Research-Informed Teaching: Integrating Cases of Chinese Enterprises Overseas into the Practical Reform of an Intercultural Communication Course ()
1. Introduction
As Chinese enterprises continue to expand their overseas investment, engineering projects, production-capacity cooperation, and market presence, intercultural communication, social coordination, and organizational image construction have become increasingly important issues in overseas operations. For Chinese enterprises, “going global” involves not only the outward transfer of technology, capital, and managerial experience, but also entry into unfamiliar cultural contexts, institutional settings, and social networks in which understanding, trust, and cooperation must be continuously negotiated. At the same time, recent reforms in undergraduate education have emphasized competence-oriented and practice-oriented learning, thereby placing new demands on communication education in higher education. Students are expected not only to master the core concepts and theoretical frameworks of intercultural communication but also to identify problems, understand differences, and communicate effectively in concrete situations1.
The Intercultural Communication course is an important component of communication programs because it is designed to cultivate students’ intercultural understanding, communicative competence, and awareness of international communication. In principle, the course should integrate theoretical explanation with practical training. In practice, however, teaching content still tends to focus on classic topics such as cultural difference, context theory, nonverbal communication, stereotypes, and intercultural adaptation, while teaching materials often rely on cases drawn from foreign textbooks or generalized situations of cultural misunderstanding. Although such content forms the foundation of the course, it is relatively limited in terms of practical relevance and problem complexity. Students therefore tend to understand intercultural communication as etiquette, cultural taboos, or a broad principle of “respecting differences”, rather than as a field involving organizational communication, social negotiation, image construction, and responsibility expression. Existing research has shown that intercultural communicative competence is not simply a matter of knowledge acquisition but also of understanding, judging, and responding to concrete situations (Deardorff, 2006; Sun, 2016).
For communication students, intercultural competence should not be reduced to familiarity with conceptual terminology; rather, it should be reflected in their ability to identify problems, understand communication targets, organize expression, and coordinate relationships in specific professional contexts. From this perspective, the key to reforming the Intercultural Communication course lies not in simply adding more cases, but in establishing a closer connection between course content and the real-world communication problems encountered by Chinese enterprises overseas. Wen (2022) argues that intercultural competence courses need to respond more directly to the Chinese context, while related studies have also emphasized that ideological and political elements in intercultural communication courses should be embedded within course content and concrete teaching situations (Du, 2026; He & Tong, 2025). These observations suggest that introducing real cases from Chinese enterprises’ overseas practices into the classroom can enhance both the practical relevance of the course and the integration of professional teaching with value education.
Against this background, this paper draws on first-hand case resources collected through the instructor’s fieldwork on Chinese enterprises in the Gulf region and Southeast Asia. It examines how case-based teaching, task-driven learning, and scenario simulation can be used to integrate enterprise cases into the Intercultural Communication course, thereby shifting the course from a concept-centered model toward a more analytical and practice-oriented one. It also discusses how this reform was reflected in students’ theoretical understanding, classroom participation, practical problem analysis, and sense of responsibility.
Methodologically, this paper is positioned as a teaching reform report with elements of classroom-based action research. It does not aim to test a formal causal relationship through experimental comparison. Rather, it documents how first-hand fieldwork materials were transformed into teaching cases and how their classroom use was reflected in student participation, classroom feedback, coursework, and peer observations. This positioning helps align the claims of the paper with the evidence available from the course implementation.
2. Course Context and Fieldwork-Based Case Resources
This paper is based on a teaching reform implemented in the Intercultural Communication course offered to undergraduate students majoring in Journalism and Communication at Shaanxi University of Technology. The reform involved two cohorts of students from the 2022 and 2023 classes, with a total of 188 students. Among them, one cohort consisted of 110 students and the other consisted of 78 students. The course was taught over a 16-week semester. During the reform, cases of Chinese enterprises overseas were integrated into the course through four main approaches: embedding cases into thematic modules, designing task-driven classroom activities, organizing scenario simulations, and incorporating curriculum-based ideological and political education into professional teaching.
