Intercultural Communication Apprehension and Conflict Mode of Employees in Multicultural Offices

Abstract

Decent communication skill is required to support academic and work activities. Difficulties are expected to arise during communication process, furthermore with individuals from different cultural backgrounds. It is important to identify one of several obstacles, which intercultural communication apprehension (ICA). Different levels of fear and anxiety certainly affect individuals' physiological state to maintain or initiate communication, particularly intercultural communication. Employing mixed method with sequential explanatory strategy, the study primarily used questionnaire and semi-structured interview as data collecting instruments. A total of 130 employees working for ASEAN countries embassies participated in the study. The data obtained were then analyzed using software package employing several ways of analysis: Mediation analysis with PROCESS Macro tool, one-way ANOVA, and discrimination analysis. This study investigated causal relationship between ICA and its association with other variables, such as conflict presence, conflict mode, generation, and work duration. The study revealed that ICA was a perfect mediating variable between generation and conflict. ICA was also found to has discriminant ability over conflict mode (p <.001). Additionally, this study discovered that work duration was positively associated with ICA (p=.003). The result of this study has implications for future research in academic and application level, which can be reflected in educational environment.