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

The Assessment of Intercultural Training Efficacy...
Development Inventory IDI (Hammer, 2007) 7 should be more appropriate
for intercultural investigations. Another risk is the socially desirable
responses in the tests. One method to avoid them is to ask not only
the expatriates, but at least four of their national collaborators involved
directly with his or her job during the expatriation time. The risk remains
that the national collaborators will also answer in this manner. Another
method, the observation of expatriates In Loco, is very difficult to conduct.
Finally, a larger sample size, a longer time range to assess the developmental
performance and the foreign deployment duration should be
taken into account. This all will provide a study with a broader source of
data and a comfortable possibility to apply more than one statistical test
to better support the findings. Another recommendation and interesting
theme is to think how to assess the training without taking into consideration
the on-going expatriation experience. It would be possible if we
had in the company two groups of employees in the process of expatriation,
one with intercultural training (trained group) and another without
(control group), so that after a period of time and during the expatriation
we could measure the variation through pre- and post test.
Considering the state of the art at this corporation, where every
employee in the process of expatriation can attend intercultural training,
such a possibility is not feasible. An alternative could be to take
expatriates of other big corporation, without any intercultural training,
as a control group. It would be manageable if we did not have many
and complex matters related to organizational culture (Shein, 1995).
Moreover, and because of company compliance matters, this kind of
investigation may not be possible.
8. Conclusion
The results of this paper support the work of Paige et al. (2004)
by looking more intentionally at the impact of intercultural training
intervention on the development of intercultural competence and consequently
the outcomes of intercultural effectiveness in working abroad.
The findings from this sample are a beginning trace to demonstrate the
7
Paige (1999) classifies a list with the most used and important intercultural
instrument – Appendix 2
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