EL MUNDO hOy. GESTIÓN DE LA DIVERSIDAD. UN IMPERATIVO ...

INTERNAcionaLIZACIÓN Y CAPITAL HUMANO
nal (intercultural sensibility), as well as the communicative-behavioral
(operational competence) 2 dimension 3 .
1.1. The Personality Inventory
This paper uses the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO Five
Factor Inventory-Neuroticism, Extraversion, Openness to Experience,
Agreeableness and Conscientiousness - FFI; adapted for on-line version
from the original version of Paul T. Costa, Jr. and Robert R. McCrae,
2004) to assess the influence of the training and the first six months of
expatriation experience on the effectiveness outcomes concerning intercultural
adjustment. We reported the results in form the of a two
factor model —also named as Big Two and concentrated our analysis
on the Plasticity factor, in order to better explain the traits accentuation
(Digman, 1997). DeYoung, Peterson and Higgins (2001) labeled these
two factors as Plasticity, composed of two NEO factors (Extraversion
and Openness to Experience, and Stability, that is composed of the
three other NEO factors (Emotional Stability or reversed Neuroticism,
Agreeableness and Conscientiousness).
According to Olson (2005) Extraversion and Openness to experience
are the most appropriate factors to assert intercultural development levels.
Therefore we concentrate our efforts on such factors resumed within the
Plasticity factor. Based on this model we hypothesize that the increasing
scores related with pre and post-test in the Plasticity factor predict at least
the desire of intercultural adaptation, consequence of the positive effects
of the training and six-month long expatriation experience.
The primary research goals involved: (1) the evaluation of intercultural
training effectiveness together with six-month expatriation experience
—as already above mentioned, as measured by the NEO Five
Factor Inventory, (2) the assessment of the impact of other variables,
such as gender, age and previous expatriation experience.
2
Operational competence refers to the capacity to express one’s cognitive and
affective experiences outwardly through specific behavior (Ruben, 1976).
3
For a broad description of the three dimensions see Earley & Ang (2003).
*Correspondence to: PhD. Researcher Flavio Rodrigues Soares, Université Libre
de Bruxelles, Avenue F. D. Roosevelt 50, CP 114/03, B-1050, Belgium. E-mail:
Flavio.Rodrigues.Soares@ulb.ac.be
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