The case resources used in the course were drawn from the instructor’s field investigations of Chinese enterprises overseas. The fieldwork covered 35 overseas units, including 17 in the Gulf region and 18 in Southeast Asia. The Gulf fieldwork involved Chinese enterprises in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, while the Southeast Asian fieldwork covered enterprises operating in several major destination countries for Chinese investment, project contracting, and regional production cooperation. The selected units included central state-owned enterprises, local state-owned enterprises, and private enterprises. They were engaged in sectors such as engineering construction, energy, logistics, mining, shipping, high technology, trade, and related services. The selection of cases followed a purposive logic: the instructor sought to include enterprises from different regions, ownership types, and industries so that the course materials could reflect the diversity of intercultural communication problems faced by Chinese enterprises overseas.
The field materials were collected through semi-structured interviews, workplace and living-environment observations, informal conversations, and enterprise-related documents or public materials when available. Each investigated enterprise involved both interviews and observation. In addition, three enterprise symposiums were held in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar, which provided opportunities to compare the experiences of multiple enterprises and to identify recurring communication issues. The original materials were then converted into teaching cases through a process of selection, simplification, anonymization, and pedagogical redesign. Enterprise names, individual identities, and commercially sensitive details were removed or generalized. The teaching cases retained the core communication situation, cultural conflict, organizational response, and learning value, while avoiding the disclosure of identifiable or sensitive information.
Evidence for the reported teaching effects came mainly from classroom observation, student feedback, student coursework and reflections, and peer observation by other teachers. Student feedback indicated that the classroom became more vivid and realistic because the cases were based on first-hand overseas fieldwork and because international students were invited to participate in scenario-based activities. Classroom observation showed that students were highly engaged in group discussion, role-play, and task presentation, with all students participating in at least one classroom task or group activity. Peer observers also gave positive comments on the reform. They noted that cases from Chinese enterprises overseas were interesting and professionally relevant, and that inviting international students to play the role of local employees, partners, or community actors made the simulations more realistic and creative. Since no formal pre-test/post-test or standardized assessment was conducted, the teaching outcomes reported in this paper should be understood as classroom-based and observation-supported results rather than statistically verified learning effects.
The integration of cases involving Chinese enterprises overseas into the Intercultural Communication course depends first on whether the instructor possesses sufficiently solid, transformable, and teachable real-world materials. Compared with reforms based primarily on textbook examples, online materials, or second-hand reports, first-hand field data better capture the authenticity, problem orientation, and situational complexity of cases and allow students to enter concrete communication scenes and understand how intercultural communication operates in practice. The teaching resources used in this study mainly derive from the instructor’s sustained field investigations of Chinese enterprises in the Gulf region and Southeast Asia.
In terms of scope and sample structure, the fieldwork resources used in this course were based on 35 overseas units investigated by the instructor, including 17 units in the Gulf region and 18 units in Southeast Asia. The Gulf fieldwork covered Chinese enterprises in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. The Southeast Asian fieldwork covered Chinese enterprises in several major destination countries for Chinese investment, project contracting, and regional production cooperation. These units included central state-owned enterprises, local state-owned enterprises, and private enterprises. Their business areas covered engineering construction, energy development, logistics, mining, shipping, high technology, trade, and related services.
The cases were not selected to represent all Chinese enterprises overseas statistically. Rather, they were selected purposively according to their pedagogical value and their relevance to the core themes of the Intercultural Communication course. In particular, priority was given to cases that involved cultural differences, communication misunderstanding, local employee management, community relations, public responsibility expression, corporate image construction, and interaction with local social norms. This selection logic enabled the instructor to transform fieldwork materials into teachable cases that were closely connected to course topics such as cultural difference, high-context and low-context communication, identity perception, intercultural adaptation, trust building, organizational communication, and international communication.
