A Model of Culture-General Competence for Education and Training: Validation Across Services and Key Specialties

Abstract : Preparing people for the cultural aspect of their jobs is a challenge for leaders. A key difficulty is that their people may ultimately go anywhere. US personnel have to be ready to engage and work with people from countless cultures. And to get up to speed quickly in new areas of operation. They need a set of cultural skills that apply no matter where they hit the ground. We refer to this set of skills as culture-general competence. The aim of the current study was to further test a model of culture-general competence. We call the model Adaptive Readiness for Culture (ARC). It is general in that it applies across all regions of interest. The skills that comprise ARC were identified in an earlier study of Marine Corps and Army service members who had worked in multiple cultures. This unique aspect of the study was essential to tease out general skills from specific area knowledge. The current study extended the sample to determine how well the model applies across the DoD and Total Force.

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