Developing students' intercultural competence is a key objective of international mobility programs in higher education. While it is widely accepted that studying abroad enhances students' competencies, little is known about the specific conditions and contexts that promote the development of intercultural competence during these experiences. This study draws on survey data from 499 students across five cohorts from a French higher education institution between 2017 and 2021. The analysis includes three distinct measures of intercultural competence and learning, along with a wide range of variables related to the mobility context, processes, personality traits and students' previous international experiences. The data were analyzed using an exploratory partial least squares structural equations model (PLS-SEM). The findings suggest that personality traits such as empathy, attributional complexity, and metacognition, positively influence the development of intercultural competence during international mobility. Additionally, encountering difficulties or conflicts positively impacts intercultural competence when students successfully manage to cope with them and overcome negative emotions. Furthermore, perceived learning from the international experience plays a central and mediating role in explaining both intercultural knowledge and ethnorelativism.

Professional sports teams provide a relevant setting for the study of multicultural work groups. Engaging in additional tasks or voluntary efforts-broadly referred to as organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs)-is key to the effective functioning of such teams. Unfortunately, cultural diversity has been shown to decrease team cohesion and could therefore be detrimental to OCBs. However, intercultural competence (IC) should help team members understand and adapt to the cultural diversity in their teams. Because these aspects remain poorly understood, this study examines the influence of cultural diversity on OCB (i.e., sportspersonship, civic virtue, helping behavior), and the moderating role of IC. A vignette survey study was conducted with 219 professional athletes from different sports (i.e., football, basketball, and volleyball). Data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling. Results suggest an inverted curvilinear relationship between cultural diversity and OCB, with OCBs being significantly lower in the moderate cultural diversity condition compared to the low and high conditions. In addition, the results suggest that athletes' level of IC acted as a positive moderator between the level of cultural diversity and perceptions of OCB. These findings are discussed in relation to the literature on cultural diversity and (sport) team dynamics.