into nine items. The translation was published, and the Chinese version was adopted directly without modification in a published translation ( Fields, 2004 ). Scholars have proved the validity of the SOSI Chinese version ( Zhang, 2012 ). Zhang (2012) extracted two common factors in nine items, explaining 55.3% of the total variation, and the homogeneity reliability α coefficient and split-half reliability r coefficient were both >0.70. The scale’s measurement dimensions, time stress and anxiety stress, refer to an individual’s continuous pressure under the job (four items) and work-related anxiety (five items), respectively. In this research, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the job stress scale was 0.90. Responses to items in SOSI range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly disagree). Higher scores indicated greater stress.

3.2.3 Intercultural communication competence

The Intercultural Communication Competence (ICC) scale was developed by Maslach et al. (1996) ; Arasaratnam (2009) to measure the intercultural communication competence of individuals and includes 10 items. ICC was a unidimensional construct and was used as the independent variable in this study. The Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients of this scale were 0.77 ( Arasaratnam, 2016 ). Respondents were asked to rate their responses, such as “I often find it difficult to differentiate between similar cultures,” and “I usually look for opportunities to interact with people from other cultures.” Responses to items in SOSI range from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly disagree). A higher score points to better intercultural communication competence. In this research, Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of the ICC scale was 0.70.

3.2.4 Control variables

Age, sex, nationality, education, marital status, number of children, and salary were selected as control variables. The selected control variables are general characteristics and were found to be related to job burnout ( Bhanugopan and Fish, 2006 ; Lee et al., 2022 ). For measuring age, participants were asked to fill “the year of your birth” question. For sex, we assigned 0 = female, 1 = male; for nationality, we assigned 0 = Chinese, 1 = Bruneian; for education, 0 = below college, 1 = college and above; for marital status, 0 = unmarried, 1 = married. As for age, number of children, and salary, they were numeric variables.

3.3 Analytical strategy

First, descriptive analysis and Pearson’s correlation analysis were adopted to overview the sample characteristics and correlations among all variables. Then, we conducted regression analysis and bootstrap analysis to examine the relations among ICC, job stress, and job burnout while controlling age, sex, religion, education, marital status, number of children, and salary. Finally, bootstrapping is used to verify the indirect effects and confidence intervals to further examine the explanatory power of the results. Bootstrap analysis can obtain a more accurate confidence interval and a higher test power ( Hayes and Scharkow, 2013 ; Kristopher, 2014 ), compared with the stepwise method of Baron and Kenny (1986) . STATA software 16.0 was used for all analyses.

Table 1 presents the descriptive statistics and correlations of the key variables. In total, 676 Chinese employees, 379 Bruneian employees, and nine Malaysian employees participated in the survey. The nine Malaysian employees were combined into Bruneian employees as they share a similar cultural background and religious beliefs. The average burnout score of employees was 39 (SD = 22.7), but the average burnout score for Bruneian workers reached a high level of 52. The sample average score of job stress was 23.8 (SD = 7.8) and 31.6 (SD = 3.4) for ICC. About 86% of the sample was male. The average age of the sample was 35.9, and approximately 65% of them had at least a college degree. Approximately 60% of participants are married, and 35% have a particular religious belief. In addition, the sample average salary is RMB 14,425.7 per month (approximately 2,024 US dollars).

Table 1 . Descriptive statistics and correlations of key variables.

The correlations of the key variables are presented in Table 1 . Age was positively correlated with ICC (r = 0.10, p  < 0.001) and negatively correlated with job stress (r = −0.34, p  < 0.001) and job burnout (r = −0.40, p  < 0.001). In addition, higher education was positively correlated with job burnout (r = 0.12, p  < 0.001). In addition, employees with married status showed lower job stress (r = −0.25, p  < 0.001) and lower job burnout (r = −0.31, p  < 0.001). In addition, the number of children also had a negative effect on job stress (r = −0.26, p  < 0.001) and job burnout (r = −0.32, p  < 0.001). What’s more, salary showed a positive relationship with ICC (r = 0.09, p  < 0.01) and a negative relationship with job stress (r = −0.37, p  < 0.001) and job burnout (r = −0.32, p  < 0.001). What’s more, employees with higher salary showed higher ICC, lower job stress, and lower job burnout status. In general, ICC was negatively correlated with job burnout (r = −0.21, p  < 0.001) and job stress (r = −0.09, p  < 0.001). Job stress is strongly and positively correlated with job burnout (r = 0.70, p  < 0.001). That is, the higher the job stress of the employee was, the more likely the job burnout was to increase.

