MANAGING INTERCULTURAL RESEARCH PROJECTS: THE INTERWEAVING OF LANGUAGE, CONTENT, AND METHODOLOGY

The conduct of intercultural, multi-lingual large-scale research projects (e.g. EU grants) puts particular demands on their process management and decision-making. Despite the big variety of project types, in all cases, project managers need to direct their attention to cultural and language issues consistently as it can be assumed that they relate to all phases of a research process and affect content, methodology as well as project management. The authors are involved in two intercultural business research projects on the European and international level; taking on different roles as partners or project leaders. The projects´ topics range from “career concepts in different cultures” via “diversity in organizations” to “European consumption behavior”. Despite the cases´ heterogeneity, the authors´ experiences unanimously indicate that language does not only impact on the decision about the data collection method (e.g. qualitative interviews versus questionnaire) and the related quality of the collected data, but also touches on the selection of useful literature (national and international), the definition of the research question, the discussion of methodological issues; the collection, the analysis, and the interpretation of data as well as patterns of documentation and reporting.