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Model Global Employees: TCKs, or 2nd Generation Immigrants?

Feb 03
Posted by Sean Oliver in Cross-cultural, Diversity, Intercultural Competence, Traveling to...

Recently, a friend I met on Twitter asked for recommendations for “Third Culture Kid” (TCK) literature; I suggested “Las Cucarachas” by Yongsoo Park.  My friend later came back and said that she had read the first chapter, and didn’t think the book was “really” about third cultures kids.  I was confused.  I asked her, “it’s about a Korean-American set of brothers growing up in a multi-ethnic community in New York… how could they be any more cross-cultural?”  I then actually looked it up, and found that basically the only people who qualify as Third Culture Kids, are the children of expats.  Because they are not usually expected to stay in the country of their formative years, they are given a special term.

There seem s to be a lot of hub-bub about TCKs as of late; how they’re the “global employees of the future”, as their cross-cultural skills are (allegedly) honed at an early age.  The thinking s seems to be that they should be model employees for international businesses.  However, the percentage of TCKs who acclimate fully to their new culture may be as low as 10%.  TCKs are more likely to return to the culture of their parents than the children of most immigrants, and possibly as a result are less likely to ever truly feel “at home” in any culture.  Now, it’s true that as perennial outsiders, TCKs may have unique 3rd-person insight into the machinations of a particular culture, but what about the children of immigrants?  What are they lacking, to not be included in the recent media fanfare for TCKs?  And what is the advantage, if any, or TCKs over 2nd generation immigrants?

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Accent on the Accent: Perceptions of Non-Native Speakers

Sep 03
Posted by Sean Oliver in General, Intercultural Competence

“Translation” ; “World Cup” ; “Futbol” ; “Football” ; “Soccer” ; “Cross-Cultural” ; “Cross-Cultural Training” ; “Global Diversity” ; “Diversity” ; “Intercultural” ; “Intercultural Competence” ; “Localization” ; “Global” ; “Global Ethics”; “Globalization” ; “Global Business” ; “International Business” ; “Contextualization” ; “Cultural Adaptation” ; “Cultural Audit” ; “Global Delivery”; “Internationalization” ; “Inclusion” ; “Intercultural Training” ; “Global Cultures” ; “Global Business Skills”; “Global Workforce”; “American Culture”A recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology by University of Chicago psychologist Boaz Keysar, shows that unconsciously, listeners are less likely to find speakers with an accent credible or trustworthy, and that the level of doubt increases with the “severity” of the accent.  The listeners “…misattribute the difficulty of understanding the speech to the truthfulness of the statements,” according to Keysar.  

Should this result surprise anyone?  There is a lot of research going on around how (American) children see and perceive cultural and physical differences, and the overwhelming majority of these studies shows that if the topic is never broached at home (in the hopes that the child will be “colorblind”), the children are likely to have less favorable reactions to people they perceive as different from themselves. 

Human beings are cultural; we have to learn almost everything…. But one exception might be somewhat of a natural preference for ones’ own group, or those we perceive to be part of our own group, whether that perception has any basis in fact or not.  If we don’t get information as children (or as adults), about how thing such as language, accent, color, religion, and even culture don’t determine another person’s value, it seems that we’re likely to create unfavorable opinions on our own.  Of course, exceptions probably apply for “third culture kids” (kids brought up in ethnically diverse environments, or kids brought up in multi-ethnic families). Third culture kids are probably less likely to perceive ingroup/outgroup on the basis of personal appearance.  

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