Table 2 presents the standardized estimates of the regression results. Four models were presented. Model 1 analyzed how ICC affected job burnout. The results showed that adjusted R 2  = 0.30, F  = 58.38, p  < 0.001; ICC was negatively associated with job burnout (β = −0.19, p  < 0.001), which meant if employees had higher intercultural communication competence, their job burnout level would be lower. Model 2 presented the effect of job stress on job burnout. The results show that adjusted R 2  = 0.53, F  = 148.99, p  < 0.001; job stress played a significantly positive role on job burnout (β = 0.65, p  < 0.001). Higher job stress leads to higher job burnout. Model 3 analyzed how ICC impacted job stress. The results showed that adjusted R 2  = 0.38, F  = 82.74, p  < 0.001; ICC was negatively related to job stress (β = −0.08, p  < 0.001). That is, if employees possessed higher ICC, their job stress would be lower. Model 4 presented the effect of ICC and job stress on job burnout ( R 2  = 0.55, F  = 143.51, p  < 0.001), pointing out that the fitness of Model 4 is higher than that of Model 1. ICC was negatively associated with job burnout (β = −0.14, p  < 0.001), and job stress is positively associated with job burnout (β = 0.63, p  < 0.001). In conclusion, Model 1 verified Hypothesis 1, indicating that intercultural communication competence has a negative association with job burnout. Hypothesis 2 was proved by Model 2, that is, the level of job stress has a positive effect on job burnout.

Table 2 . Regression analysis of job burnout.

Furthermore, among the control variables, age, sex, nationality, and number of children passed the significant test in most of the four models, suggesting that these four variables were associated with job stress and burnout. For instance, in Model 1, age (β = −0.14, p  < 0.001), male (β = −0.09, p  < 0.001), and number of children (β = −0.12, p  < 0.001) were negatively associated with job burnout, while nationality (Bruneian) (β = 0.29, p  < 0.001) was positively correlated with job burnout.

4.1 Partial mediating role of job stress

By controlling age, sex, nationality, education, marital status, number of children, and salary, this article tested the mediation effect of job stress between ICC and job burnout. Table 3 and Figure 2 have suggested that after adding the intermediary variable job stress, ICC played a significant negative effect on job burnout (β = −0.21, p  < 0.001), and the coefficient effect on job burnout was less than the original −0.19. The total effect of ICC on job burnout was −0.19, the direct effect was −0.14, and the indirect effect of ICC via job stress was −0.05 ( p  < 0.001), as presented in Table 3 and Figure 2 . In this case, job stress had a partial mediating effect on job burnout. The mediating effect was −0.05, the 95% bootstrap confidence interval was [−1.241, −0.667], and the proportion of the effect mediated by job stress was −0.05 (b a  × b b ). Thus, Hypothesis 3 was verified: the level of job stress plays a mediating role between intercultural communication competence and job burnout.

Table 3 . Bootstrap analysis of mediation effect test.

Figure 2 . Conceptual model of intercultural communication competence, job stress, and job burnout.

5 Discussion

Currently, empirical research lays emphasis on job burnout within one single country ( Azeem and Nazir, 2008 ; Ran et al., 2020 ; Huang et al., 2021 ); few studies aim at employees’ job burnout among joint ventures or MNCs overseas and under intercultural background. However, burnout research has expanded beyond its original borders and is expanding internationally ( Maslach et al., 2001 ; Sweileh, 2020 ). Therefore, the present study extends the literature by investigating employees’ job burnout status in a large Chinese MNC located in Brunei, a Southeast Asian country.

In this study, intercultural communication competence was found to play a significant role in MNC employees’ job burnout in regression analysis. The results showed that a higher level of intercultural communication competence was associated with a lower level of job burnout, which echoes that, although scholars seldom directly tested the relationship between ICC and job burnout, previous research that verified communication competence could release the job burnout level. For example, Lee et al. (2022) conducted a survey on 146 nurses working in the operating room (OR) in South Korea and verified that communication competence was adversely associated with burnout among OR nurses after controlling for other factors related to burnout. Babin et al. (2012) found that communication competence will predict the extent to which participants report experiencing job burnout. In their daily work, cross-cultural communication among MNC workers is inevitable. Obstacles can be traced to the diverse cultural contexts of group members, such as cultural diversity and relational, communication, and cultural orientation differences ( Matveev and Milter, 2004 ; Izogo and Mpinganjira, 2020 ). Abundant studies have proved that intercultural communication competence affects performance within multicultural teams ( Matveev and Nelson, 2004 ; Abugre and Debrah, 2019 ) and expatriates’ adaptation and adjustment ( Brein and David, 1971 ; Abugre, 2018 ), which is vital for MNC sustainable operation. Competency in intercultural interactions has become a necessity for individuals to succeed in a multicultural working environment, so the ICC level that an employee possesses can affect his/her job burnout level.

