Cross-cultural Knowledge Management

The success of international companies in providing high quality products and outstanding services is subject, on the one hand, to the increasing dynamic of the economic environment and on the other hand to the adoption of worldwide quality standards and procedures. As market place is becoming more and more global, products and services offered worldwide by international companies must face the multi-cultural environment challenges. These challenges manifest themselves not only at customer relationship level but also deep inside companies, at employee level. Important support in facing all these challenges has been provided at cognitive level by management system models and at technological level by information cutting edge technologies Business Intelligence & Knowledge Management Business Intelligence is already delivering its promised outcomes at internal business environment and, with the explosive deployment of public data bases, expand its analytical power at national, regional and international level. Quantitative measures of economic environment, wherever available, may be captured and integrated in companies’ routine analysis. As for qualitative data, some effort is still to be done in order to integrate measures of social, political, legal, natural and technological environment in companies’ strategic analysis. An increased difficulty is found in treating cultural differences, common knowledge making the most hidden part of any foreign environment. Managing cultural knowledge is crucial to success in cultivating and maintaining long-term business relationships in multicultural environments. Knowledge Management provides the long needed technological support for cross-cultural management in the tedious task of improving knowledge sharing in multi-national companies and using knowledge effectively in international joint ventures. The paper is approaching the conceptual frameworks of knowledge management and proposes an unified model of knowledge oriented enterprise and a structural model of a global knowledge management system.Global Business, Intercultural Competencies, Business Intelligence, Multicultural Knowledge Management, Business Knowledge Frameworks, Knowledge Capital

COLLABORATIVE PORTAL MODEL FOR INTERCULTURAL TEAMS KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

In the multinational organizations, more groups of individuals are being involved in the process of knowledge creation in a collaborative manner, of sharing knowledge and learning from it. These individuals can have heterogeneous cultures and they must use a common language. IT has created and is developing the infrastructure for cross-cultural communications and intercultural knowledge management. Nowadays, intercultural knowledge management can be realized with support of Collaborative Technologies and Knowledge Management Support Systems (KMSS). In this respect Collaborative Technologies and Intercultural Knowledge Management Support Systems (IKMSS) will be the appropriate way for supporting intercultural communication, learning and collaborative knowledge management in organizations. In this paper we present a conceptual model of a collaborative portal for Intercultural Team Knowledge Management as a powerful support for increasing team’s performance.: collaborative support, collaboration, knowledge management, intercultural teams, intercultural knowledge management, intercultural knowledge management portal

Towards Learning ‘Self’ and Emotional Knowledge in Social and Cultural Human-Agent Interactions

Original article can be found at: http://www.igi-global.com/articles/details.asp?ID=35052 Copyright IGI. Posted by permission of the publisher.This article presents research towards the development of a virtual learning environment (VLE) inhabited by intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) and modeling a scenario of inter-cultural interactions. The ultimate aim of this VLE is to allow users to reflect upon and learn about intercultural communication and collaboration. Rather than predefining the interactions among the virtual agents and scripting the possible interactions afforded by this environment, we pursue a bottomup approach whereby inter-cultural communication emerges from interactions with and among autonomous agents and the user(s). The intelligent virtual agents that are inhabiting this environment are expected to be able to broaden their knowledge about the world and other agents, which may be of different cultural backgrounds, through interactions. This work is part of a collaborative effort within a European research project called eCIRCUS. Specifically, this article focuses on our continuing research concerned with emotional knowledge learning in autobiographic social agents.Peer reviewe

A Critical Review of Contemporary Practice and Educational Research in Internationalisation within the business education subject communities

This report critically reviews contemporary educational research and practice in the field of internationalisation within the business education subject communities in order to inform curriculum development and pedagogy geared towards the development of international perspectives and intercultural learning. Drawing on current pedagogical literatures as well as staff and student consultations, it identifies a number of key points which reflect good practice in business education curricula. Due to the broad disciplinary scope of the subject area in focus and the diversity of curricular activities across the UK, this critical review is selective rather than exhaustive and seeks to stimulate further discussion and research in the field. The report is structured as a reference text around key themes and issues emerging from the review, providing the reader who has a particular interest or issue in their practice with an outline of key texts which can be followed up as appropriate

The impact of studying abroad on students’ intercultural competence: An interview study

This paper presents qualitative research examining to what extent sojourns abroad engage their participants in intercultural interactions and whether or not such experience translates into students’ intercultural growth. The results of the study demonstrated that studying abroad did not provide students with ample opportunities to immerse into the local community and fully discover a new cultural environment. However, students surrounded by local and their fellow international students met foreign cultures, which motivated them to explore and interpret the encountered diversity, and thus equipped them with knowledge about foreign cultures, sensitizing them to cultural diversity. Sometimes such contacts challenged students’ preconceived judgments and stereotypes of specific cultural groups, their ways of thinking, valuing and acting, and resulted, to a lesser or greater extent, in rethinking these, leading to changing attitudes and values. International experiences also stimulated students to self-analyze their own cultural identity, and thereby contributed to their growth in self-awareness in this respect. By offering opportunities for experiencing cultural differences and prompting students to develop coping strategies and to make references to the home culture, the sojourn is thus of significant importance for tertiary students, allowing for fostering their intercultural development to a certain degree

A Critical Review of Contemporary Practice in Internationalisation in the Hospitality, Leisure, Sport and Tourism (HLST) Subject Communities

This report identifies and critically reviews contemporary practice in the field of internationalisation within the HLST subject communities in order to inform curriculum development and pedagogy geared towards the development of international perspectives and global awareness. Drawing on current pedagogical literatures as well as staff and student consultations, it identifies a number of key points which reflect good practice in UK HLST curricula in the UK. Due to the broad disciplinary scope of the subject area in focus and the diversity of curricular activities across the UK, this critical review is selective rather than exhaustive and seeks to stimulate further discussion and research into this area

Transformative Leadership and the Unapologetic Leader

My poem, I Want an Unapologetic Leader, indicates a few of the qualities that I associate with transformative leaders–namely, open-mindedness, emotional intelligence, and integrity. Perhaps a transformative leader doesn’t need to like art, but some enthusiasm for confusion is necessary. In this age of increasing complexity and uncertainty, a leader must be flexible, ask questions, seek diverse viewpoints, and take risks to respond creatively in changeable circumstances (Montuori, 2010; Giulioni and Hendel-Giller, 2018). The ending of the poem explains the title, but it also speaks to an exceptional quality found in transformative leaders–the courage to change one’s mind

Is Creativity Lost in Translation? A discussion of the cultural underpinnings of creativity

Abstract In the interrelated knowledge economy the fostering of creativity is key and as such is the focus of many government initiatives internationally. But is an international definition of creativity achievable or even desirable? Comparisons of different cultures’ propensities for creativity are problematic when we consider that most creativity research has taken place in Western cultures, with Western measures; and when creativity is defined as revolutionary this has often presented a dichotomous view of creativity that equates Westernisation with modernity. As a form of communication, creativity is open to mis- translation across cultures and despite some consensus between the West and Confucian heritage cultures on the desirable attributes to facilitate creativity, misunderstandings of creative practice based on cultural general tendencies such as individualism and collectivism remain. This paper reviews the literature on the development of concepts of creativity in Western and Confucian heritage cultures as well as reporting on a qualitative research study into the understandings and practice of creativity in a London art and design college in order to comment on the existence of a cross-cultural creativity divide and suggest that rather than be set against each other, creativity is enhanced by cultural creativity exchange and cross-cultural collaboration