Globalization has led to interdependent relationships between nations and economies. As a result, there is a growing trend for organizations to send employees abroad for temporary assignments. Organizational development specialists have identified intercultural competence--a combination of affective, cognitive, and behavioral skills-as essential for executives to successfully manage the challenges of an increasingly diverse working environment. When couples are sent abroad on assignments, the employee and the non-working accompanying spouse often have very different experiences in terms of their contacts with the host culture. The employee moves into an organizational environment with a specific role and objectives. In contrast, the accompanying spouse may find him- or herself in an entirely different role. This study explored experiences of the employees and accompanying spouses in terms of their contact with the host culture and the intensity factors associated with their expatriate assignments. The participants completed the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDiv.3) to measure their intercultural competence, and engaged in a structured interview. I found similar levels of intercultural competence in both spouses. The majority scored in the ethnocentric stages of Minimization and below. Only one participant scored above Minimization in Acceptance. The findings from this study suggest that should offer support to the assignee and accompanying spouse according to their needs in that situation. Ideally the support would include both pre-departure cultural training and ongoing access to a skilled cultural mentor. The development of intercultural competence beyond Minimization requires self-reflection and an examination of assumptions, and this process is rarely followed without support or intervention.

This study is a design and delivery of a comprehensive re-entry training program which has been implemented to meet the needs of returning French engineering grande ecole undergraduate sojourners. With particular attention to the historical and specific character of a grande ecole's interdependent relationship with industry and professional training as an integral part of the educational design, this program has been specifically conceived as a semiautonomous, in-house institute for advanced intercultural training and studies with the combined aims of a) meeting the immediate and longer-term needs of returning sojourners and b) enhancing intercultural awareness at the school generally. This study focuses specifically on the re-entry program delivered by the newly created Winter Institute of Intercultural Communication (WIIC) as the capstone innovation in the broader developmental curriculum redesign scheme for grande ecole students. The Institute now provides the necessary re-entry follow up after an extensive pre-departure training program and six months experience abroad as well as providing a workshop for moving on to more advanced levels of intercultural communication issues.

This thesis project described the development, design, delivery, evaluation, and discussion of a series of four intercultural team building pilot workshops appropriate for multicultural teams in the context of international corporations. The target audience of the workshops was an Information Technology (IT) team of a Fortune 500 company in the United States. The team consisted for the most part of U.S. Americans and Germans based in either Boston, MA, or Frankfurt, Germany. The overall objective of the workshops was to help raise awareness and gain understanding about cultural variables that affect the performance of a multicultural team. The desired outcome of the training program was to help participants gain transcultural competence. This was to be achieved by providing them with a set of tools that would help them to communicate and interact more effectively, and as a result, more successfully, with their team colleagues across cultural borders. Due to the composition of the team, I placed particular emphasis on the communication and interaction patterns of the U.S. American and German cultures. The first two pilot workshops were delivered in Boston and the target audience was the Boston-based part of the team. Thus, the workshop was delivered in the English language. The third and the fourth workshop were delivered in Frankfurt, Germany and the target audience was the Frankfurt-based part of the team. Thus, the workshop was delivered in the German language. Given these circumstances, I not only translated the workshop contents into the German language but also made culture-appropriate adaptations to the German context. The results of the evaluations showed that the workshops were well received and fulfilled the need of the team for intercultural training. Thus, the overall objective of the workshop, to help team members understand cultural variables that influence their performance as an intercultural team, was successfully met. However, in order to utilize and enhance these newly learned skills that comprise transcultural competence, additional training is required in which a common culture strategy and a plan to integrate the different processes and structures would be developed.

Public health nurses are required to communicate important communicable disease and preventative health information to an increasing number of immigrants and refugees accessing the American public health system. They must also obtain information on a broad scope of topics about clients and/or their children. Little attention has been paid to the study of intercultural communication between public health nurses and their diverse clientele. The purpose of this study was to identify barriers affecting communication between public health nurses and their immigrant and refugee clients. The Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity developed by Milton Bennett provided a conceptual framework for review and analysis of study results. Data were collected using semi-structured formal interviews with a network sample of 17 nurses. Analysis of the data indicated four major themes: (1) common use of a Western- European, ethnocentric communication style; (2) insufficient recognition of how the dominant culture's values, beliefs, and behaviors affect those from non-dominant cultures; (3) inadequate or irrelevant prior diversity training; and ( 4) lack of available and competent interpreters necessary for translation of information during interviews. These categories capture the essential barriers preventing effective communication with culturally diverse clients. From the perspective of the nurses, communication barriers due to cultural or language differences result in difficulty obtaining compliance with public health mandates such as childhood immunization and medication regimens, and limit understanding of preventative healthcare practices. The results of this study provide information and insight for the development of intercultural sensitivity training for public health nurses. A training program that demonstrates cultural training theory, methods, and suggested sequencing is included. An additional sample training outline follows that offers public health nurses culture specific information regarding Hmong refugees.