In terms of content and pedagogical fit, the field materials correspond closely to the core knowledge areas of the Intercultural Communication course. During fieldwork, attention was paid not only to business operations but also to communication practices, relationship building, organizational expression, and social interaction in overseas contexts. For example, the cases address how Chinese enterprises establish communication channels with local communities, reduce misunderstandings under conditions of cultural difference, adopt forms of expression in public welfare and corporate social responsibility activities that are more acceptable locally, and maintain corporate image in complicated public opinion and social environments. Although such issues appear on the surface to concern management or social relations, they are in fact deeply embedded in intercultural communication and correspond closely to course topics such as cultural difference, contextual interpretation, identity perception, trust building, and organizational communication. Both experiential learning and production-oriented teaching stress the value of promoting students’ understanding, analysis, and expression through concrete tasks and real problems (Kolb, 1984; Wen, 2020; Zhang, 2025). From this perspective, cases of Chinese enterprises overseas are especially suitable for transformation into classroom case discussions, task analysis, and scenario simulation.
The transformation from field material to teaching case followed three steps. First, the instructor identified recurring communication problems from interviews, observations, and enterprise discussions, such as misunderstandings between Chinese managers and local employees, differences in work rhythm, inappropriate forms of public expression, or difficulties in explaining corporate social responsibility to local communities. Second, these problems were linked to relevant theoretical themes in the course, including cultural difference, contextual interpretation, intercultural adaptation, identity negotiation, and organizational image. Third, the cases were redesigned as classroom tasks, including case discussion, group analysis, role-play, communication strategy design, and reflective writing. Through this process, fieldwork materials were not simply presented as stories; they were converted into structured teaching resources that required students to analyze problems, apply concepts, and propose communication strategies.
These cases also possess a distinctive Chinese experiential dimension. Wen (2022) argues that intercultural competence courses should respond more directly to the Chinese context. Compared with cases borrowed from foreign textbooks and Western theoretical traditions, cases of Chinese enterprises overseas originate in the actual international practices of Chinese actors and therefore help students approach intercultural communication from a Chinese perspective. They also enable students to understand, through concrete situations, the organizational, social, and image-related responsibilities borne by Chinese enterprises overseas, thereby providing a practical basis for integrating ideological and political education into the course. Overall, the first-hand materials generated through field investigations of Chinese enterprises in the Gulf region and Southeast Asia provide a solid resource base for reforming the practical teaching of the Intercultural Communication course and make it realistically feasible to transform research outcomes into classroom cases, instructional tasks, and scenario-based activities.
3. Practical Constraints and Reform Design
The Intercultural Communication course is a core course in communication studies that combines theoretical, practical, and applied dimensions. Its purpose is not only to help students master foundational knowledge such as cultural differences, contextual features, identity cognition, and communication strategies, but also to cultivate their ability to identify communication barriers, understand cultural differences, and communicate effectively in complex social contexts. In recent years, undergraduate education reform and curriculum-based ideological and political education have continuously stressed the integration of competence orientation, content renewal, and value formation, which has raised new expectations for the course2.
However, several limitations remain evident in current teaching practice. First, teaching remains heavily concept-centered, and students often remain at the level of memorizing terminology. Existing research suggests that intercultural communicative competence should be understood not only as knowledge mastery but also as the ability to make situational judgments, adapt communication, and understand others (Deardorff, 2006; Sun, 2016). Yet when teaching relies primarily on conceptual explanation and textbook cases, students may memorize terms without being able to use them as tools for analyzing real-world problems, especially those involving organizational communication, relationship negotiation, and responsibility expression.
Second, case materials remain relatively homogeneous and insufficiently connected to Chinese realities, particularly the overseas practices of Chinese enterprises. Most teaching cases still come from foreign textbooks, generic multinational examples, or generalized accounts of cultural misunderstanding, which are somewhat distant from the lived experience and social imagination of Chinese students. Wen (2022) notes that intercultural competence and intercultural communication courses should respond more fully to the Chinese context and to the requirements of curriculum-based ideological and political education. For communication students, the absence of cases rooted in Chinese enterprises’ overseas activities makes it difficult to build an intercultural communication framework grounded in Chinese experience.
