News

CCC of the Dutch military

In 2007 and 2008 Dutch soldiers, NCOs and Officers on mission in Afghanistan (TFU4 en PRT4) participated in a survey on their image of the local population of Uruzgan. Coen van den Berg (NLDA), Richard de Ridder (ICCN), Robert Gooren (CAI) and Sjo Soeters (NLDA) were the initiators of this project. Analyses of the results demonstrate that specific CrossCulural Competencies are directly related to the effectiveness of contacts between the military and the local population. [CrossCultural Competence of the Dutch military in Uruzgan]

Consulting

ICCN has designed an approach and instruments to facilitate a change in organisational culture. This so-called ‘Four-steps approach to cultural change’ has been successfully carried out in a large public health organisation in The Netherlands.

Training & Education

  • Training Intercultural Skills. ICCN is involved in the preparation of Dutch military personnel for peace keeping missions [ISAF, UNTSO and EUFOR].
  • The Caspian Sea Simulation – designed by Richard de Ridder en Lieven Callewaert – has been successfully employed in workshops on multi-party cooperation and negotiation. [Flyer CSS]
  • ICCN developed the project ‘Intercultural competence, skills & behavior’ for the Netherlands Defence Academy (NLDA) in Breda.
  • The last few years ICCN has focused on intercultural management training for different organizations and educational institutes, such as De Baak and Nijenrode.

Research

Current research deals with the predictors of successful cooperation in multiparty and intercultural settings.

  • DeRidder,R., & van de Ven, M. (2007). How can we train professional for effective multiparty collaboration? An empirical study.(Dutch) [Meerpartijen Samenwerking]
  • Do CrossCultural Competencies change over time? Recent analyses of CCC of Dutch military before and after their mission in Afghanistan demonstrate that some specific CrossCulural Competencies do change depending on the nature of experiences in a foreign environment, while others do not. This finding has important implications for training of CCC.

Miscellaneous

FORCE-IT62 is an instrument to assess a person’s basic competencies for effective collaboration with people from other cultures and parties. The FORCE-IT62 is a combination of the MPQ (Jan Pieter van Oudenhoven en Karen van der Zee, Foundation for the enhancement of intercultural contact) and the Multi-party Competence questionnaire (Richard DeRidder, ICCN). The questionnaire is available for training and education. It can be answered online in English, French and Dutch. [deridder@iccn.nl]