In the United States the debate concerning transracial adoption and gay and/ or lesbian adoption has been going on since the 1970s. This research used the co-cultural theory of communication to explore how the marginalized population of gay and lesbian transracial adoptive (TRA) parents communicated with the other culturally dominant members of their society. It then analyzed the communication behaviors found to see if any differences existed in their interactions. Finally, the communication behaviors were examined to see what impact they might have on the ability of parents to be effective TRA parents. This research included eight in-depth interviews with gay and lesbian TRA parents. In these interviews, these parents were asked to explain, through their own 7 personal experiences, what it was like to be part of this cultural group. Their experiences were then analyzed using the methods described in the co-cultural communication theory. Results showed that gay and lesbian TRA parents predominantly employed the assertive accommodation and the nonassertive assimilation communication orientations in their interactions with others. Of the two, the parents overwhelmingly employed assertive accommodation. Results showed three important differences regarding how the parents employed communication orientations or enacted co-cultural practices in their interactions. Results also showed that the employment of the assertive accommodation orientation was likely to have a positive effect on the parents' ability to be effective TRA parents. The employment of the nonassertive assimilation orientation was found generally to have t mixed results. I hope that insight into the communication behaviors of this population found through this study will help clarify the most effective communication methods for these parents to learn in order to raise healthy and happy children of color.

Master‘s thesis deals with problems connected with managing of the firm in multicultural environment. The aim is to indentificate basic components of kompetence of the manager working in multicultural environment, that are important for smooth cooperation and elimination or minimalization of faults, that could lead to misunderstandings and conflicts.

Masters´s thesis is analysing through questionnaires and conversations experience of management of the companies in the Czech Republic in the area of intercultural communication and intercultural training. It contains suggestions which will lead to rise of labour productivity in the companies doing business in the multicultural environment.

Cette thèse étudie la manière dont les rappeurs engagés et les acteurs des institutions publiques se représentent mutuellement. Elle étudie les interactions entre les rappeurs, les acteurs institutionnels et les intermédiaires (médiateurs, éducateurs, animateurs etc.) Elle tente d’analyser et de comprendre les dysfonctionnements communicationnels et de savoir quels rôles peuvent jouer la médiation et la communication interculturelle dans un contexte de conflits. Nous avons choisi d’étudier la relation entre les rappeurs et les institutions publiques selon une démarche systémique, interculturelle et interactionniste, qui nous a conduits à privilégier certains concepts clés : l’interaction, la médiation, la construction d’identité, la communication interculturelle, l’intégration, l’institution, les stratégies identitaires, les représentations sociales, la trace, les industries culturelles et créatives, la démocratie et la démocratisation culturelle. D’un point de vue méthodologique, cette thèse s’appuie sur une démarche qualitative. L’enquête utilise des entretiens semi-directifs et des observations directes (Piretz, 2004) de rappeurs et d’institutionnels dans les quartiers populaires situés dans les zones périphériques du Havre, complétés par l’étude d’un corpus d’émissions radiophoniques et télévisuelles, de textes et de vidéo-clips des rappeurs. La comparaison avec les politiques publiques d'autres villes françaises est en outre utilisée comme stratégie de recherche pour éclairer la situation spécifique du territoire havrais. La thèse se compose de trois parties, chacune contenant deux chapitres. / This thesis examines the mutual representation of rappers and actors of public institutions. It studies the interactions between rappers, institutional actors and the intermediaries amongst whom the mediators. It tries to analyze and understand the communicative dysfunctions and to know what roles mediation and intercultural communication could play in the context of conflicts. We chose to study the relationship between rappers and public institutions in a systemic, intercultural and interactionist approach which lead us to favour certain key concepts: interaction, mediation, identity construction, intercultural communication, integration, institution, identity strategies, social representations, the trace, the cultural and creative industries, democracy and cultural democratization. From a methodological point of view, this thesis is based on a qualitative approach. The survey uses the semi-structured interviews and the direct observations (Piretz, 2004) of rappers and institutional agents in the “immigrant and working class” areas of Le Havre. The survey was supplemented by an analysis of programs of radio and television, texts, and video clips of rappers. The comparison with other public policy in french cities is also used as a research strategy to clarify the specific situation of Le Havre territory. The thesis is formed by three parts, each one contains two chapters.

This volume deals with the exchange of spatial knowledge that accompanied the nineteenth-century European exploration of what are today eastern Senegambia and southwestern Mali. The travelogues of Raffenel and Gallieni are analysed with regard to how spatial information was negotiated, under what conditions it was transmitted and what problems arose. The dependence of the two Frenchmen on African informants is demonstrated, and in some cases it can be shown that they incorporated African spatial knowledge into their monographs and maps.

<div> <div> <div> <p>Mental illness historically has had a stigma surrounding it. For years that was my understanding of mental illness as well. To be able to see mental illness and its treatments in a healthy way, I had to suffer a radical change to my life. The beginning of this paper is my story as to how I came to understand mental illness in a different light. Following that, Ch. 2 explores a brief history of mental illness and how it has been treated in society. Next, it delves into the current social narrative about mental health and what the entertainment industry is doing to either help or hurt the de-stigmatization. Lastly, the personal narrative is analyzed. The story an individual tells themselves is influenced by many different elements. </p> <p>This is something on which more research needs to be done. Individual’s perceptions about mental health impact their likelihood to seek help. To explore this, I surveyed 379 people to address their personal beliefs of mental illness. To analyze the data, I split the respondents into groups of those diagnosed and those that have not been diagnosed. Of the four hypotheses, only one group was supported. After that, I ran a post hoc analysis looking at perceived societal views and that came out much stronger. Additional research needs to be done on perceived societal views and how that impacts an individual’s decision to express concerns or seek help for mental illness. </p> </div> </div> </div>