Department of Intercultural Communication and Management (ICM)
Department of Intercultural Communication and Management (ICM)
The ICM 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 from very different perspectives, all relating to international and/or intercultural relations, of which a common characteristic is that they incorporate communication and culture in their analyses. The current topics 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.
ICM was established as a department in 1993 and is responsible for the BSc. programme in Business, Language and Culture (BLC) (BAint and CMI) and the Asian Studies Programme. In addition, the Department provides teachers, course coordination and programme management for a number of study programmes of the CBS Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, CBS Executive and the Faculty of Languages, Communication and Cultural Studies.
Highlights of 2004
The most important Department events in 2004 were related to the joint celebration of the Department's 10th anniversary and the 20th anniversary of the BLC programme. The Department's research was presented to changing groups of researchers, business people and students at various academic events, among them a PhD course given by honorary doctor Joanne Martin from Stanford University; a seminar on the globalisation of enterprises; a birthday reception and party attended by many alumni of the programme; a seminar on media power in the new world order held in connection with the general CBS alumni day; a conference on Berlin and Copenhagen as regional capitals; and a panel debate on Danish enterprises in Japan. The number of events will be rounded off in 2005 by a presentation and discussion of a research project on foreign managers in Denmark. On the occasion of the anniversary, the Department published a book entitled From the Many Worlds – Intercultural Themes on Business and Society (ICM, Sven Bislev, editor) presenting the research areas and results of the Department.
Several of the anniversary functions were part of ICM's strategy to develop its relations to the business community. Both BLC alumni employed in the business community and practicians with other backgrounds were among the audience and acted as presenters. The new centre entitled Imagine .. Creative Industries Research headed by Brian D. Moeran, which was opened in 2004, aims to interact with the Danish and international business communities as well as researchers in the areas of design, creativity and experience industry.
Research at ICM emphasises Internationalisation – as well as various aspects of and perspectives on globalisation. A couple of important publications are associated with this area: Morten Ougaard wrote and published a book entitled Political globalisation – state, power and social forces (Palgrave Macmillan, New York), reviewing the theories of international political economics in the light of globalisation. Several ICM researchers co-wrote and Maribel Blasco co-edited Intercultural Alternatives – Critical Perspectives on Intercultural Encounters in Theory and Practice (Blasco and Gustafsson, editors, CBS Press), which is also a fine example of research collaboration between the two faculties. Finally, Jette Schram and co-writers Peter Lawrence and Karl Henrik Sivesind published a monograph entitled Management in Scandinavia on Edward Elgar's list. As a special aspect of internationalisation the book entitled The Expressive Organization, originally published in 2000 by Majken Schultz with M. J. Hatch and M. H. Larsen, was translated into Arabic and published in 2004 (Oxford University Press).
In conformity with 2003, Workshop 2 on CSR in relation to the Third World, which was sponsored by the Center for Corporate Values and Responsibility and organised by two PhD students, Michael Elgård Nielsen and Peter Lund-Thomsen, gathered an international group of leading researchers in the field. As a result of the workshop, a special edition of International Affairs (the Royal Institute of International Affairs, London: Blackwell Publishers) is now being published with contributions from Nielsen and Lund-Thomsen.
ICM has always been concerned with the learning university – and with the development of new teaching programmes and methods. In 2004, it was decided to develop and launch the BSc. in Business Economics and Politics (HA(pol.), the MSc. programme in Business Administration and Organizational Communication and the MBA programme in Corporate Communication and to change the BLC programme into an English language study programme.
Academic profile
ICM remains a Department of broad spectrum and diversity. The six research clusters creating a flexible research framework deal with:
- Cultures, Organisations and Management.
- Intercultural Brands, Organisations and Consumer Studies
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Business, Media and Communication
- Globalisation, Business and Development
- Governance, Globalisation and Cultures
What unites the research clusters 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. In addition, 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. This became clear, when after department evaluation in 2003 the Department entered into an interdepartmental CBS evaluation of the Corporate Communication focus area, which was started in 2004. More than half of the Department's research results had to be reported once again as part of this process, which will end in 2005. In 2004, the diversity of ICM's profile was emphasised by the opening of two new centres as mentioned above, and by the establishment of the Media Hub, an international network of media researchers headed by Lilie Chouliaraki. The connection across academic identities is illustrated by the overlapping membership of the Department's three centres, the research clusters and the Media Hub.
Research strategy
ICM research has three centres of gravity: emphasis on enterprises and organisations, the international perspective and the cultural and communication analysis perspectives. The Department is committed to 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 of any research strategy in addition to the increased emphasis on presenting our research results. Fundraising and presentation are also part of ICM's research strategy.
The Department has obtained a strong position in areas such as corporate branding, mergers & acquisitions, value management, discourse analysis, globalisation, Japanese economic culture and business and development. The area of corporate communication is a wide one, but ICM has achieved a number of results within various parts of the area – management communication, brand communication, political communication, media, ICT, market communication – and plans to expand them. The same applies to area studies as an academic field – very wide-ranging and comprehensive, but ICM has researched and published quite a lot and will continue working with sub-topics such as comparative culture, comparative institutions and business systems. The next goal is to create similar positions within global media, creative industries, governance, international political economics and corporate social responsibility.
Research results
From a quantitative point of view, most categories have been falling off compared to 2003. Despite the many fine performances supporting the CBS focus areas in an exemplary way, this development is alarming. The explanation seems to be a combination of an excessive teaching effort for several years and individual research publication cycles. This will be the paramount issue of attention in 2005. For the past three years the Department utilisation rate has been above 120%. There are strong indications that for a number of staff this excessive teaching effort did not form part of a carefully planned research and publication strategy aiming at creating a scope for concentration in teaching-free periods. At the same time a great strain has been placed on ICM's researchers for a number of years in connection with the development and introduction of new study programmes and radical restructuring of existing ones.
The quantitative development is illustrated by the following graph:
Research relations to practice
In 2004, The CVR Center made great efforts to establish a closer collaboration with partners in the Danish and international business communities, implying, and this is crucial, the allocation of external funds. The Center is currently endeavouring to develop research projects concerning social responsibility and partnership etc., in collaboration with enterprises in its network. Two projects are jointly funded by the LOK allocation of the Research Councils and enterprises: a major 3-year project entitled International Aspects of Corporate Branding, ending in 2005, and a smaller one-year project: 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 applies to the Business in Development project, which was completed in 2004.
The graph below shows our consumption of research funds (excluding new funds, but including current spending of allocated funds) broken down by sources. Most external funds were spent on PhD studentships, of which the Department currently has three with external funding. The rest has mainly gone to research costs, release for teaching etc. The ENRECA project managed by Henrik Schaumburg-Müller, ICM, and Olav Jull Sørensen, AalborgUniversity, has supplied ICM with new activities and funding allocations from 2004.
Last updated by Tine Büchler Poulsen 27/11/2008
