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The purpose of the paper is to investigate how cross-cultural elements such as cultural difference and stereotype are integrated into collaborative modes and actions and to explore their corresponding effectiveness.

The sample of the quantitative content analysis is drawn from the posts with the topic of China on Quora. A collaborative case, where two users have a question-and-answer interaction, is taken as the unit of analysis. The effectiveness of collaboration is operationalized as the extent to which a collaboratively produced answer is visited and favorably reviewed, using the feedback index (the number of upvotes*1,000/views). One of the sampled collaborative cases is further analyzed qualitatively to see how cultural differences, stereotypes and other factors are incorporated into users' interaction.

This content analysis reveals nine modes of collaborative production of knowledge on Quora: initial questioning, pointed answering, raising doubts, responding to others, agreeing with others, correcting mistakes, enriching content, further questioning and extending issues. Diversity of the cross-cultural acts of collaborative production, particularly two of often-used collaborative actions, correcting stereotypes and supplementing cultural differences, helps to enhance overall collaborative effectiveness.

This paper offers new perspectives and ideas for strategies to change socially problematic stereotypes, e.g. to correct stereotypes where necessary and use more convincing resources such as reliable images as collaborative actions to bridge cultural differences. It also calls on social Q&A website developers to create more international users-friendly design by providing various channels for users with diverse cultural backgrounds to interact with each other.

This study is one of the first to investigate online collaborative knowledge production within a broader cross-cultural context. Specifically, cultural factors and cross-cultural collaborative actions have been innovatively integrated into this research, enriching the dimensions that can be used for collaboration classification. It is helpful for users from different countries to actively adopting different strategies to overcome cultural differences, preconceptions and other negative factors that are not conducive to communication and knowledge acquisition.

The rapidly evolving competitive global marketplace with its culturally diverse customers has increased demand for multinational corporations (MNCs) to accelerate global innovation. Leaders increasingly face the challenge of facilitating global and local team knowledge in order to improve strategic planning and execution for new products and services worldwide. An unresolved question in this regard is how global leaders can facilitate multicultural team collaboration aimed at improving performance of global innovation initiatives? Addressing this research question, a qualitative study was conducted focusing on the role of global leadership in facilitating multicultural collaboration and global innovation performance. The study included interviews with 105 global project leaders at 36 MNCs with headquarters based in Europe, Asia, and North America. These exploratory findings demonstrate how global leadership behaviors can facilitate cross-cultural collaboration for international project performance.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate knowledge sharing of Chinese and German scientists collaborating in a cross‐cultural nanotechnology R&D project. Particularly, the authors analyze cultural differences that might indirectly influence the scientists' intention to share knowledge.

Quantitative data were gathered from professors and PhDs working in academic Chinese‐German nanotechnology collaboration regarding influencing factors of their intention to share knowledge like subjective norms, anticipated extrinsic rewards and image. Moderated regression analysis was used to identify how nationality influences the relationships between independent variables and the intention to share knowledge.

The findings show that the analyzed variables generally constitute important influencing factors of the intention to share knowledge. However, moderation analysis suggests that the proposed differences between the Eastern and Western cultures do not significantly affect influencing factors of the intention to share knowledge.

The focus of this study is on an academic environment, limiting the generalizability of the results. It promises to be a worthwhile endeavor to investigate possible influencing factors and effects of organizational culture in cross‐cultural collaboration projects more thoroughly in the future, further deepening our understanding of knowledge sharing in collaborative R&D projects.

Cultural differences between Chinese and German researchers might have diminished over the past decades. Both in China and Germany, academic scientists can be expected to largely share the same values, beliefs, assumptions and expectations with regard to their work.

The study at hand is the first analysis of an academic Chinese‐German nanotechnology collaboration.

As industries are increasingly globalized, our students’ future workplaces require facility with cross-cultural collaboration, yet curricula often remain situated within the home culture. This chapter presents a qualitative case study on a collaborative project between students in London, Hong Kong, and Singapore. An overview of the process is given drawing on the experiences of the teachers and students involved, informing a discussion around the issues inherent in the internationalization of the curriculum. Tutors created a shared private Facebook group to connect London College of Fashion students with students at City University Hong Kong and LASALLE College of the Arts Singapore. Students worked on separate but aligned briefs that mirror contemporary working patterns and allowed co-creation of educational experiences beyond the geographic and time constraints of working internationally, specifically addressing issues around global and local communications. The Facebook platform was used separately and collaboratively to support students’ learning and the digitally mediated collaboration allowed for flexibility in when and how education took place, providing a third space for co-creation of learning: a global classroom.

