The Effect of Institutional Support on the Cultural Intelligence of Nursing Students

Background: Cultural intelligence is important for studying, working, and living in multicultural societies. Previous studies have indicated that training and learning support are important for improving students’ cultural intelligence. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of institutional support on cultural intelligence. Methods: 933 nursing students in three countries, among Malaysia, the Philippines, and Thailand, answered a rating scale questionnaire. A structural equation model was used to examine the effect of institutional support on cultural intelligence. Results: Institutional support had a statistically significant effect on cultural intelligence, with an effect size of 0.57. Conclusion: For promoting cultural intelligence divided into three aspects, the first concerns the implementation of multicultural experiences in curricula; the second involves extra-curricular activities for being applied in multicultural situations; and the last regards encouraging teachers to realize the importance of culture and integrating cultural content in their teaching and in the students’ learning.

Place Brand Co-Creation through Storytelling: Benefits, Risks and Preconditions

Co-creation in place branding is used as an umbrella term for the complex brand meaning emerging through stakeholders’ participation in place activities, their contribution, collaborations and interchange of ideas and resources. Co-creation is often an aspiration for places to create and promote their brands collectively. In this context, storytelling—an old technique used in corporate marketing to instigate brand stakeholders’ participation—serves as a method which facilitates place brand co-creation through shared place stories. With the rise of online interactions, the chances of place stakeholders’ participation in brand meaning creation increase, and place stories are effective in allowing diverse place meanings to emerge from various stakeholders. However, when storytelling emerges as a marketing tactic, mostly from a top-down campaign, the stories are not always accepted by all place stakeholders, and they create contrasting brand meanings. The paper aims to investigate the benefits and risks of participation in “Many Voices One Town” (2018), a top-down campaign from Luton, UK, which used storytelling to instigate place brand co-creation. The campaign was created by the Luton Council with an external advertising agency. The campaign attempted to tackle the town’s segregation issues and foster community cohesion through the promotion of seven selected Lutonians’ stories about their diverse and multicultural experiences of living in Luton. The study employs a qualitative methodology to analyse the MVOT case study. Interviews with the council and participants in the campaign and netnographic data from Twitter, Facebook and Instagram were used to gain an insight into residents’ participation in a top-down approach and examine the outcomes of co-creation. Residents’ participation in such a campaign shows numerous benefits but also risks for the place brand. The findings show that participation can sometimes intensify disputes about the town if people’s needs are not properly addressed. The study highlights the importance of open communication between all parties involved in the process, bringing into focus the need for careful coordination of top-down initiatives in line with stakeholders’ needs. It also demonstrates the ‘power of the people’ in the sense that stakeholder engagement with the shared stories led to negative outcomes that were not predicted by the Council.

Speech Therapy Telepractice Services in Fiji: A Multicultural Experience for Graduate Student Clinicians

Purpose The University of Maine Speech Therapy Telepractice Program provides speech therapy telepractice services to children with communication disorders at the International School Suva (ISS), Fiji. This partnership has fostered international engagement and multicultural experiences for graduate student clinicians in the Department of Communication Sciences and Disorders while filling a need for speech therapy services in Fiji. Despite infrastructure, scheduling, and COVID-19 issues, the benefits of this partnership have far outweighed the challenges. Clinical observations of the ISS children's responses have revealed excellent progress toward achieving therapy goals. Parents and school personnel have also reported a high degree of satisfaction with our services. The program has encouraged our graduate students to be resilient, out-of-the-box thinkers as they research a variety of multicultural issues and apply this new knowledge to the clinical programs of their clients. Conclusions This article highlights the partnership between The University of Maine, Speech Therapy Telepractice Training Program and the ISS, Fiji, as an example for other academic programs that are interested in establishing international telepractice partnerships. A description of the telepractice clinical procedures and technology for service provision at the ISS is included, along with a discussion of the challenges and benefits for providing international speech therapy telepractice services. Two case examples illustrate the complexity of providing services to multilingual children with different cultural backgrounds.

Deciphering the role of multilingualism in creativity at university: the influence of context

Despite the close connection between creativity, multilingualism and multiculturalism, limited research has focused on their specific features in contexts where English is a foreign language. In order to fill this gap, this paper examines this relationship in two different bilingual situations: Spanish–Galician (same cultural context) and Spanish–English (different cultural context). For this purpose, a survey was devised to elicit students’ multilingualism, multicultural experiences and creativity. The results show that advanced English skills improve creative development. They also verify that living in a new cultural context benefits bilingualism/multilingualism (English) and creativity. Additionally, it was confirmed that being bilingual in Spanish–English fosters creativity. However, no significant differences were found when students were bilingual in the same cultural context (Galician–Spanish). Thus, bilingualism/multilingualism is confirmed to impact creativity only when it occurs in different cultural contexts. The most significant implication emphasizes the need to foster opportunities for multiculturalism to increase creativity.

Global Leaders for Global Teams: Leaders with Multicultural Experiences Communicate and Lead More Effectively, Especially in Multinational Teams

In an era of globalization, it is commonly assumed that multicultural experiences foster leadership effectiveness. However, little research has systematically tested this assumption. We develop a theoretical perspective that articulates how and when multicultural experiences increase leadership effectiveness. We hypothesize that broad multicultural experiences increase individuals’ leadership effectiveness by developing their communication competence. Because communication competence is particularly important for leading teams that are more multinational, we further hypothesize that individuals with broader multicultural experiences are particularly effective when leading more versus less multinational teams. Four studies test our theory using mixed methods (field survey, archival panel, field experiments) and diverse populations (corporate managers, soccer managers, hackathon leaders) in different countries (Australia, Britain, China, America). In Study 1, corporate managers with broader multicultural experiences were rated as more effective leaders, an effect mediated by communication competence. Analyzing a 25-year archival panel of English Premier League soccer managers, Study 2 replicates the positive effect of broad multicultural experiences using a team performance measure of leadership effectiveness. Importantly, this effect was moderated by team national diversity: soccer managers with broader multicultural experiences were particularly effective when leading teams with greater national diversity. Study 3 (digital health hackathon) and Study 4 (COVID-19 policy hackathon) replicate these effects in two field experiments, in which individuals with varying levels of multicultural experiences were randomly assigned to lead hackathon teams that naturally varied in national diversity. Overall, our research suggests that broad multicultural experiences help leaders communicate more competently and lead more effectively, especially when leading multinational teams.

Multicultural Experiences and the Secondary Transfer Effect of Intercultural Attitudes

This research investigates whether multicultural experiences (MCEs) (1) improve attitudes toward primary outgroups, (2) improve attitudes toward secondary outgroups (the “secondary transfer effect”) – depending on the perceived similarity versus dissimilarity of the target group, and (3) affect ingroup reappraisal. The deprovincialization and attitude generalization hypotheses were also investigated as underlying mechanisms. A meta-analysis of effects across studies ( N = 633) revealed MCEs (1) improve primary attitudes ( r = .19), (2) improve, albeit more weakly, similar secondary attitudes ( r = .10), but have no significant effect on dissimilar secondary attitudes ( r = .07); (3) have no effect on ingroup reappraisal ( r = .04), and (4) only improve secondary attitudes through attitude generalization. Contributions, limitations, and emerging questions regarding deprovincialization are discussed.