Bicultural Competence and its Impact on Team Effectiveness

Abstract

This paper develops the concept of bicultural competence and explores its impact on multicultural team effectiveness. Biculturals are individuals who have deeply internalized two cultural schemas. A cultural schema is a set of knowledge about values, norms, and beliefs for a given culture. Biculturals are an increasing workforce demographic, and hence a growing part of multicultural teams. Their innate skills that result from being bicultural may help solve central problems in multicultural teams, including managing conflicts and boundary spanning across cultures. Specifically, this paper defines bicultural competence, determines its antecedents, specifies its impact on the two main roles bicultural individuals play in teams, and explores their impact on multicultural team effectiveness. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.