The impact of foreign language and field education on the perception of intercultural competence of business administration students: The case of İzmir province

In this study, it is aimed to investigate the factors that affect university students' intercultural competence (IC). For this purpose, firstly, the literature on culture, cultural differences and intercultural competencies was examined, hypotheses about the factors that affect intercultural competencies were created and tested. 382 students were reached using the simple random sampling method. Survey technique was used as data collection method and data were collected in the 2018-2019 academic year. In the research, Intercultural Competence Scale developed by Chao (2014) was adapted to Turkish and used. The questionnaire consists of 5 dimensions: Knowledge of Intercultural Interaction, Affective Orientation to Intercultural Interaction, Self-efficacy in Intercultural Situations, Behavioral Performance in Intercultural Interaction and Display of Intercultural Consciousness. According to the findings of the research, the dimension in which the Intercultural Competencies of the freshmen and the senior students of Business Department of the universities in Izmir are the highest is the Affective Orientation to Intercultural Interaction dimension and it is followed by the Self-efficacy dimension in Intercultural Situations. It is seen that different demographic characteristics also have an effect on variables. As a result of the research, it is seen that the gender variable does not make a statistically significant difference in terms of IC. It was found that there is a significant difference between the courses taken at the university, the international experience, experience of living abroad, the type of high school and university, and the preparatory education taken at the university and the IC.