Implizites interkulturelles Wissen in multinationalen Organisationen

Überlegungen zu Forschung und Training

Abstract

This article argues that employees of international organisations who engage in frequent and intensive intercultural communication or work in intercultural environments tend to possess implicit intercultural knowledge. Intercultural training for this target group is only meaningful or successful if it is based on the implicit intercultural knowledge of the participants and not, as is often the case, on general intercultural knowledge brought in from outside. For this, however, it is necessary to find out what intercultural knowledge pool the actors refer to. An ethnographic, collaborative research method is a suitable way to do this. Working together with the actors, the implicit intercultural knowledge needs to be described, transformed into explicit knowledge and made accessible to them. I will discuss how the implicit intercultural knowledge co-constructed in the organisation can be captured, explicated and communicated based on my practical experience with research and intercultural training in multinational companies – especially in the context of Japanese-American-German cooperation.