Abstract:

Recent research suggests that international cooperative arrangements between universities should be viewed as repositories of knowledge and a network of capabilities. According to this the processes of knowledge-creation, sharing and exploitation within and between the geographically dispersed units have attracted increasingly managerial and international scholarly interest. However, the understanding of how to handle and optimize this processes is anything but complete and coherent. In particular, little is known about the effectiveness of the cross-border transfer of knowledge related with dissimilar cultural contexts. Concurrently amounts of misfits in practicing international knowledge transfer were reported.
Although at first glance such findings resolve the general problem of implementing knowledge management strategies, there are also some plausible reasons to be discouraged about the failure rates of knowledge management in such arrangements. First, the transfer of knowledge has always been a major issue tied to the uniqueness of internationalization as a process. Many Authors stress the specific capability of a multinational corporation in transferring knowledge across borders. Secondly, the knowledge aspect is also an essential component of the most popular process theory of internationalization, the so-called Uppsala-Model.
Using this Model as our reference point we will show that research within international knowledge transfer has, up to now, neglected a central question, specifically the precise structure of the learning process that creates knowledge for the participants. Through our argumentation, we will show that the Uppsala-Model is not necessarily a general theory of corporate internationalization activities, but rather a very specific culture-based concept relating to the processes of learning and understanding.
Based on this substantial argument - that the efforts in theorizing systems of international knowledge management mostly are characterized by academic ethnocentrism so far - the interplay between cultural contexts and learning processes of individual knowledge participants is clarified by the concept of learning styles. This discussion is getting opened with a concise discussion of Kolb’s popular concept of learning styles. Afterwards a selection of surveys focusing the intercultural dimension of this construct will be presented. On the whole, the results illustrate that international knowledge management activities with a compelling logic have to deal with the fact of learning style diversity.
Furthermore we exemplify with reference to the field of international teamwork the potential benefits of thinking in and working with divergent learning styles in international knowledge processes. This also includes a critical discussion of popular approaches in order to describe and explain cultural differences in the field of international business research.

Keywords:

Knowledge management, intercultural management, intercultural education.