Intercultural Communication in the Advertising Industry

Organisations are under pressure to keep pace with a fast changing, highly competitive, and increasingly global business. To continue to grow and thrive in this environment, global players need to make use of the new technologies; recognise knowledge and knowledge workers as their most important asset; maximise cross-cultural and cross-border knowledge exchange to find innovative solutions for their clients; and encourage their organisational learning process. The present empirical study takes up the chance to explore how one single cross-border communications agency, StrawberryFrog (SF), herein defined as a technology-enabled, geographically dispersed organisation overlaid by a community of practice, maximises its position in the volatile international advertising industry by making use of the new information technologies, recognising intellectual capital as a key asset, treating cultural diversity as a resource, and leveraging the functionality and benefit of communities of practice to encourage their organisational learning and knowledge sharing processes across geographical borders, cultural boundaries, and time zones.

Autorentext

Christina Merl holds a PhD in translation science from Vienna University, where her work synthesised concepts from the fields of translation science, communities of practice, intercultural communication, and diversity management. Over the past 10 years, Dr. Merl has focussed on generic competencies, community facilitation, e-moderation.