INTERCULTURAL COMPETENCES IN SLOVAK BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

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.