Intercultural Competence in Work: A Case Study in Eastern Finnish Enterprises

This paper presents the research results of a study that focused on intercultural interaction issues in private sector workplaces in Eastern Finland. The results show that the current challenges caused by the globalisation pressures in the realm of economics behoves work communities to review their personnel training and management practices: the work communities as a whole should be helped to deal with increasing cultural diversity. Although the number of workers with foreign backgrounds has increased in Eastern Finland, so far, there have been only a few attempts to restructure the working practices in an effort to take into account the demands of increasingly diverse working contexts. In all participating companies the mainstream people were the norm. It was common that Finnish language proficiency was seen as a necessary but not yet sufficient qualification for work. In addition, knowledge of the practices of Finnish working life, as well as training and working experience acquired in Finland were desired.