Intercultural Competences in Slovak Business Environment

Abstract

The paper highlights the importance of intercultural competence (IC) in business environment, and presents outcomes of a research into the level of IC among employees of Slovak enterprises. In the contemporary business world, intercultural competence and its individual components: affective, behavioral, and cognitive competences, become an inevitable asset for enterprises, due to high globalization of virtually all corporate processes and activities. Even though the available literature on research into this cultural phenomenon reports a rather high perception of one's own IC, namely its affective component, as proved by our research, the main objective of which was to measure IC of Slovak employees, the actual level of overall IC, and especially its affective component, in Slovak enterprises is rather low. The research, the detailed description of which is the primary focus of this paper, was conducted in spring 2018 on a representative sample of Slovak employees in enterprises of all types, sizes, and fields of industry, and has proved that by increasing one of the three components of IC, the overall IC of an individual will increase. Therefore, it may be stated that training of intercultural competence has a high potential in corporate environment, and may produce great benefits for enterprises who deal with interculturality in their operations, and encounter people of other than their home culture, may it be their external or internal stakeholders. The outcomes of the research also suggest a need, and provide a platform for, both the assessment of IC of employees, and a targeted intercultural training in Slovak enterprises, which would be tailored according to the individual needs of each enterprise.

Measuring Behavioural Aspects of Quality in an Enterprise A Study of Indicators Using the Slovak SMEs to Track Behavioural Aspects of Quality

“…Based on the theoretical foundations to the given topic, as well as the empirical studies dealing with the problem (Benčiková, Malá, Ďaďo, 2019;Araújo et al, 2019;Avey, 2018;Cristofaro, 2020;Cronemyr et al, 2017;Kotter, Cohen, 2002;Mendez, 2018;Pan et al, 2019;Kurey, 2014), we formulated the following hypotheses. We assume that H1: … SMEs in Slovakia focus on tracking financial indicators more than behavioural indicators, and H2: … the more behavioural indicators are tracked, the better behavioural values the enterprise's employees achieve.…”

Behavioral approach to quality: An empirical study in Slovak SMEs

“…Based on the theoretical foundations and previously conducted empirical studies related to this matter (Benčiková et al, 2019;Cassar et al, 2014;Malhi, 2013;Miller et al, 2017;Travaglianti et al, 2017;Tsao et al, 2015), the following hypotheses were formulated: H1: Within the profile of a Slovak SME employee, development of cognitive and affective components has an impact on the development of this employee's behavioral component with regard to building quality culture that focuses on behavioral approach to quality. H2: The cognitive component is the strongest within the profile of Slovak employees with regard to building quality culture that focuses on behavioral approach to quality.…”

“…It affects behaviors within an enterprise, as well as behaviors of the enterprise toward the environment it operates in (Nenadál et al, 2018). Based on the analysis of various researches (Avey et al, 2018;Benčiková et al, 2019;Hurt & Welbourne, 2018;Levinthal, 2018;Park et al, 2013;Travaglianti et al, 2017;Zhang & Li, 2005), three main components of employee profile in quality culture were determined (Figure 1): (1) the cognitive component relating to knowledge of an employee concerning their work with regard to quality in the enterprises; (2) the affective component expressing the perception of the employee of themselves, e.g., their self-evaluation; (3) and the behavioral component relating to a tendency to act in a way that is appropriate to knowledge and self-evaluation. Simply said: I know, I feel, I have tried.…”

“…The ability of an enterprise to change affects its success in the market (Bakotic & Rogotoc, 2017). Although there is no infallible predictor of a long-term success, everyday observable behavior which affects decisionmaking is a suitable indicator of the future of people and the enterprise (Benčiková et al, 2019). There are many facts that prevent us from changing our way of thinking and behaving.…”

How Behavioral Aspects Influence the Sustainable Financial Decisions of Shareholders: An Empirical Study and Proposal for a Relevant Decision-Making Concept

“…If investors become conscious of biases they can face, they can act more rationally [42,43]. According to [44,45], behavioral biases include both cognitive biases (such as anchoring, representativeness, mental accounting and availability) and emotional biases (such as risk aversion, overconfidence and regret aversion). Reference [46] described in their article "Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases" the systematic errors in the thinking of ordinary people, while analyzing the origin of such errors in the cognitive mechanism.…”