Third, teaching methods remain relatively traditional, and students’ practical training for dealing with real-world situations is insufficient. Both experiential learning and production-oriented pedagogy stress that learners should develop their understanding, analytical ability, and expressive competence through tasks, interaction, and reflection (Kolb, 1984; Wen, 2020). In actual classroom practice, however, teaching still often revolves around lectures, brief student responses, and after-class assignments. Case discussions and task design remain insufficiently systematic, so that students may have “studied” intercultural communication without genuinely developing the ability to handle complex communicative situations.
Finally, the integration of ideological and political education with professional teaching remains somewhat artificial. The Guidelines for the Construction of Curriculum-Based Ideological and Political Education in Higher Education explicitly require professional courses to integrate value shaping, knowledge transmission, and ability cultivation3. Related studies have likewise emphasized that ideological and political elements in intercultural communication courses should be embedded in course content and concrete teaching contexts (Wen, 2022; Du, 2026; He & Tong, 2025; Zhang, 2025). The course therefore needs to move beyond its reliance on textbook knowledge and generic examples by strengthening its connection with Chinese realities, professional contexts, and communication practices and by enhancing students’ problem awareness and practical competence through case analysis, task-driven learning, and scenario simulation.
Based on these field resources, the reform did not simply aim to add more enterprise cases; rather, it sought to transform case resources from supplementary teaching materials into core instructional resources, thereby reshaping course content, teaching methods, and student participation. To achieve this goal, the Intercultural Communication course was reformed mainly through four approaches: restructuring teaching modules around cases, designing task-driven learning activities, implementing scenario simulation, and integrating curriculum-based ideological and political education.
First, at the level of course content, teaching modules were reorganized around cases involving Chinese enterprises overseas so as to strengthen the connection between course content and real-world problems. While retaining the basic framework of cultural differences, context theory, identity, and intercultural adaptation, the course embedded enterprise cases into corresponding modules. For example, when discussing cultural difference and communication barriers, the course introduced cases in which misunderstandings arose from differences in expressive styles, behavioral expectations, or social habits in overseas settings. When discussing organizational communication and image construction, it incorporated cases involving community communication, public welfare expression, and corporate image building. When focusing on intercultural understanding and relationship building, it analyzed interactions among enterprises, partners, community representatives, and employees. Existing studies suggest that intercultural courses should respond to the Chinese context and help students understand cultural difference and communication issues through concrete situations (Sun, 2016; Wen, 2022).
Second, at the level of teaching organization, case-study tasks were used to move students from passive listening to active analysis. Students were assigned group case analyses in which they examined the regional setting, communication context, major problems, responses, and outcomes of enterprise cases, and discussed them through course concepts. Compared with ordinary classroom questioning, this design placed greater emphasis on problem identification, information integration, and logical expression, thereby encouraging students to become case analysts rather than concept receivers. Production-oriented teaching emphasizes that tasks and output promote learners’ understanding, analysis, and expression, which is consistent with the logic of the present course design (Wen, 2020). In practice, the instructor no longer merely lectured on cases, but transformed them into tasks that students could process, discuss, and present, thereby enhancing classroom participation and learning productivity.
Third, scenario simulation was introduced to deepen students’ experiential understanding of complex intercultural communication settings. Role-playing activities were designed around common communication situations faced by Chinese enterprises overseas, such as communication with local communities, coordination with partners, and post-event expression following social responsibility activities. Students took on roles such as enterprise representatives, community members, partners, and media observers. In some classroom activities, international students were invited to participate by playing the roles of local employees, partners, or community actors. Through simulation, students experienced how different positions shaped problem concerns and communicative logic, and they then reflected on communication outcomes. Experiential learning theory emphasizes that learners construct understanding through concrete activities, interactive participation, and reflective summarization, providing methodological support for scenario simulation in the classroom (Kolb, 1984; Zhang, 2025). Compared with ordinary classroom discussion, scenario simulation better reflects the interactive and negotiated nature of intercultural communication and helps improve students’ expression, adaptability, and teamwork.
