A major purpose of courses in intercultural communication is often to improve students' ability to perform well in situations with the potential to be both highly enlightening and highly difficult--in multicultural teams. This article reports the results of exercises in which members of a dysfunctional multicultural class were assigned to teams…

Some have called plagiarism literary theft. Plagiarizing is akin to stealing the intellect of another person. At times, plagiarism occurs because of ignorance, sloppy authorship, or lack of knowledge about proper sourcing. Sometimes, it is done purposefully. Experts have suggested that the concept of intellectual ownership is limited to Western…

New employees, including college students, often experience expectation-reality gaps about work, making the assimilation process more difficult for all. This qualitative study explores the role of the internship in narrowing the work expectation-reality gap. This article addresses two research questions: (a) What do students learn about work…

In this analysis the authors introduce three memos announcing layoffs in Chinese companies. The three memos, translated from Chinese, are from: (1) Hewlett Packard China, an American company doing business in China; (2) UT Starcom, founded in China; and (3) Rizhao Steel, one of China's largest steel manufacturers. Comparing the Chinese and…

In this article, the author describes his experiences and the lessons he learned from a 2-week stint teaching negotiation in Lithuania. He learned that for anyone older than about 25, and that constituted most of the class, being part of the Soviet Union for more than half a century seems to have left deep wounds that have not yet healed.…

There are many factors that influence dress code decision making in formal and informal business arenas. In South Africa, with its colonial and apartheid history followed by an exuberant resurgence of Africanism, factors such as diversity of race, ethnicity, religion, and culture play a critical role in lifestyle and worldview. These many and…

A beverage, as well as the way it is served, can be a window into the soul of a culture. For the author and her husband, Turkish tea helped them understand and enjoy the culture of Turkey. They learned that the broad nuances of culture can be as instructive as a classroom experience. The tea story begins in Chicago in the spring of 2005 when the…

In spring of 2006, the author spent a semester teaching undergraduate and graduate business and managerial communication courses at Chuo University, with intent to challenge his US-centric habits of mind about interaction and communication by immersing himself in a cultural and work environment fundamentally different from his own. Although…

The author describes a sense of "teaching abroad" in her hometown in a communication graduate class that included five exchange students from Germany; an exchange student from Norway of Indian descent; two students from India who had come to New Zealand for graduate work; another from Malaita, Solomon Islands; a South African-born New…

Prior to a teaching assignment at Miyazaki Women's Junior College in 1993, the author accepted a 6-month contract to teach in the women's high school of the Miyazaki Educational Institute. In this article, she shares her first-day experience with a class of fifteen Miyazaki Girls' High School freshmen on their first lesson, a question-and-answer…

Kosovo is a region in the heart of the Balkans with a predominantly ethnic Albanian population. In the area of higher education, Kosovo has seen a proliferation of private universities that follow an American education model; even English as the language of instruction is commonplace (not least because of a high number of foreign instructors).…

The Alan Shawn Feinstein Graduate School at Johnson & Wales University (J&W), located in Providence, Rhode Island, and the Berufsakademie, University of Cooperative Education (BA), located in Ravensburg, Germany, have established an exchange program in which faculty from each institution travel abroad for brief guest teaching visits. In April…

The author and her colleagues were given an opportunity to teach their master's program in professional communication overseas in Prague. Initial concerns regarding logistics, cultural differences, and other faculty issues and fears were offset by the benefits of an international education program for students and for professional and personal…

Presents a personal view of the Association for Business Communication European Convention in Helsinki. Discusses the author's reflections on some of the five plenary talks and six parallel tracks. Describes her experience in the track on International and Intercultural Aspects of Business Communication. Comments on a paper in the fifth track: new…

Students who are nonnative speakers of English are both a major component of today's diverse student population and also a special constituency in business communication classrooms. They may be foreign students or resident students who have primary languages other than English. Business communication instructors face major challenges conducting…