Structure and agency of cultural diversity in (international) higher education have to be addressed with a critical perspective on international mobility and practices of international academic teaching. In order to overcome naive assumptions about intercultural developments on the individual and the organizational level, sociological analysis should address the intersection of both levels. The concept of academic communities of practice is introduced as an appropriate level for analysing the process of negotiating interculturality in institutions of higher education. Based on this approach, a conceptual typology model is presented to illustrate four different types of intercultural orientations, each one characterizing a prototypical strategy of intercultural organizational development and corresponding social reflectivity. (Contains 3 notes and 1 figure.)