Finally, ideological and political education was deliberately integrated into case analysis so as to combine professional teaching with responsibility education. The Guidelines for the Construction of Curriculum-Based Ideological and Political Education in Higher Education make clear that professional courses should integrate value shaping, knowledge transmission, and ability cultivation4. Cases of Chinese enterprises overseas provided a practical basis for this integration. By analyzing issues such as overseas communication, social responsibility expression, and image building, students came to recognize more concretely that Chinese enterprises overseas are not merely economic actors but also, to some extent, carriers of China’s image and cultural communication. Related studies likewise suggest that ideological and political integration in intercultural communication courses should be connected to course content and concrete teaching situations (Wen, 2022; Du, 2026; He & Tong, 2025; Wang, 2024). In this way, the course moved beyond abstract value advocacy and helped students understand the relationship between professional competence and national needs through concrete problems.
4. Case Transformation and Teaching Outcomes
One example concerned communication between a Chinese enterprise and local employees in an overseas project setting. In the original field material, Chinese managers mentioned that some local employees understood work schedules, religious practices, and workplace communication norms differently from Chinese staff. What appeared to Chinese managers to be a problem of work discipline was sometimes related to differences in religious routines, social expectations, and local understandings of reasonable communication. In order to protect the identities of the enterprise and interviewees, specific names, locations, and operational details were removed, while the core communication problem was retained.
This material was then transformed into a classroom case for the module on cultural difference and intercultural adaptation. Students were asked to analyze the situation from the perspectives of Chinese managers, local employees, and communication coordinators. The classroom task required each group to identify the communication barrier, explain it with course concepts, and propose a more culturally appropriate communication strategy. In the scenario simulation, Chinese students played the role of enterprise representatives, while international students were invited to play the role of local employees or community actors. The intended learning outcome was to help students move beyond a simple “right or wrong” judgment and develop the ability to understand communication problems from multiple cultural and organizational positions.
This example illustrates the logic of the reform. The field material was not used merely to make the class more interesting; it was redesigned as a structured learning task. The teaching process connected a real overseas communication problem with a course topic, a group analysis task, a role-play activity, and a learning outcome. In this way, students were guided to understand how intercultural communication theories could be used to interpret and respond to practical problems faced by Chinese enterprises overseas.
Based on classroom observation, student feedback, student coursework, and peer observation, the reform showed several positive classroom-based outcomes. Since the course did not adopt a formal experimental design or standardized pre-test/post-test assessment, these outcomes should be understood as observation-supported teaching effects rather than statistically verified results.
First, students’ understanding of intercultural communication theory became more concrete in classroom discussion and coursework. Student feedback indicated that the use of first-hand enterprise cases made the course feel more vivid, realistic, and connected to real overseas communication situations. Compared with textbook-based examples, cases from Chinese enterprises overseas helped students understand that intercultural communication is not limited to etiquette, taboos, or general respect for difference. Rather, it also involves workplace coordination, local employee communication, community interaction, corporate responsibility expression, and organizational image construction. In classroom assignments and group presentations, some students were able to use concepts such as cultural difference, contextual interpretation, identity perception, and intercultural adaptation to explain concrete communication problems in the cases.
Second, the reform increased student participation and practical engagement. Classroom observation showed that students were highly engaged in group discussion, role-play, and task presentation. All students participated in at least one classroom task or group activity during the implementation of the reform. The participation of international students further strengthened the realism of the classroom. When international students played the role of local employees, local partners, or community representatives, Chinese students had to adjust their communication strategies according to different cultural positions and communicative expectations. This design made the classroom interaction closer to real intercultural communication situations and encouraged students to think from multiple perspectives rather than merely repeat theoretical concepts.
Third, the reform made the integration of curriculum-based ideological and political education more natural and situation-based. Instead of adding value education as an external component, the course embedded responsibility awareness into case analysis and scenario simulation. Through cases involving overseas corporate communication, community relations, and social responsibility expression, students came to understand that Chinese enterprises overseas are not only economic actors but also important carriers of China’s organizational image and cultural communication. Student feedback suggested that the cases and the participation of international students helped them gain a more realistic understanding of the communication responsibilities faced by Chinese enterprises overseas. In this sense, ideological and political education was not delivered through abstract slogans, but through concrete communication problems that required students to analyze, judge, and respond.
