Learning to negotiate reality: a strategy for teaching intercultural competencies

Managers in a global business environment work with people who have different values, behavioral norms, and ways of perceiving reality. Team members bring their different national and professional backgrounds to the table, and suppliers and clients come from different corporate cultures. Consequently, intercultural competencies have become important for a wider range and larger number of people in business than ever before. In order to prepare students to become effective in the multiple cultural contexts they will face, business educators must clarify what constitutes intercultural competencies and how to develop them within the context of a business school classroom. In this paper we present the idea of learning to negotiate reality as a core intercultural competence and we describe an approach we designed and used for developing this competence at an international business school in Europe. -- Die Fähigkeit, mit Menschen aus unterschiedlichen nationalen, professionellen, ethnischen und organisationellen Kulturen zu arbeiten wird immer wichtiger. Sei es in Projektgruppen mit Mitgliedern aus verschiedenen Ländern und mehreren Funktionsbereichen, sei es in Verhandlungen mit Kunden und Lieferanten: kulturell geprägte Werte und Verhaltensnormen beeinflussen die Erwartungen über Ziele und Vorgehensweisen und können zu Missverständnissen und Konflikten führen. Interkulturelle Kompetenz, im Sinne der Fähigkeit, ein gemeinsames Verständnis einer Situation auszuhandeln (negotiating reality) gewinnt in Organisationen immer mehr an Bedeutung. Dieser Beitrag beschreibt wie diese Kompetenz im Rahmen eines drei- bis viertägigen Seminars entwickelt werden kann. Die relevanten Theorien werden dargestellt und an einem ausgewählten Fall illustrativ angewandt.

Overcoming dangerous learning: the role of critical reflection in cross-cultural interactions

Rapid globalization has increased the need and opportunity for interactions between people from different cultural backgrounds. Experience is often considered the best teacher and experiences with cross-cultural interactions represent important opportunities to learn to deal with differences. Drawing on a collection of 260 cases, this contribution argues that even when people enter into cross-cultural interactions with the intention of learning new ways of seeing and doing things, they often draw conclusions that make them unreceptive to information that might contradict what they already think. Thus, learning from experience can be dangerous when it inhibits inquiry and closes off new knowledge. This contribution illustrates the kinds of dangerous learning we have encountered in our research and presents strategies of critical self-reflection and interaction to generate shared understandings of situations, desired outcomes, and appropriate actions. -- Erfahrungen gelten als wichtige Lernressource, dieser Beitrag hingegen stellt anhand ausgewählter Fallstudien über interkulturelle Interaktionen dar, wie Erfahrungen dem Lernen auch im Wege stehen können. Die Untersuchung zeigt auf, dass auch Akteure, die sich bewusst in interkulturelle Situationen begeben, um neue Sichtweisen zu erlernen, auf eingeübte Interpretationsmuster und Lösungsansätzen zurückgreifen, sobald kulturelle Situationen ihren eigenen Erfahrungen und Vorstellungen widersprechen. Somit wird das unreflektierte Lernen aus Erfahrungen zu einer gefährlichen Strategie, da es die Überprüfung der Annahmen verhindert und neue Erkenntnisse ausschließt. Die Konsequenzen sind sowohl auf individueller wie auch auf organisationaler Ebene von Bedeutung, da Schlussfolgerungen aus Erfahrungslernen oft unkritisch als handlungsleitend für zukünftige Interaktionen im Organisationsgedächtnis gespeichert werden. Dieser Beitrag verdeutlicht, wie dangerous learning zu Stande kommt und entwickelt interaktive Lernstrategien, um dieser Gefahr entgegenzuwirken.

Renormalization of 2PI resummation: a renormalization scheme approach

A practical method is suggested for performing renormalized 2PI resummation at finite temperature using specific momentum dependent renormalization schemes. In this method there is no need to solve Bethe-Salpeter equations for 2PI resummation. We examine the consistency of such schemes in the paper. The proposed method is used to perform a two-loop renormalized 2PI resummation in the finite temperature Phi^4 model.Comment: 14 pages revtex, 8 figure

From "Sirups" to Biocarbons: A 30 Year Research Cooperation for Better Biomass Utilization with Michael J. Antal, Jr

The results of a 30 year U.S.-Hungarian research cooperation are surveyed. The head of the cooperating U.S. laboratory, Michael J. Antal, Jr., died on Oct 21, 2015. He was a leading person in biomass research. The collaboration started with pyrolysis studies. In this phase of the work, the aim was to clarify the factors that enhance the formation of the valuable volatile products ("sirups"). For this purpose, the kinetics and mechanism of the biomass pyrolysis were studied with a particular emphasis on the behavior of the cellulose component. Later, the interest of the cooperation gradually shifted to the solid products of the pyrolysis: chars, charcoals, and biocarbons. Hence, the formation, properties, and uses of these products were studied. The present paper illustrates the 3 decades of the common work by selected results. Such examples are shown that (i) are thought to be useful in the planning of future studies on pyrolysis and combustion of biomass materials (ii) and/or may help in the interpretation of the existing literature data. The presented results include the choice of the proper experimental conditions, the evaluation of experiments with linear and nonlinear temperature programs by the method of least squares, the assessment of complex mechanism schemes by a suitable series of experiments, and the kinetic modeling of the combustion of inhomogeneous chars in the kinetic regime

The role of onium salts in the oxidation of hydrocarbons by O2 catalysed by cationic phase-transfer reagents

Experimental and theoretical evidence is presented that cationic phase-transfer catalysts promote the homolytic decomposition of hydroperoxide initiators into radicals, this being a fundamental step in the catalysis of the oxidation of hydrocarbons by O-2. Such decomposition of the model substance tert-butyl hydroperoxide (t-BHP) results in O-2, tert-butanol (90-95%) di-tert-butyl peroxide (5-10%) and traces of CO2. The stoichiometric ratio Delta[t-BHP]/Delta O-2 was found to have a value of 2, independently of the nature of the counteranion present. It is assumed that the interaction between hydroperoxide and onium cation is mainly electrostatic in nature and that its effectivity depends on the positive charge density on the onium cation, which is controlled by the nature and dimensions of the counteranion. The role of water in the decomposition of t-BHP is also elucidated