Transcultural Student Research Groups

In 2018 the Transcultural Leadership Summit focused on transcultural leadership and cooperation in and with Brazil. The keynotes, workshops and discussions at the Summit gave rise to ideas on how to take the presented thoughts further within the context of transcultural research. The theory of Relational Leadership interprets leadership not in terms of an individual’s position, personal traits or charisma but as the result of a social exchange process between the leader and the follower within an organisational and institutional context. Relational Leadership puts cooperation, particularly the motivational and structural determinants and success factors of cooperation, at the center of its analysis. Within this perspective, individual and organisational resources that shape the dynamic and continuous processes of social interaction and learning are prerequisite and result of cooperation at the same time.

How can the concept of transculturality be applied to the work of the Hope Development Initiative, helping women farmers in Uganda?The starting point of this research project was a talk by Dr Agnes Atim Apea, founder and CEO of the Hope Development Initiative (HDI), at the Transcultural Leadership Summit 2017 at Zeppelin University. At this Summit on “Learning about Sub-Saharan Africa”, Dr Apea presented her work with the HDI. Her talk spontaneously gave rise to ideas on how to take her thoughts further within the context of transcultural research. As a social-entrepreneurship initiative, HDI helps women farmers in northern rural Uganda realise their full potential, based upon the values of their communities and their own ambitions. With a view to this purpose, HDI encapsulates several topics relevant for the research agenda pursued by LEIZ, centered upon the notions of culture, leadership and cooperation. As the concept of ‘community’ is an important part of transculturality, we want to examine this concept in the case of the HDI further.

This research project aimed at tackling questions of transcultural cooperation and the related determinants and processes in Hong Kong through field study and observation. The team assembled seven students, the perspectives of six countries, five disciplines, and four study programs offered at Zeppelin University and aimed to contact international migrants and local citizens for qualitative interviews. For this purpose, each of the young researchers focussed on a specific area, namely migration, arts, communication, policy, behavioural ethics or business & entrepreneurship, and therefore added a particular contribution to the overall research question.