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Intercultural competence and assessment: perspectives from the INCA Project 471

the ‘intercultural personhood’ (Kim 2001) and are called intercultural compet-
ences. Gelbrich (2004) conducted a study of the impact of intercultural compet-
ence, and found that it influences successful workplace interaction for individ-
uals on overseas assignments. In her study with a student sample, intercultural
competence explained more than 40% of successful interactions in that context.

3. INCA’s framework of intercultural competence

3.1. The situation at the outset of the project

The INCA model assumes that intercultural competence is needed in situations
of ‘cultural overlap’, in which people from different cultures, with specific sets
of values, beliefs and behaviours, interact. This can occur anywhere; it is not re-
stricted to overseas encounters. For example, one of the INCA development
partners, the Engineering Employers’ Federation in the West Midlands region
of England, provided a rich test bed for theory and practice in intercultural com-
petence because of the large number of different cultures and languages repre-
sented among young employees in the locality.
The INCA model is generic, in that it applies to all cultural groups. It ident-
ifies the range of competences needed in intercultural encounters, whatever the
cultural groups involved. Although there may be different ways of exhibiting
the competences (Lustig and Koester 1999: 329) within each cultural group,
from a practical point of view, it is not feasible to acquire the specific norms of
every different cultural group (Spencer-Oatey 2006: 2544). Intercultural com-
petence must therefore be seen as a generic competence. Nevertheless, assess-
ment instruments need to be validated for different cultural groups (Matsumoto
et al. 2003: 545; Matsumoto, You and LeRoux in this volume).

3.2. Components of intercultural competence

As shown in Table 1, the INCA framework of intercultural competence com-
prises six components, each of which has three elements. The six components
are based to a large extent on Kühlmann and Stahl’s (1998) research. However,
Byram’s (1997) “knowledge discovery” component was added, because the
world is constantly changing, and it is important not only to focus on one’s ac-
tual knowledge but also to be able to enlarge one’s sphere of knowledge, and in
particular, knowledge about other cultures.