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This paper aims to present the Cultural and Organisational Diversity Evaluation (CODE) model and its subsequent electronic tool, aiming to assess the cultural fit of global partners.

The study is a longitudinal study for gaining profound insights into cultural differences and for increasing understanding of human dynamics influencing the success of global relationships. A multi-method including overlapping qualitative and quantitative research methodology was used comprising interviews, observations and questionnaires.

Incorporating cultural knowledge and understanding of the specific context of the partners in global transactions was found to bring added value to global partners. The results of the pilot studies suggest that increased appreciation and awareness of cultural diversity in global transactions are important factors for achieving harmonised distributed collaboration. Such awareness, also called cultural intelligence, can be reached by using a customised assessment tool that evaluates the particularities of the partners.

The conceptual CODE model has so far only been piloted in a few cases in a longitudinal study and is not a commercial tool.

Raising awareness of cultural concerns is important for organisations that are involved in global transactions to improve communication, mutual understanding and effectivity. The CODE assesses the cultural fit of partners in a global context.

Organisations involved in global transactions would benefit from understanding the culture of partners for improved effectiveness.

The CODE model, an instrument for assessing the fit between organisational and national culture, is a novel model developed by the authors.

EU‐sponsored lifelong learning projects involve a variety of experts of diverse cultural, organisational, and professional backgrounds connected together in one project with time and money constraints. The members of the consortium, often unknown to one another from the beginning, come together for a specific period of time to accomplish certain distinctive objectives. A special knowledge‐sharing strategy is needed in order to incorporate culturally diverse values, and to overcome the technical difficulties of dispersion and limited access to informal communication. This paper aims to explore the way in which EU projects appreciate diverse cultural (national, organisational, and professional) influences on knowledge sharing in project‐based collaboration.

This paper is based on longitudinal studies, own multicultural experiences and earlier conceptually grounded arguments regarding cultural complexities to knowledge sharing in project environments. The key cultural issues highlighted here were empirically tested through a survey in the context of knowledge sharing in several EU lifelong learning projects. Finally, the paper discusses the implications of dealing with cultural issues in fostering good knowledge‐sharing practices within dispersed projects.

It is apparent that culture has a most significant influence on the knowledge‐sharing capability of time‐ and money‐restricted dispersed projects. Cultural awareness and the use of new information and communication (ICT) tools, such as web 2.0, are factors supporting knowledge sharing.

Previous studies have not examined knowledge sharing in EU projects. The paper aims to help practitioners and academics, who participate in EU projects, to recognise that the different EU project team members usually are dispersed in terms of geography, expertise and working methods and to understand that diverse cultural values (national, organisational and professional) can be a competitive advantage. As a result of gaining such understanding it is expected that EU project performance will improve if diversities are handled in a proper manner and if in addition web 2.0 is used as a communication and sharing platform to enable increased knowledge sharing, interactive participation and digital democracy in practice.

This paper aims to report on the design and creation of a knowledge management course aimed at facilitating student creation and use of social interactive learning tools for enhanced learning.

The era of social media and web 2.0 has enabled a bottom‐up collaborative approach and new ways to publish work on the web, promoted by tools such as YouTube video service. In this spirit a knowledge management course was designed aiming to facilitate university students to compose videos on different difficult concepts in the theory part of the course by searching for explanations on the web and by creating a Windows Media Player video focusing on the self‐defined problems. The videos created by the students were published on a wiki (Wetpaint) and the students were encouraged to actively share knowledge and learn from one another by familiarising themselves with the videos of the other students. In order to utilise cognitive and social constructivism, as well as problem‐based learning, the principles of the Jigsaw method were used to enable different students to create videos on different themes.

Based on the authors' experiences it is suggested that curriculum and syllabus planning should be transformed toward a more student‐centred approach. This is the most natural in the context of knowledge management, which emphasizes the meaning of participation and knowledge sharing. The social constructivist learning theory emphasizes the meaning of interaction in successful learning. By publishing videos created by the students themselves, by commenting on videos created by other students and by reading comments expressed by others the approach proved to be beneficial for learning in many ways.

The research limitation lies in the differences of quality, format and sizes of these videos produced and the efforts and time requirements for editing and use.

The present finding and report implies more of these resources could be generated by students in other courses in other study areas encouraging use of these types of resources, engaging students with the curriculum, and encouraging interaction amongst students promoting deeper understanding, more positive learning experiences and the generation of curriculum teaching materials by students for class work, making learning more student focused.

The paper focuses on a unique process that allows the use of social technology by students for the generation of materials for use in learning.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the under‐representation of women in computing, information technology (IT) and information systems in most Western countries. This under‐representation can only be detrimental to society.

The authors discuss recently published studies on the under‐representation of women in this field, and the lack of career progression for women, particularly in positions of senior responsibility. The results of a survey conducted in the UK, Greece, Malaysia and China are presented, and similarities as well as differences are identified. Malaysia and China are included as the under‐representation is much less in the Asian countries.

The authors identify the main reasons for the under‐representation and lack of career progression, and study the effect of national culture on the formation of strategy and of practice in the four countries.

The survey respondents are mainly female students studying computing/IT at degree level. In the next phase of the research, the survey will include both male and female students, lecturers and employees within the IT sector. The research will be extended into a longitudinal study, in order to monitor trends.

The UK Government is currently undertaking a number of initiatives to improve the representation of women in information and communication technologies. For those initiatives to be successful, the cultural issues identified in the paper need to be considered.