Identity Management Theory (also frequently referred to as IMT) is an intercultural communication

Intercultural communication

Intercultural communication is a form of global communication. It is used to describe the wide range of communication problems that naturally appear within an organization made up of individuals from different religious, social, ethnic, and educational backgrounds. Intercultural communication is...

 theory from the 1990s. It was developed by William R. Cupach and Tadasu Todd Imahori on the basis of Erving Goffman's Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior (1967). Cupach and Imahori distinguish between intercultural communication

Communication

Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...

 (speakers from different culture

Culture

Culture is a term that has many different inter-related meanings. For example, in 1952, Alfred Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn compiled a list of 164 definitions of "culture" in Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts and Definitions...

s) and intracultural

Intracultural

The term intracultural is used to describe data and interactional data from within one cultural group. For example: Value variations among Palestinians are intracultural. Often used in Subaltern Studies, Development Studies and Sociology....

 communication (speakers sharing the same culture).

To understand IMT, it is important to be familiar with Cupach and Imahori's view of identities

Cultural identity

Cultural identity is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as one is influenced by one's belonging to a group or culture. Cultural identity is similar to and has overlaps with, but is not synonymous with, identity politics....

. Among the multiple identities which an individual possesses, cultural and relational identities are regarded as essential to IMT.

Cupach and Imahori claim that presenting one's face

Face

The face is a central sense organ complex, for those animals that have one, normally on the ventral surface of the head, and can, depending on the definition in the human case, include the hair, forehead, eyebrow, eyelashes, eyes, nose, ears, cheeks, mouth, lips, philtrum, temple, teeth, skin, and...

 shows facets of an individual's identity. Whether an interlocuter is able to maintain face or not, reveals his or her interpersonal communication competence

Metacommunicative competence

Metacommunicative competence is the ability to intervene within difficult conversations and to correct communication problems by utilizing the different ways of practical communication:...

. The use of stereotype

Stereotype

A stereotype is a popular belief about specific social groups or types of individuals. The concepts of "stereotype" and "prejudice" are often confused with many other different meanings...

s in intercultural conversations often results from the ignorance of each other's culture; the application of stereotypes, however, is face threatening. Being able to manage the resulting tensions, is part of intercultural communication competence. For becoming competent in developing intercultural relationships, the following three phases have to be passed:

1. "trial and error": act of looking for similar aspects in certain identities.
2. "mixing up" the communicators' identities to achieve a relational identity acceptable for both participants
3. renegotiating the distinctive cultural identities with the help of the relational identity that was created in phase 2

Cupach and Imahori call these phases "cyclical" as they are gone through by intercultural communicators for each aspect of their identities.