Does intercultural competence matter in intercultural business relationship development?

Abstract

This paper examines issues concerning the development of cross-border buyer–seller relationships between China and the UK. It reports initial findings on the association between “intercultural competence” and the quality of business relationships between business partners from these two countries. The quality of relationship was taken as a composite measure of previously established areas, i.e. trust, co-operation, commitment, adaptation, satisfaction and long-term orientation. The notion of intercultural business competence was conceived as culture-specific knowledge and skills—the latter being tested via scenario generation. The concept was tested in a large-scale study involving UK managers, importing/exporting with China. Intercultural business competence is seen to be related to the quality of, in particular, long-term relationships. Conflict resolution competence was measured to be more important than both relational and commercial competence in the study.