The rising popularity of social software poses challenges to the design and evaluation of pedagogically sound cross‐cultural online collaborative learning environments (OCLEs). In the literature of computer‐mediated communications, there exist only a limited number of related empirical studies, indicating that it is still an emergent research area. The purpose of this paper is to describe an OCLE – iCamp Space – which addresses the challenges by integrating three pedagogical concepts – cross‐cultural collaboration, self‐directed learning (SDL) and social networking – with the aim to advance participants' competencies and by mixed‐method approaches to evaluating the complex situations.

A validation field study involving four European countries was conducted. Groups of students co‐created a questionnaire, which was assessed to provide an indicator of task performance. Multi‐source (surveys, blogs, emails, diaries, chats, videoconference and interviews) and multi‐perspective data (facilitators, students and researchers) were studied with social network analysis, content analysis and conversation analysis.

Motivation of learners as well as facilitators is the critical success factor for an OCLE; voluntary involvement is recommended. Participants should be provided with basic training on the use of selected social software tools. Other critical success factors include task selection that contributes to participants' sense of ownership and moderately structured setting that offers some guidance whilst leaving room for the development of SDL competence.

The paper enhances a limited, albeit increasing, number of empirical studies deploying social software for educational purposes. It thus contributes to a body of applied knowledge that enables a coherent understanding of this specific research topic to be drawn.

Purpose – Recent theoretical analyses examining the intersection of race, class, and gender have resulted in exciting new epistemological frameworks in the social sciences. However, feminist researchers have yet to articulate concrete strategies for capturing this intersectionality empirically.

Methodology – On the basis of ethnographic research conducted in Cuba, we build on previous feminist epistemological insights and begin to develop methodological strategies that can be used to capture the intersection of race, class, and gender in the context of cross-cultural research.

Findings – The major contribution of our work is the articulation of theoretical insights into methodological guidelines that can guide research both inside the United States, the site where much of this theorizing takes place, and beyond our borders.

Research limitations – The primary limitation of our research is the lack of collaboration with Cuban researchers. Given the political rancor between the United States and Cuba, and limitations on their academic freedom, is difficult to work with Cuban scholars without compromising their security. Cuban scholars who are critical of the state are fearful of potential reprisals.

Originality – Nonetheless, our work provides a unique analysis of how to capture the intersection of race, class, and gender empirically from a cross-cultural perspective.

The purpose of the current study is to investigate the effects of individual-level (espoused) cultural values (collectivism, power distance, uncertainty avoidance, masculinity and long-term orientation) on the individuals' acceptability of inappropriate social network behaviors.

The study employs survey data collected from 482 social network users (261 in the United States and 221 from India).

Results show that individuals with high power distance, masculinity and long-term oriented cultural values are more accepting of inappropriate social network behaviors of others, while those with strong uncertainty avoidance cultural values have high degree of social network behavior inappropriateness, which is defined as the extent to which behaviors of social network users are considered unacceptable by others.

The paper highlights the need for more academic research on the intersection of culture and social network behaviors. This study emphasizes the need for adopting an interdisciplinary approach to understand individuals' social network behaviors.

The paper offers recommendations to global organizations pertaining to the need for creating social network policies in such a way that encourages their global workforce to openly, yet respectfully, share their ideas using social networks.

Using an interdisciplinary approach, the present study extends our understanding of a recently proposed social network behavioral inappropriateness construct and explains how differences in cultural values may lead to differences in individuals' social network behaviors.

With the globalization of trade and advancement of technology, diverse task groups are required to work together. With new models of teamwork, conflict will accelerate from a variety of sources as multicultural groups emerge. This article explores this problem and challenge by presenting contemporary research. The process model of conflict and the structural model will be examined as well as the cognitive and interactional theories of conflict to consider congruence with organization demands. Conflict in a multicultural task groups is discussed considering the six dimensions of culture as well as trust (mistrust) and communications (miscommunications). Diversity as an antecedent condition of perception of conflict is presented utilizing Hofstede’s classical research framework. A systematic process to diagnose as well as implement these strategies conclude this article in conjunction with the development of key behavioral skills and competencies to assess managers to deal with conflict, culture and change.