Peer observation also provided supportive evidence for the teaching reform. Teachers who observed the class commented that the overseas enterprise cases were interesting, concrete, and different from conventional textbook examples. They also noted that inviting international students to participate in scenario simulation was a creative design because it allowed Chinese students to experience more realistic interactions with culturally different communication partners. According to these peer comments, the course created a classroom scene that was rarely seen in conventional intercultural communication teaching, as it connected fieldwork resources, professional knowledge, student participation, and real intercultural interaction.
Overall, the teaching effects were reflected most clearly in classroom realism, student participation, and students’ ability to relate theoretical concepts to real communication problems. These effects should not be overstated as formally measured learning gains. Rather, they indicate that first-hand overseas enterprise cases can make the Intercultural Communication course more problem-oriented, more situated, and more relevant to the professional development of Journalism and Communication students.
5. Limitations and Conclusion
This teaching reform also has several limitations. First, it was implemented in a single Intercultural Communication course at one university, so its findings cannot be generalized directly to other institutions, disciplines, or student groups. Second, the instructor played a dual role as both the fieldwork researcher who collected the enterprise cases and the teacher who designed and implemented the course reform. This dual role made it possible to transform first-hand research materials into teaching resources, but it may also have influenced the interpretation of classroom effects. Third, the evidence for teaching outcomes was mainly based on classroom observation, student feedback, student coursework, and peer observation rather than a formal experimental design or standardized assessment. Therefore, the reported outcomes should be understood as preliminary and practice-based. Future reforms could introduce more systematic evaluation tools, such as pre-course and post-course surveys, rubric-based assessment of student assignments, and follow-up interviews, in order to examine the learning effects more rigorously.
This paper has presented a teaching reform of the Intercultural Communication course based on first-hand fieldwork materials from Chinese enterprises overseas. By transforming field materials from 35 overseas units in the Gulf region and Southeast Asia into anonymized teaching cases, the course attempted to connect intercultural communication theories with the practical communication problems encountered by Chinese enterprises in overseas operations. The reform was implemented through case-based modules, task-driven learning, scenario simulation, and curriculum-based ideological and political education.
The implementation of the reform suggests that research-informed, case-based, task-driven, and situated teaching can enhance the realism and participation of the Intercultural Communication course. Based on classroom observation, student feedback, coursework, and peer comments, the reform helped students connect intercultural communication theories with real overseas enterprise situations and encouraged them to think more concretely about communication responsibility, cultural difference, and organizational image. However, because the evidence remains classroom-based and practice-oriented, further research is needed to evaluate the learning effects through more systematic assessment.
For communication programs, the reform offers a practical pathway for transforming research resources into teaching resources. It also shows that cases of Chinese enterprises overseas can serve not only as supplementary examples but also as core instructional materials for cultivating students’ intercultural understanding, professional communication ability, and responsibility awareness. In future teaching practice, further efforts can be made to improve the case database, refine assessment mechanisms, and encourage students to produce more research-based and practice-oriented learning outputs.
NOTES
*Author Bio: Yawei Chen, PhD, is a faculty member in the School of Humanities at Shaanxi University of Technology. Her research interests include intercultural communication, international communication, organizational communication, the management of Chinese enterprises overseas, and overseas interest protection. In recent years, she has conducted sustained fieldwork on Chinese enterprises in the Gulf region and Southeast Asia, focusing on intercultural communication, localization practices, organizational image construction, and socio-cultural risk governance in overseas operations. Her fieldwork-based research has also been integrated into the teaching reform and case-based instruction of the Intercultural Communication course.
1Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (MEPRC) (2019). https://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s271/201910/t20191011_402636.html; General Office of the Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (GOMEPRC) (2021). https://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A08/s7056/202103/t20210322_521681.html
2Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (MEPRC) (2019). https://www.moe.gov.cn/jyb_xwfb/s271/201910/t20191011_402636.html;
Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (MEPRC) (2020). http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A08/s7056/202006/t20200603_462437.html
3Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (MEPRC) (2020). http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A08/s7056/202006/t20200603_462437.html
4Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (MEPRC) (2020). http://www.moe.gov.cn/srcsite/A08/s7056/202006/t20200603_462437.html