Report 2003: Department of Intercultural Communication and Management (IKL)
Department of Intercultural Communication and Management: Research Report 2003
The IKL researchers are mainly concerned with the challenges of globalisation to enterprises and communities. In a substantial number of projects they analyse problems of enterprises and communities in very different perspectives of which a common characteristic is that they incorporate communication and culture in their analyses. The current subjects include conditions of enterprises and enterprise systems, relations between enterprises and consumers, between enterprises and the public, media and government, and the conditions of and relations between various public and private organisations. IKL was established as a department in 1993 and is responsible for SPRØK – the BSc program in International Business Administration and Modern Languages (BAint and CMI) and the Asian Studies Program. In addition, the Department provides courses, course coordination and programme management for a number of study programmes of the CBS Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, including BSc in Business Administration and Organisational Communication and MBA and a couple of course elements for the Faculty of Languages, Communication and Cultural Studies.
Highlights 2003
IKL and the Center for Corporate Values and Responsibility, CVR, held four conferences on enterprises, ethics and social responsibility: a seminar on value management attracting 200 participants from the business community, public organisations and research. A workshop on management, corporate responsibility and ethics based on the American business scandals where researchers from CBS had discussions with three American professors. In September, CVR held a big international 3-day conference, European Academy of Business in Society 2nd Annual Colloquium, with 400 participants. Most leading researchers in the field of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) participated and by means of corporate sponsorships we also succeeded in getting Michael Porter from Harvard Business School to make a presentation at the conference. Mette Morsing was in charge of both arrangements.
Finally, a 2-day workshop was held in November discussing CSR in relation to the Third World. It was organised by two PhD students, Michael Elgård Nielsen and Peter Lund-Thomsen, and gathered an international group of leading researchers in the field.
Finally, a 2-day workshop was held in November discussing CSR in relation to the Third World. It was organised by two PhD students, Michael Elgård Nielsen and Peter Lund-Thomsen, and gathered an international group of leading researchers in the field.
Department researchers published 3 significant books in 2003: Professor Anne-Marie Søderberg in collaboration with Ero Vaara published the book, Merging across borders - people, cultures and politics – (CBS Press), which is based a long-term study by a major group of researchers of one of the largest mergers in the Nordic countries, the Nordea merger. Together with Timothy de Waal Malefyt, Brian Moeran wrote and published the book, Advertising Cultures (Berg), an anthropological study of businesses in the advertising industry. Morten Ougaard wrote and published Political Globalization: State, Power and Social Forces (Palgrave), a monograph on government development during globalisation.
As part of CBS’s efforts to develop and sustain an international research level, in 2000 IKL was subjected to an international research evaluation performed by professors Barbara Czarniawska from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and Stanley Deetz from the University of Colorado, USA. Their report emphasised, among other things, that Department research uses a very wide selection of approaches and theories in a unique way. They recommended further development of this multi-disciplinary profile and further efforts to communicate it to the public.
IKL undertook a commitment to present its results in 2003. Mette Morsing was awarded CBS’s internal communication prize for the two CVR conferences. Afterwards Anne-Marie Søderberg received the prize for her outstanding efforts to present the BSc programme in Business Administration and Organisational Communication to the public. At the end of the year, the Department started to plan a number of presentation arrangements in connection with the 10th anniversary of the Department (and the 20th anniversary of Sprøk) next year.
IKL is concerned with developing teaching programmes and methods that meet the requirements of both society and the business community and the students’ expectations. In 2003, another structural reform was implemented with regard to the Sprøk programme for the purpose of increased integration between the different course elements. The BSc programme in Business Administration and Organisational Communication launched in 2002 doubled its enrolment and continued the development of the second and third year of study. The Japan Studies Program, reorganised in 2002 to be taught in English, was changed to the Asian Studies Program in 2003 and now offers English-language Bachelor's and Master’s degrees with either Japanese or Chinese as the linguistic and cultural element.
Academic profile
In 2003, IKL took the consequence of its growing size and started a process of organising research in a number of ”flexible clusters” to inspire and strengthen future research development. At the same time the descriptions of the cluster profiles give an indication of the Department’s broad spectrum and diversity. The only thing uniting them is that they all address internationalisation in some way, i.e. they study cross-border activities or compare national systems and organisations, and study cultural differences or global networks. Almost all of them address enterprises and/or other organisations. Most projects and researchers apply a cultural and/or communication perspective as a more or less important part of their research.
Clusters end-2003:
- ”Cultures, Organizations and Management”. This cluster is concerned with the relation between cultures and management in private enterprises and public institutions.
- ”I-BOCS: Intercultural Brands, Organizations and Consumer Studies”. This cluster includes research in 1) brands and their importance to organisations, consumers and communities; and 2) marketing management and consumer research.
- ”Corporate Social Responsibility”. A group of researchers and projects concerned with ethical, social or environmental aspects of running a company.
- ”Business, Media and Communication”. Some researchers work with the production of forms of media and the corporate practices determining the choice of media concepts. Others work with media representations and their social, cultural and political implications.
- ”Globalization, Business and Development”. The group of Department development researchers who are concerned with globalisation processes and dynamics and especially their impact on governments, industries, enterprises and other players in the Third World.
- ”Governance, Globalization and Cultures”. Projects and researchers studying control and management of social and cultural processes in the intersection between the public and private and the local and global domains.
Research strategy
IKL research has three centres of gravity: emphasis on enterprises and organisations, the international perspective and the cultural and communication analysis perspectives. The Department aims at combining elements of those in ways that will make us a leading research environment in our broad field. This is achieved by recruiting the best researchers we can get, by inspiring each other to address contemporary and future-oriented issues and by carefully optimising our use of resources and enhancing the quality of our research.
Only in exceptional cases is it possible to implement research projects of any significance without external funding. Therefore, fundraising is an important element in any research strategy in addition to the increased emphasis on presenting our research results. Thus, fundraising and presentation are also part of IKL’s research strategy.
Research results
Our published research results can be found in the CBS library Research@CBS
database. The quantitative development is illustrated by the following graph:
Figure 1
Most publication categories show a slight, negative trend compared with the excellent level and composition of 2002. ”Other publications” show some growth in presentation activities or in the awareness of their academic relevance.
Research relations to practice
The CVR Center has a close working relationship with partners in the business community in Denmark and abroad, especially concerning arrangements such as the conferences in 2003. At present the Center is developing research projects on social responsibility and partnership, etc., in cooperation with enterprises in its network.
Two projects are jointly funded by the LOK allocation of the Research Councils and enterprises: International Aspects of Corporate Branding and Communication, knowledge sharing and intercultural competence - Danish companies in Japan. They both involve cooperation with a number of enterprises on research implementation and use. The same applied to the project concerning the great Nordic bank merger, which was completed in 2003, and the Business in Development project, which will be completed in 2004.
The below graph shows our consumption of research funds (excluding new funds, but including current spending of allocated funds) broken down by sources. It demonstrates a steadily upward trend in our ability to acquire external funding from Research Councils and other sources. Most funds were spent on PhD studentships of which the Department currently has four with external funding. The rest has mainly gone to research costs, release for teaching, etc. A new, relatively large funding allocation for a ENRECA project managed by Henrik Schaumburg-Müller, IKL, and Olav Jull Sørensen, Aalborg University, will supply IKL with new activities and funding allocations from 2004.
Figure 2
Last updated by Webmaster 19/11/2004
