Towards An Intercultural Business Communication Competence Model And Assessment System

With the increasing global economic integration,China's overall opening up is taking shape.Chinese business personnel and organizations are facing more frequent communication with people and organizations from different cultural backgrounds.Intercultural business communication activities have become new normal phenomena and the communication competence constitutes one of the required,basic competences for Chinese international business talents.Although there exist discussions on related constructs at home and abroad,a systematic,in-depth empirical study is rare concerning the components and assessment of Chinese international business students and practitioners'intercultural business communication competence.How to define and assess this competence has hence become a necessary and important issue with theoretical and practical significance.This dissertation,expected to address the research gap at home and abroad,is made up of three main parts including the introduction,the conclusion and the main body composed of five innovative theoretical and empirical studies with new research findings.Based on the literature review on intercultural communication competence,inter-personal communication competence,intercultural business communication and international business talents' intercultural competence,interviews with experienced international business practitioners and experience shared by senior and experienced international business people,the author proposes models of intercultural business communication and communication competence.An importance evaluation questionnaire on the key components of intercultural business communication competence was developed and filled by Chinese international business talents.The questionnaire enjoys sound construct validity and internal consistency.20 key components with statistical significance were extracted.Basing on the theoretical findings of the first study,the author developed an Intercultural Business Communication Competence Scale in which 16 items were finally retained.The scale was handed out to about 850 subjects made up of international business practitioners and business students from different universities,majors and grades.A construct validity and reliability test were executed with SPSS22.0 and the results demonstrated the scale's satisfactory construct validity and internal consistency.Three factors were extracted by an exploratory factor analysis and named business English linguistic competence,business communication situation cognitive competence and intercultural business communication motivation.The internal consistency of the three factors was sound with the reliability coefficients ranging from 0.760 to 0.875.Mplus6.12 was introduced to carry out a confirmatory factor analysis based on the questionnaires filled by 130 subjects.The fitness index demonstrated that the data fit the model well and the three-factor model of this study is stable enough to explain the subjects' intercultural business communication competence.The innovative three-factor model also provides theoretical foundation for competence cultivation,training and further assessment.The significant positive correlations between the scores of the three factors and the total score provided evidence for the convergent validity of the scale.The significant low correlations among the scores of the three factors provided evidence for the scale's discriminant validity.The independent sample T tests show that the scores of different dimensions and total scores differ significantly due to the differences in majors,schools and grades.The Cultural Intelligence Scale(CQS),Emotion Intelligence Scale(EIS),task performance scale and contextual performance were introduced in the third study.The confirmatory factor analysis based on the survey with 93 business students demonstrated that the Emotion Intelligence model and the data fit well.The construct validity and the credibility of the CQS were supported by a survey with 94 translation majors.Two months later,the majors of international economy and trade completed the Scale of Intercultural Business Communication Competence(Cronbach ?=0.879)together with the CQS(Cronbach ?=0.857)and EQS(Cronbach ?=0.872).The Pearson correlation between the total score of the Intercultural Business Communication Competence and that of the EQS and CQS is 0.235(P<0.05)and 0.489(P<0.01)respectively.The survey results with Chinese international business practitioners demonstrated that IBCC total score appeared as significant predictor of their task performance,interpersonal facilitation and job dedication.In the three dimensions,their communication motivation emerged as a significant predictor of job performance.To gain detailed knowledge on the status quo of the intercultural business communication activities of Chinese international business practitioners,the author implemented a survey among 239 subjects.The factual questions include the main languages used in the workplace,the main communication media applied,the high-frequency communication situations experienced,the communication situations important to organizations and employees'career life,the most challenging communication situations and sensitive communication topics.The main communication media applied by the subjects are E-mail,telephone or cell phone and We-Chat.The high-frequency communication situations are E-mail communication,conference communication and telephone communication.Conference communication,E-mail communication and business reception are the three main communication situations important to the organizations.The conference communication,interview communication and business reception are considered important communication situations to the subjects' career life.The most challenging communication situations are business conference,business negotiation and business receptions.The topics of price negotiation,pay rise and customer complaints rank the top three sensitive communication topics.The author designed and implemented an intercultural business communication competence assessment system in Study 5 to depict a comprehensive picture of the subjects' competence.Critical incidents were collected from the experts'interviews and experience shared by senior practitioners to develop the situations of the questions.The typical and vital intercultural business communication situations in the VOA program Business Etiquette and American Business English were also considered.The assessment methods include situation judgement tests,situation-oriented questions for oral communication,situation-oriented questions for written communication and group discussion.The subjects'intercultural business communication competence was evaluated by five judges on a 5-point observation scale.The Pearson correlation between the subjects'self-reported linguistic competence and the observed linguistic competence scores was practical.(r=0.433,P<0.01)The innovative assessment system is expected to complement the self-report instrument and provide more information on the subjects' intercultural business communication competence.The research findings also provide more evidence for the scale' s ecological validity.In conclusion,the study proposes a three-dimension Intercultural Business Communication Competence Model including business English linguistic competence,business communication situation cognitive competence and intercultural business communication motivation.The Intercultural Business Communication Competence Scale shows sound face,content,convergent,discriminant and ecological validity and internal consistency reliability.The intercultural business communication competence assessment system provides more objective,detailed and comprehensive evidence for the subjects' competence.The direct and indirect evidences provided by the qualitative and quantitative approaches depict a more objective and comprehensive picture of the communication competence.