Thesis advisor: Karen Arnold / Thesis advisor: Philip Altbach / The attainment of attitudes, knowledge, and skills that develop students' intercultural competence so that they may navigate the globally interconnected environment of the 21st century is touted as an important learning objective for higher education (Deardorff & Jones, 2012). Colleges and universities strive to enhance this learning objective by offering a variety of international opportunities; prominent among these is a period of study abroad. However, past research indicates the results of intercultural development through study abroad are mixed. How can education abroad contribute to students' intercultural development? This study focuses on a cohort of students who traverse through three countries (China, Russia, India) in the course of one semester as they live and learn together, alongside faculty and staff from their home institution. To better understand the features of study abroad programs that contribute to students' intercultural development, this study examined the real and perceived development of a group of students (N=21) engaged in a multi-destination study abroad program utilizing a mixed-methods approach. The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI) scores of the 21 participants increased by an average of 24.45 points (25%), an increase that exceeded the IDI gains in previous studies. Programmatic conditions that cultivated students' intercultural competence included facilitated contact with natives, academic structure, student self-initiated exploration, and multi-destination. Social and residential features of the program had the least impact on participants' intercultural development. The analysis of the participant narratives is indicative of a web of interconnected features that provided the scaffolding for students to develop empathy, recognize their own biases, challenge stereotypes and ethnocentric beliefs, and ultimately gain knowledge and skills that enabled them to communicate and behave appropriately and effectively in intercultural situations. The results of this study imply that a web of intentionally designed features (e.g., multi-destination, faculty engagement, consistent reflection opportunities, facilitated contact with natives, and IDI guided coaching and mentoring) provide a solid scaffolding that accelerates students' intercultural development. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2015. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

This thesis focuses on intercultural comparison issue. In the first part, essential parts of cultural comparison are discussed, as the consideration of future way and meaning of national cultures. Next, the relationship between national and organizational culture is described and recent intercultural researches are assessed. On this theoretical framework, the Swedish culture research is based. The main benefit of the research is the subjective comparison method that describe in detail position of Swedish culture compared with another. At the end, the Swedish national culture results are gently transferred to organizational culture. The goal of this paper is contemporary assessment of Swedish culture and topics suggested for next research.