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Although interest in the study of popular culture on the university and college level has increased greatly since the 1960s, there has been little written to date about collection development in this field. What has been written has typically described the collection development activities in particular academic libraries instead of attempting to address the topic generally. The lack of general guidelines for collection building in this area of study is not surprising. In the first place, popular culture is a relative newcomer to the academic scene with most programs and courses instituted in the last decade. Secondly, popular culture is a broad, diverse field of study with its researchers typically scattered throughout many of the more traditional departments of the university. As a result, the demands on the library have been less focused than if they had been coming from one clearly defined academic department.

This article, which is exploratory in nature, considers the experiences of migrant students enrolled in the transnational degree program of an accredited American college located in the Czech Republic. Migrant students have considerable experience in negotiating the different national cultures of their college and of the new country in which they live. Students, participating in a Cross-culture Management course, were asked to maintain reflective journals in which they recorded their experiences of national culture difference. The purpose was to encourage consideration, reflection, and the growing internalization of cross-cultural appreciation and negotiation.

Participants were asked to maintain reflective journals during the semester, in which they identified and considered critical incidents and defining issues in their cross-cultural experiences. Journals were analyzed from an inductive phenomenological perspective with no preconceived imposition of structure, although participants had been informed that the root-metaphor of the journal should be that of “journeys”. Ten emergent themes were identified and a number of these, which seemed to impact national culture adaptation, are discussed. In an attempt to retain the authentic voice of participants, verbatim quotations are reproduced in some detail.

The emergent themes identified give insight into the range of national cultural complexities that these migrant students confronted. Sharing these issues with those who have less national culture experience might increase their understanding of the adaption process. More importantly, the journal increased reflection, prompted deeper sensemaking, and allowed participants to articulate their experiences. Making explicit their own cultural adaption problems may also be beneficial for these participants.

Cross-culture education has often taken a didactic approach that emphasized teaching and learning. The reflective journal focuses on an experiential approach to making sense of cultural experience. From a learner perspective, the use of a reflective journal stimulates reflection and contributes to resolution. From an instructor perspective, journals provide valuable insight into issues significant in a developing awareness of a national culture. Journals also provide an unrecognized insight into the personal experiences of international and transnational students that may have implications in their general learning and broader education.

The advent of Web 2.0 technologies invites educators to fundamentally rethink the systems we choose to manage our courses. Although many scholars have examined the democratizing functions of online and hybrid learning (Hall, 1999; Kibby, 2006; McCormick, 2006) and offered case studies of successful social media integration (Dunlap & Lowenthal, 2009), a need exists to theorize about how faculty and students actually envision the changing role of learning technologies, particularly the LMS and now social media, in their everyday education. Grounded in critical pedagogy and building from a brief history of the learning management system and new media learning technologies, we examine which features have been most beneficial to the shared learning experience between faculty and students. Through this discussion we provide a working model of a re-imagined learning technology platform that integrates the best tools of the LMS with the more shared, democratizing features of social media in common use among today's students and faculty. We envision a shift from that of a management system to a dynamic platform built from the ground-up to integrate traditional course technologies such as grade books and testing, with the open, collaborative nature of social media. Toward this end, the chapter includes examples of combining Wordpress, Buddypress, and Twitter into a tri-fold approach that reaches beyond the physical classroom walls to build a community of learning where students are the educators via content creation and critical analysis of cultural institutions.

Managers need to be able to understand and use cultural concepts to manage different work groups, to handle organizational change and to operate in the international marketplace. Most managers find it difficult to handle formal models of organizational culture because they lack exposure to the disciplines whose paradigms structure such models and because they lack a language and practice in discussing cultural concepts in the workplace. Presents data on a survey of young managers′ ability to apply cultural concepts. Argues that it may be more effective to teach managers about culture using an educational paradigm which focuses on experience than one focusing on the transmission of knowledge. Suggests a number of innovative approaches to teaching culture using the former approach.

Describes the Royal School of Librarianship, Denmark, the facilities offered and curricular changes, including a master′s programme leading to the qualification MLISc. Outlines a new two‐year postgraduate programme, “Culture and mediation”, a joint venture with the University of Odense. Gives details of revised educational structures in the library and information science field. Emphasizes the increasing internationalization of the school, itemizing a number of conferences held there, and defines a new course, the “Inter‐university co‐operation programme”, which will have information technology and management as the main themes.

