<p>In times of rapid growth, both in terms of economic development and globalization, an increasing number of firms extend their businesses abroad. A subsequent challenge of this development is the managerial implications of cross-cultural management. This study employs a qualitative approach in a single case study of Swedish company and its subsidiary in China. After reviewing the previous studies, the authors summarize the differences of management style, staff behaviors and communication system in different culture context and find the barriers of cross cultural communication in multinational firms. The findings of this study indicate that the barriers of communication come from the national culture’s influence on the work place and behaviors of people with different identity. Moreover, culture also influences people’s way of thinking and behaving and result in different understandings toward vision and purposes of firms.</p>

Cultural competence is a topic that concerns social scientists and medical anthropologists who pay attention to demographic changes and health disparities. This study demonstrates practical approaches to developing cultural competence in medical education by using factors from the social environment to develop protocols for action. With current concerns in domestic and global health care, it is evident that health care organizations struggle to deliver culturally appropriate services. Additionally, educational institutions also struggle to evaluate culturally applied medical practices and competencies. Unlike medical competence, cultural competence is seldom evaluated, and as a result, a gap exists in health care delivery. The purpose of this research is to examine the changes in self-assessment of physician assistant (PA) medical students and graduates, as indications of changes in their medical practice and attitudes. Key objectives explore how PA medical students self-assess their own cultural competence; what factors impact their evaluation, and if change indicates cultural competence. The methodology consisted of a qualitative approach designed to conduct focus group discussions, in-depth interviews, and field work, while results of existing quantitative data was used to inform the study. Triangulation methods substantiated the findings along with environmental and data analysis to provide rigor to this investigation. Participants were students and graduates from a Physician Assistant Studies Program in Oregon. Major findings showed changes in participants' cultural competence self assessment due to a change in self-awareness, exposure and experiences with diverse underserved populations, in domestic and international encounters with the real world. In conclusion, change in self assessment had actually occurred, but the change in the quantitative results really portrayed a level of development on a cultural competency continuum, but not cultural competence itself. It followed from these findings that using components which influenced change along with external and internal environmental factors, provided a basis for a model to establish procedures for action. This strategic model, the praxis of cultural competence, takes critical elements or protocols to move medical students from theory to practice. From the results of this study we can see evidence of closing the gap between the theory of cultural competence and culturally competent practices. / Graduation date: 2005

Thesis (M.A. (Industrial Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2007.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Title from first page of PDF file. Includes bibliographical references (p. 166-172).

My dissertation, The Question of Cross-Cultural Understanding in the Transcultural Travel Narratives about Post-1949 China, aims to intervene in the genre of travel writing and its critical scholarship by studying a flourishing but under-explored archive. Travel literature about (post-) Communist China is abundant and has been proliferating since 1979 when China began to implement its open-door policy. Yet its scholarship is surprisingly scanty. Meanwhile, in the field of travel literature studies, many critics read the genre as one that articulates Western imperialism, an archive where peoples and cultures are defined within conveniently maintained boundaries between home and abroad, West and non-West. Othersin the field of literary and cultural studies as well as other disciplineshave started to question the binary power relationship. However, some of this work may well reinforce the binary opposition, seeking only evidences of the travellers powerlessness in relation to the native; and some, conceiving travel only on a geographical plane, seems unable to transcend the dichotomy of home and abroad, East and West at a theoretical level. My project is committed to further interrogating the binarism constructed by the genre of travel and its scholarship. My intervention is not to argue who gets an upper hand in a hierarchical relationship, but to challenge the stability of the hierarchy by foregrounding the contingency and complexity of cross-cultural relationships. My dissertation engages with the key issue of cross-cultural understanding and explicates various modalities of the travellers interpretation of otherness. By reading Canadian journalist Jan Wong, geophysicist Jock Tuzo Wilson, US Peace Corps volunteer Peter Hessler, American anthropologist Hill Gates, and humanist geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, I examine the ways in which the Western traveller negotiates and interprets foreignness, and probe the consequences of transcultural interactions. The overall argument of my dissertationin dialogue with other scholarship in the fieldis that travel not only (re)produces cultural differences but also paradoxically engenders a cosmopolitan potential that recognizes but transcends them. / English

