Contextualizing intercultural competencies: Genesis, concepts and research agenda

Cultural specifics are increasingly experienced in intercultural interactions, as more and more people with different cultural backgrounds and orientation systems work in organizations. In order to design these interactions appropriately and purposefully, people as central actors of interculturality need certain motivations, attitudes and abilities, which are bundled together and referred to as intercultural competence. Specific processes and measures can be supportive so that actors become interculturally more competent. However, research on intercultural competence has so far been limited primarily to the relatively isolated consideration of individuals, without taking sufficient account of interaction processes or the context of action. The focus of this contribution is therefore on the contextualization of intercultural competence. The authors successively present the importance of the topic, the historical genesis of intercultural competence, concepts and models of intercultural competence, the development and measurement of intercultural competence, and a context-related research agenda.