Cross-cultural Competencies and Skills Development Training Manual

This training manual has been developed as the third output of the ERASMUS+ funded project, “Developing the cross-cultural skills of graduates in response to the needs of European enterprise”. The manual comes as a materialization of the research conducted during this project aimed to support academics, trainers, and managers in facilitating the learning of intercultural skills necessary for graduates who want to work in the modern business environment in Europe.

Five Higher Education Institutions have participated in this project: University of Worcester (Project lead- UK), London South Bank University (UK), UC Leuven-Limburg (Belgium), Halmstad University (Sweden), and Bursa Uludağ University (Turkey). The diversity of these partners and staff members involved in the project, their respective regional and national contexts, and their experience in working together with regional businesses were central to developing a robust manual which can help both in the academic and different industry sectors.

This manual builds on the previous two outputs of this project; the Intercultural Skills for Graduates and Businesses needs in Europe Today Report and the Intercultural Competencies and Skills Development Toolkit. The Intercultural Competencies and Skills Development Toolkit includes twenty case studies, comprising ten written cases studies, five narrated case studies, and five video case studies. All of the case studies explore at least one of the intercultural skills identified as important in the Intercultural Skills for Graduates and Businesses needs in Europe Today Report.

This training manual explains which intercultural skills and business issues each case study seeks to explore and develop from both a theoretical and an applied business perspective. This provides guidance as when to utilise each of the case studies in education and training. The second part of the training manual provides guidance in the form of teaching notes as to how the case studies can be applied in classrooms and workplaces to maximise learning and suggested answers.