Educating future managers for a culturally diverse workspace: Using course as a living laboratory

Abstract

Society is increasingly becoming multicultural, with more pressure to improve the quality of intercultural interactions. Higher education institutions are experiencing internationalization through increased mobility of students and faculty, which creates the need to manage diversity with the imperative of smoothing communication, reducing stress and making studying and working in a multicultural environment more efficient. Employers also dictate a need to educate culturally competent professionals, who are capable of succeeding in a globalized environment characterized by increased workforce mobility and international assignments. Intercultural competences discourse has a long track with researchers and practitioners, without any agreement on its definition or measurement, but with a clear message that cultural diversity will not result in increased intercultural competences. In this paper, intercultural competences are viewed as a transversal learning outcome, considering the increasing internationalization of higher education institutions. The research is qualitative in nature, based on the analysis of course evaluations and an open-ended survey. This study used a purposeful sample of current and former students who have been exposed to a diverse intercultural environment while studying at an international business school in Sweden. Based on the findings, a course design is suggested where exposure to cultural diversity is guided and facilitated by bringing students to collaborate in an assignment-driven context, with a culturally diverse group composition. Lecture-based components of the course are balanced with the addition of a component of self-reflection assignment, providing both culturally specific and general knowledge, thus contributing to the ability to extrapolate the experience on future intercultural encounters.