Intercultural Adaptation — It is a Two-Way Process: Examples from a British MBA Programme

This chapter draws on a larger ethnographic study (Zhao, 2007) of the intercultural adaptation process between Mainland Chinese students and their British lecturers and fellow students in the UK. This study aims to extend Kim’s (1988, 2001) model of cross-cultural adaptation and Jin’s (1992; Jin & Cortazzi, 1993) cultural synergy model by providing qualitative data to demonstrate that the intercultural adaptation process is not simply one way, but essentially a two-way process. Participant observation, semi-structured interviews and web-based questionnaires were the main data-collection methods in the study, with episode analysis, transcript analysis and artificial ‘dialogue’ adopted as the main data-analysis methods.

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