Intercultural theatre is a highly contested form of theatre. Critical discussions over its position as a revitalizing force or a colonial instrument have raged on for almost thirty years. An investigation into two theatre directors who have often been in the spotlight concerning these critical discussions, French theatre director, Ariane Mnouchkine, and Japanese cult icon, Shji Terayama, will illuminate the possibility of moving beyond such oppositions. Both have employed Asian theatre techniques and aesthetics, specifically Japanese, to produce highly theatrical performance events which actively engage their spectators. However, their methods vary from elegant integration to confrontational provocation. An extensive exploration into both artists prolific theatre, and the established theories concerning the process of creating intercultural theatre postulated by a range of theorists including, Patrice Pavis, Rustom Bharucha, Jacqueline Lo and Helen Gilbert, will reveal a fresh look at interculturalism where cross-cultural theatre exists on a continuum.

This autoethnographic dissertation recounts numerous untold stories about my journeys into the Islamic Republic of Iran as a sports consultant and women’s softball coach for Global Sports Partners (GSP). Autoethnography as defined by Ellis & Bochner (2000), is “an autobiographical genre of writing and research that displays multiple layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural…Autoethnographers vary in their emphasis on the research process (graphy), on culture (ethnos), and on self (auto)” (pp. 739-740). Autoethnographers, writing within a branch of narrative inquiry (Ellis & Bochner, 2000), believe in the power of story and that humans learn through stories lived and told (Ellis, 2004). To date, the majority of the literature devoted to Iranian women in sports has been written from a critical feminist perspective, detailing the “oppressive” societal structures associated with sport in an Islamic Republic (Hargreaves, 2000; Pfister, 2003; Pfister, 2006). While understanding the structure in which Iranian women compete is important, it does not closely reflect my experiences with the way Iranian women define their own sport participation. The purpose of this autoethnography is (1) to confront my previously held stereotypes and reveal my personal transformation, (2) to provide a counternarrative that “extends sociological understanding” (Sparkes, 2002), (3) to demonstrate the use of sport in fostering cross-cultural respect, appreciation, and dialogue, and (4) to offer new ways of knowing and telling (Ellis & Bochner, 2000; Richardson, 2000b).

This study explores automobile online brand communities in the different cultural contexts between South Korea and the United States. The core assumption is that members of automobile online brand communities in different cultures have different motivation orientations to visit their online communities and have different community experiences. Hofstede’s cultural dimensions were utilized as embedded cultural circumstances in examining relationships between different motivation orientations and community experiences. Two steps of qualitative and quantitative research methods were adopted to determine the relationships among community members’ motivation orientations, community experiences, and satisfaction. The study found that Korean automobile online brand community (KAOBC) members have stronger social, business, and communication motivations than American automobile online brand community (AAOBC) members. These community members’ motivations also influenced their community experiences. Both social network motivations and communication motivations are crucial predictors for four community experiences: Community loyalty, trust, membership identity, and word of mouth (WOM). Community members who have a stronger social networking and/or communication motivation are more likely to have a higher level of community loyalty, trust, membership identity, and WOM. Finally, community experiences were the most important indicators of the satisfaction of online community members among nationality, demographic factors, and motivation orientations.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Nevada, Reno, 2005. / "May, 2005." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 68-74). Online version available on the World Wide Web. Library also has microfilm. Ann Arbor, Mich. : ProQuest Information and Learning Company, [2005]. 1 microfilm reel ; 35 mm.

In times of rapid growth, both in terms of economic development and globalization, an increasing number of firms extend their businesses abroad. A subsequent challenge of this development is the managerial implications of cross-cultural management. This study employs a qualitative approach in a single case study of Swedish company and its subsidiary in China. After reviewing the previous studies, the authors summarize the differences of management style, staff behaviors and communication system in different culture context and find the barriers of cross cultural communication in multinational firms. The findings of this study indicate that the barriers of communication come from the national culture’s influence on the work place and behaviors of people with different identity. Moreover, culture also influences people’s way of thinking and behaving and result in different understandings toward vision and purposes of firms.