Whereas PCD, IC and IRC are highly context related concepts, intercultural competence (ICC) is seen as more of a quality in a person that has the ability to change over time through experiences. When determining the interviewees’ ICC it is important to notice that they had all been living in Finland for at least one academic semester and had had opportunities to strengthen their ICC in relations to Finnish culture at the time of the
interviews. Keeping this in mind the interviewees in this study have potential to a higher ICC in the Finnish context as a starting point than customers who might be interviewed about ICSE in their home country or foreigners who had just arrived in Finland and had not had a chance to build up their cultural knowledge of the country and society.
Because this study focuses on intercultural service situations in Finland, ICC is analysed from the point of view of the interviewees’ ICC in Finland as well as their overall ICC.
6.3.1 High ICC and high IC
At the time of the interview, D from Canada had lived in Finland for about 8-9 months.
It had been easy for her to adapt to live in Finland, because she feels there are a lot of similarities between Finnish and Canadian cultures. She has also travelled extensively, having visited 11 foreign countries in Europe and in North-America and is able to compare Finnish cultural behaviour with other countries she has visited. She also has family living in England and the United States.
EXAMPLE 7 (Female, Canada)
1 D: but other similarities to Finland uhh (.) I think uhh the way people are like 2 actually uh personal space is a big similarity (.) where’s like with
3 Mediterranean cultures you know like in spain you greet people with kisses 4 you don’t do that in Canada you don’t do it in Finland
5 J: yeah
6 D: it’s very similar this way so it’s nice (.) to kinda have that safety net I guess 7 you could call it
In example 7 she describes her closeness to the Finnish culture (lines 1 to 7) and compares the notion of personal space in Finland to that in Mediterranean countries (lines 1 to 4). Her closeness to Finnish culture, her relatively long stay in the country and extensive travel in other foreign countries contribute to a high level of ICC.
Example 8 goes on to examine how her high ICC is connected to IC in customer service interactions. She explains how she has noticed how Finnish customer service employees react when they do not have a high enough level of English to serve her properly.
EXAMPLE 8 (Female, Canada)
1 D: when people don’t understand they start pointing I find 2 J: ok
3 D: and sign language that no-one really understands ((laugh)) 4 J: you mean the Finnish customer service workers
5 D: yeah ((laugh)) yeah everyone kinda goes like this with their hands and put
6 them up to their face and go ummm I mean they’ll try to do something with 18 people who are aggressive and they’ll be like this isn’t right you have to fix 19 what you are doing better command of English is not a problem for her because of her personality (lines 11 to 19) and because she understands how situations like this are considered in Finland (lines 21 and 22)(high ICC). D’s reaction to a potentially uncomfortable situation is relaxed, because of her high ICC towards Finnish culture. This supports proposition 5:
high intercultural competence (ICC) is connected to high interaction comfort (IC).
6.3.2 Low ICC and low IC
The next case is reversed in comparison to D’s case in example 8. C from China has lived in Finland for about two academic semesters at the time of the interview, adding up to about 9-10 months. During her studies in Finland she had also travelled to 4 other European countries and to Japan and Korea before her exchange in Finland. She recognizes that there are a lot of differences between people’s lifestyles in China and in Finland. In comparison to D, C feels further away from Finnish culture as a starting point and she has a lot of trouble communicating with Finnish service employees and getting satisfactory service, because the service she receives is different from what she is used to (low ICC). In example 9, C explains how she has had problems with Finnish bus drivers because of a language barrier.
EXAMPLE 9 (Female, China)
1 C: yeah uh sometimes uh sometimes when I don't know the name of the place the 2 exact name of the of the district or the name- street name I can only describe 3 but the bus driver cannot cannot understand it all- all so maybe I will find- 4 hopefully I can find a translator like a Finnish passby and they can speak 5 English and Finnish and they can help us translate but sometimes I can't find
6 so I just get off the bus and ((laugh)) yeah and maybe ask someone what is the 7 name but it's really like (??) make me headache
***
8 C: I of course I can feel very- I feel very bad about that because I think that bus 9 driver they should speak English
10 J: mm
11 C: like there are international people and when they go to somewhere it can be 12 quite difficult
13 J: mm
14 C: and I well I go travelling in other countries like the most people in the train or 15 on the bus they can speak good English so and also the train- the conductors of 16 the train in Finland they cannot- mostly they cannot speak English
C’s reaction to the language barrier problem is quite different to D’s. C feels that bus drivers should be able to speak English just like in other places she has visited, in order to make the situation better for the customer. In this example, she describes that dealing with bus drivers with low levels of English gives her a headache and sometimes she leaves the situation because the problem could not be solved (low IC) (lines 5 to 7).
Also in this case the ICSE framework proposition 5 is supported because a lower level of ICC is connected to low IC.