Importantly, job stress was proven to act as a mediator between ICC and job burnout. On the one hand, ICC was negatively related to job stress, which was consistent with the existing research results ( Redmond, 2000 ; Ulrey and Amason, 2001 ). Ulrey and Amason (2001) found effective intercultural communication can lower healthcare providers’ anxiety so as to reduce their stress in a survey of the employees of a large healthcare system. Redmond (2000) also found a negative relationship between the handling of stress and intercultural communication competence, as reported by international students attending a US university. On the other hand, job stress played a significantly positive role in job burnout, which has been proven by a variety of empirical research in work-related contexts (e.g., Innstrand et al., 2004 ; Leung et al., 2011 ; Silbiger and Pines, 2014 ; Mullen et al., 2018 ). In this study, higher ICC can reduce employees’ job stress and effectively lower the job burnout that occurs at work.

Based on the findings presented above, it is suggested to improve employees’ intercultural communication competence in MNCs. In company H, Bruneian staff can speak English and Malay, while only 10% of Chinese staff can speak fluent English. To improve intercultural communication competence, Chinese staff are suggested to strengthen language competence first, such as spoken English, so as to eliminate language barriers. Second, intercultural activities, such as team building, ice-breaking games, and celebrating traditional festivals both from China (such as the Spring Festival) and Brunei (such as Raya), are encouraged. Third, the findings call for ICC training for employees to broaden their cross-cultural view of multinational corporations.

The results of this study must be considered with several limitations. First, the application of a cross-sectional dataset only allows us to approximate associative relations, so further research needs to be utilized with longitudinal data collection to examine the temporal order of ICC, job stress, and job burnout. Second, the data were based on participants’ self-reports, which may include memory bias or social desirability bias. Third, this study analyzed data that were collected from employees in one case. While the sample size and high response rate increase our confidence, these findings may not be generalizable to the other MNCs. Thus, further studies using random sampling of MNCs are needed.

6 Conclusion

This study investigated the associative relations among intercultural communication competence, job stress, and job burnout in a sample of 1,064 employees from a large Chinese MNC based in Brunei. Specifically, we investigated how ICC affects job burnout and whether job stress plays a mediation role between ICC and job burnout. Our findings have demonstrated that ICC has a negative association with job burnout, while job stress is positively related to burnout. In addition, job stress plays a mediating role between ICC and job burnout. This study extends past research by reaching out to employees’ burnout studies under a multinational background and providing evidence of these relations in a sample of Chinese MNC workers. Notably, the results suggest the importance of ICC in work status. Thus, intercultural communication competence interventions are needed to prevent employees from experiencing job burnout.

Data availability statement

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.

Ethics statement

The studies involving humans were approved by the Review Committee of Research Institute of Social Development, Southwestern University of Finance & Economics. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author contributions

XX: Writing – review & editing, Conceptualization, Data curation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision. YT: Investigation, Software, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. CH: Data curation, Formal analysis, Software, Supervision, Validation, Writing – review & editing.

The author(s) declare that no financial support was received for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher’s note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

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Keywords: Chinese multinational corporation, intercultural communication competence, job burnout, job stress, Southeast Asia

Citation: Xie X, Tu Y and Huang C (2024) Intercultural communication competence and job burnout in MNC employees: the mediation role of job stress. Front. Psychol . 15:1339604. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1339604

Received: 16 November 2023; Accepted: 01 March 2024; Published: 19 March 2024.

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*Correspondence: Yulu Tu, [email protected]

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Exploring Transnational Intercultural Communication with Professor Elizabeth (“Ela”) Lozano

In the heart of Chicago, among the bustling streets and towering skyscrapers, the work of School of Communication Professor Elizabeth (“Ela”) Lozano, Ph.D. on transnational intercultural communication stands as a beacon of understanding and connection.  

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