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Our guest author Dr. Regina Kessy writes about the prejudices we still have when encountering foreigners – thereby especially focusing on the African continent and its historical framework – and about the need of a “transcultural gaze”, ensuring transcultural awareness and open-mindedness in today’s interconnected world.

From 9th to 17th of April, the Transcultural Caravan was part of an innovative concept of Zeppelin University: During the so called “ZU Bildungsexkursion”, several students, staff and collaborators travelled through Germany, accompanied by an eye-catching Airstream and lots of information about the university. A blogpost by Michelle Sun.

The explosion of visual media sharing around the world presents great possibilities but also an urgent need to address the chronic misinterpretation of images and spaces of “cultural others.” The dynamics of making sense about the world, or making truthful assertions about realities of others, is not a forthright process because the world appears differently to different people. The meaning and function of objects or concepts are culturally coded, and therefore an interpretation is fixed according to the “cultural-toolkit” available to the one perceiving the object or other people. A blogpost by Regina Kessy.

The Transcultural Caravan is more than happy to introduce our newest team members, Michelle Sun and Nicolas Göller, to the community. They are both students at Zeppelin University and will help us to further develop the Transcultural Caravan’s ideas, networks, events and research goals in the new year. In order to find out what they are up to exactly and how they came to work for the Transcultural Caravan, our Project Collaborator Vanessa set down with them for an interview.

Sabela Pérez García, a Spanish exchange student at the Zeppelin University (ZU) in Friedrichshafen, is currently on an internship in the compliance department of Rolls-Royce Power Systems. Having performed very well, she was awarded a free ticket to the Transcultural Leadership Summit taking place at Zeppelin University in Friedrichshafen. Here she chats over an espresso to Marcus A. Wassenberg, Chief Financial Officer of Rolls-Royce Power Systems, about what leadership and intercultural cooperation mean to her.

Different cultures are not an obstacle to the activities of global corporations but are rather the starting point for global value-creation and cooperation. This was demonstrated at the two-day Transcultural Leadership Summit at Zeppelin University (ZU). At the congress, around 200 participants, including corporate leaders, experts from business and academia as well as PhD. students and undergraduates from all over Germany and abroad exchanged experiences and ideas about the leadership of global corporations and civil society organisations. The focus was on Sub-Saharan Africa.

With this much experience and knowledge in the field, we were of course very excited and thankful to get the opportunity to ask Mr. Hampden-Turner a few questions about transculturality.

Cultural heterogeneity, far from being an impediment to corporate success, constitutes a source of global value creation. This was the result of the two-day congress, „Transcultural Leadership Summit“, held on the campus of Zeppelin University (ZU) in Friedrichshafen. More than 190 participants – among them corporate leaders, experts from academia and business, and students – convened to share their ideas on leadership in globally operating enterprises. This year’s country of focus was China.

In studies on the welfare state and in the field of social policy, approaches to empowerment and capability are fiercely debated. In Attachment Theory, John Bowlby and Amartya Sen, suggest the Capability Approach which argues that an individual with increased resilience during childhood – supported by a strong attachment to the mother – develops a stronger personality. Also, Bowlby and Sen emphasize that empowered individuals, with increased capability, have more opportunities to succeed in life. In the following post, the Attachment Theory and the Capability Approach are outlined as the theoretical basis for a new perspective on leadership. Subsequently, this article examines why and how motherly love helps to build sustainable, ethical Transcultural Leaders. A blogpost by Florine Weiß.