Intercultural Competence at Work: The Origins of an Implicit Trait Policy

An implicit trait policy (ITP) on intercultural competence reflects a worker’s self-beliefs regarding effectiveness of behavior in intercultural work situations. An ITP thus integrates the worker’s competence on selection of effective behavior like intensifying intercultural contacts and rejection of ineffective behavior like discrimination. The present study researches to which extent selection and rejection relate to different origins by mapping worker data from a public employment service (N = 3,310) onto the present study’s ITP framework of intercultural competence. Results show that a worker’s competence to avoid ineffective behavior is unrelated to the worker’s ability to endorse effective behavior, with both competences showing relations to (partly) different origins. These results also trend further towards two actual behavioral outcomes. Both processes of effective selection and rejection of behavior are relevant for the worker’s intensity of intercultural contacts. However, only rejection remains relevant for avoiding the display of discriminatory behavior in the future. Indeed, an organizational development intervention to promote intercultural contacts needs a different approach than preventing discrimination, as both outcomes are related to different origins. The key to a successful intervention therefore resides in addressing the appropriate ITP origins in order to evoke selection or rejection of the targeted behavior.