Graduates of cross-cultural management (CCM) courses should be capable of both tackling international and cross-cultural situations and creating positive value from the diversity inherent in these situations. Such value creation is challenging because these situations are typically complex due to differences in cultural values, traditions, social practices, and institutions, such as legal rules, coupled with variation in, for example, wealth and civil rights among stakeholders. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors argue that a scientific mindfulness approach to teaching CCM can help students identify and leverage positive aspects of differences and thereby contribute to positive change in cross-cultural situations.

Scientific mindfulness combines mindfulness and scientific thinking with the explicit goal to drive positive change in the world.

The authors explain how the action principles of scientific mindfulness enable learners to build positive value from cultural diversity. The authors then describe how to enact these principles in the context of CCM education.

The professional experiences of teachers of languages and cultures, along with the learning experiences of their students, are embedded in educational contexts, which themselves are informed, and constrained, by national language policies. This study aims to explore 51 English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) secondary teachers’ perceptions of Web-based technology use to enhance students’ cultural awareness in Chile. Specifically, the study investigated teachers’ use of Web-based resources for cultural awareness, culture content and technology-based tasks, as well as perceived challenges in implementing technology-enhanced language and culture learning.

The study adopted a mixed-method research design combining online questionnaires and interviews as data collection tools. Results were analyzed through the use of descriptive statistics and content analysis.

The teachers in this study emphasized reflection in their classrooms but did not take a critical approach. Their approach to culture was limited to a “country-specific” view, and technology-enhanced activities accentuated differences rather than promoting meaningful intercultural exchange. Challenges to the successful implementation of technology-enhanced language and culture learning included a somewhat out-of-date theoretical approach to intercultural learning in the national curriculum, a nationwide approach to professional development that lacks a focus on critical reflection and inadequate support for effective use of technologies in schools.

The study highlights the importance of periodically revising a country’s EFL language policies, communication methods, support mechanisms and implementation factors to ensure classroom integration of language, culture and technology education.

This paper explores the tension between macro-level national policy and teachers’ perspectives on their classroom practice, including the contextualized limitations of implementing national policy at the micro level.

The article seeks to show that companies should and can build winning cultures.

A total of 365 companies in Europe, Asia and North America were surveyed for links between financial out‐performance and winning culture. Three dozen high performers were analyzed in in‐depth case studies; one from each region that has transformed its culture is presented.

Findings were that building a winning culture – which fewer than 10 per cent of companies succeed in doing, despite broad recognition that culture provides the greatest source of competitive advantage – requires five key steps: setting expectations, aligning leaders, accountability for delivery, organization‐wide consistency and communication/celebration. Winning cultures tend to display six key behaviours: high aspirations, external focus (customers and competitors), attitude of ownership, bias to action, valuing collaboration and striving for the exceptional. These can be measured through the daily performance of the company's front line.

By definition, out‐performance is rare, but further insights into winning cultures may result when the survey of companies is extended to new regions, such as Latin America.

Practical implications are the winning culture key behaviours, key building steps and performance measurement identified. The article also shows that challenges and even crisis can help, rather than hinder, the transformation of a corporate culture into a winning one.

The article will help focus company leaders on the opportunity and challenges in building a winning culture. It identifies the key behaviours of winning cultures, key steps in building them, and how to measure their progress. It should be of value to all management levels from the chief executive to front‐line staff.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ongoing misapplication of the Hofstede and GLOBE national culture dimensions at the individual level of analysis in both research and teaching. It provides suggestions as to how these national level constructs might be used in analysis and the challenges such use presents to researchers.

The methodology used by Hofstede and GLOBE in their calculation of national culture dimensions is discussed together with the implications.

The consequences of the national nature of the Hofstede and GLOBE national culture dimensions are that the dimensions do not exist at the individual level. The paper explains why, in spite of this, the dimensions continue to be misapplied to individuals.

There are important implications for practitioners. The cultural assumptions often made about individuals in different countries based on the Hofstede and GLOBE dimension scores are invalid. Practitioners should not use national culture dimension scores in individual‐level culture related decision making.

The paper is the first that is focused on the invalid projection of national culture dimensions onto individuals and which highlights the origins and the ongoing nature of this problem.