Intercultural Communication Competence among Expatriates in Saudi Arabia

The importance of ICC for those who study and work in Saudi Arabia is difficult to overstate. Research by Karolak and Guta (2014, p. 45) notes that faculty at one of the largest private universities, Prince Mohammad Bin Fahd University, consists of people from 27 countries. Because it is difficult to hire enough skilled professionals in Saudi Arabia, the university hires educators and professors from Britain, the United States, Canada, Pakistan and other countries. In view of existing multi-ethnicity, educators and students need ICC to understand each other. Karolak and Guta (2014, p. 42) conducted interviews with female Saudi students, who noted that they found it much easier to engage in interactions with Saudi professors than with foreign professors, at least partially because they were afraid they lacked ICC skills. Participants mentioned that they were unable to understand the foreign professors’ cultural background and could not communicate with these professors due to cultural and language differences.

The findings of Karolak and Guta (2014, p. 46) demonstrate that female Saudi students’ ICC is not sufficiently developed, thus creating barriers to their successful communication with professors and, subsequently, to their studies. Regarding the latter aspect, poor ICC deprives students of the opportunity to ask questions and clarify the material. These findings are consistent with those from Havril (2015, p. 555), who highlights how lack of ICC in female students prevents them from developing successful learning strategies, increasing their self-esteem and engaging in competition. When studying and working in a significantly multicultural environment, students and staff of Jazan University cannot successfully communicate with each other and experience a range of intercultural difficulties because the university does not reinforce their acquisition of ICC. Havril’s (2015, p. 564) research shows that not all teachers in Saudi universities possess well-developed ICC skills. Moreover, instead of focusing on ICC, teachers are forced to fulfil many administrative tasks.

Both Karolak and Guta (2014, p. 53) and Havril (2015, p. 555) assert that Saudi students and foreign professors should receive training in ICC, especially intercultural training courses that foster understanding of different cultures and help individuals to communicate with and understand those from different cultures. Such training would provide foreign professors with an opportunity to successfully interact with all culturally diverse students. As for Saudi students, training would help them prepare ‘for the globalised job market’s challenges’ (Karolak and Guta, 2014, p. 54). Ahmad and Ahmad (2015, p. 54) assert that a recent tendency among many Saudi companies is to hire employees with knowledge of Arabic and good ICC. However, a study by Dean and Popp (1990, p. 405) demonstrated that Arabic proficiency among American managers who work in Saudi Arabia was not a key factor in developing ICC. Intercultural adjustment instead depended on their flexibility and personality traits. Moreover, Dean and Popp’s (1990, p. 405) research was conducted several decades ago. Hence, their findings should be re-tested within the contemporary globalised Saudi context.

An ethnographic study by Lauring (2011, p. 231) shows that the lack of ICC among Danish expatriates and Saudi employees hindering their intercultural communications. As this was a Saudi subsidiary of a Danish corporation, Saudi employees were exposed to exclusion. The results also reveal specific barriers to developing ICC in this context, such as prejudices among Danish and Saudi employees. In this regard, it is crucial to mention results from Saidoun’s (2016, p. 218) study, which focuses on Algeria and Morocco and highlighted a positive impact of ICC in project management organisations. Using examples from everyday intercultural communication, Saidoun (2016, p. 218) acknowledges that ICC heavily relies project managers’ ability to penetrate deep into the Algerian and Moroccan contexts. The results provide valuable insight into the ways to improve ICC of employees as countries in North Africa (which are similar to Saudi Arabia) strive towards globalisation. It is extremely important to further the research on the impact of ICC on business because, in the viewpoint of Suchan (2014, p. 2), those who want to interact with the Arab world do not possess reliable evidence on how to successfully engage in intercultural communication with Arab people. Such an investigation, however, is beyond the scope of the present research.

Alshammari (2013, pp. 112, 169) assesses the views of foreign expatriates from 16 nations working in two Saudi Arabian universities, Ha’il and Al Jouf. Most respondents came from Arab countries, such as Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Palestine, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia and Yemen. Others were from Canada, England, India, North Ireland, Pakistan, South Africa and the United States. In this study, the foreign expatriates acknowledge that they easily engage in interactions with their colleagues and students, because many of them belong to similar cultures, share similar religious beliefs and understand the cultural and socio-religious nuances of Saudi Arabia. The findings suggest that it is more efficient to invite educators and professors who understand Arab culture and Arab people. Foreign expatriates also mention that there is no correlation between their previous experience and the ability to adjust to a Saudi setting, indicating that experience is less significant in a Saudi setting than specific knowledge and communicative skills; moreover,

in the viewpoint of foreign expatriates, language proficiency is a prerequisite to developing ICC (Alshammari, 2013, p. 170). The researcher concludes that it is essential for Saudi university managers to help foreign expatriates adjust to the social-cultural realm of Saudi Arabia by increasing their ICC. For instance, a counselling or guidance department for foreign expatriates can help reinforce adjustment strategies and engage them in intercultural activities with other educators (Alshammari, 2013, p. 184). Without such efforts, teachers may become dissatisfied with their work and fail to engage in intercultural communication with students and Saudi nationals.

Quite different results are obtained by Jackson (2012, p. 1), who invited Western expatriates working in Saudi Arabia to express their views on cultural adjustment and intercultural communication. The expatriates in Jackson’s (2012, p. 1) study and Alshammari’s (2013, p. 184) study belong to culturally diverse societies, so their experiences are heterogeneous. In particular, Western expatriates specified that they still experienced serious problems with cultural adjustment and intercultural communication. Two major obstacles to the development of ICC were poor knowledge of the Arabic language and reluctance of Saudi universities to organise intercultural activities for educators and students (Jackson, 2012, p. 1). Although Western expatriates spent some time working in Saudi Arabia, they failed to learn Arabic. The results from these two studies are somewhat contradictory, however, because the researchers engaged different numbers of participants with different levels of language proficiency and different cultural and educational backgrounds. Nevertheless, these analyses show that teachers’ views on ICC largely depend on the universities in which they work, their language proficiency and their awareness of Arabic cultural values and traditions.