Apologies for Cross-Posting
Intercultural Engineering
Special Issue of Interculture Journal, October 2012
Guest editors:
Prof Jasmin Mahadevan, Pforzheim University, Germany, jasmin.mahadevan@pforzheim-university.de
Prof Claude-Hélène Mayer, University of Applied Sciences Hamburg, Germany, claudemayer@gmx.net
Special Issue outline
In a globalized and highly technological world, cultural interaction becomes increasingly more complex. Hence, in-depth studies of cross-cultural and intercultural corporate fields are on the rise. However, most of this research focuses on managerial contexts. The world of technical experts working together across organizational boundaries and national cultures – which we understand as "intercultural engineering" – remains comparably underexplored. This special issue intends to investigate into this field.
With intercultural engineering, we mean any intercultural social or corporate field that is characterized by a high importance of technology and specialized knowledge of those working with this technology. We name those working in such fields engineers. We understand the term engineers broadly, as including any type of technical expert, be it with regard to computer science, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering or other related fields. With intercultural, we mean any field that crosses imagined borders between social identities and cultures, be it on societal-cultural, organizational-cultural or professional-cultural level.
So far, it has been a point of much debate whether engineering is culture-free or culture-bound. On the one hand, engineering can be understood as being based on universal principles of science. The social mediation of technology is of paramount importance for technical communities of practice (Orr, 1997). Kunda (1992) has highlighted the antagonism between engineering and management cultures in engineering companies. Mahadevan (2009) has argued that the divide between professional cultures such as engineering and management is more relevant to intercultural engineering than national cultural difference within global engineering. However, issues of power and hierarchy have been found to impact global engineering culture (Mahadevan, 2011a). On the other hand, societal cultural differences are to be found in technical fields, yet, they might be bridged through collective sense-making and intercultural creation (Mahadevan, 2011b).
With this special issue, we intend to investigate into how different cultural levels influence intercultural engineering and how culture-specific or culture-free intercultural engineering actually is. We are interested in empirical and conceptual research on the nature and specific fields of intercultural engineering. We are looking for research that acknowledges the complexities of intercultural engineering across more than one level or in more than one context. Therefore, we welcome papers from all disciplines and all methodological perspectives; both empirical and theoretical papers are welcome.
Questions may include (but are not limited to):
· How can intercultural engineering be studied and conceptualized? Which methods and theoretical perspectives are suitable for intercultural engineering? How to incorporate the study of intercultural engineering into management studies?
· Does the researcher have to be an engineer to study intercultural engineering? What are the requirements with regard to researcher identity in order to study intercultural engineering?
· What are the contexts of intercultural engineering in a globalized and highly technological world? What are the different types of intercultural engineering and how are they related to each other and to cross-cultural and intercultural managerial fields?
Timeframe and submission:
Please submit your full (anonymized) paper and additional author information until March 15, 2012, via e-mail to franziska.mueller@pforzheim-university.de, indicating the special issue you are submitting to in your e-mail header.
Papers will be subjected to blind peer review and should be prepared accordingly. Authors are encouraged to discuss their paper ideas with the guest editors, jasmin.mahadevan@pforzheim-university.de. Author's guidelines can be found at: http://www.interculture-journal.com/
The special issue is scheduled for publication in October 2012.
Depending on the quality and focus of the submission, we also plan to publish an edited book on Intercultural Engineering. We are currently negotiating with various publishing houses.
References
Kunda, G. (1992): Engineering culture – control and commitment in a high-tech company. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Mahadevan, J. (2009): Redefining organizational cultures: An interpretative anthropological approach to corporate narratives. Forum Qualitative Social Research, 10/1, Art. 44.
Mahadevan, J. (2011a): Power / knowledge in postcolonial settings. The case of IT Bangalore. Interculture Journal 13, pp. 61-81.
Mahadevan, J. / Weißert, S. / Müller, F. (2011b): From given cross-cultural difference to a new interculture: A Sino-German Example. Interculture Journal 14, pp. 55-76.
Orr, J. (1997): Talking about machines – an ethnography of a modern job. Ithaka, NY: Cornell University Press.