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Few phenomena have incited as much passion as the unravelling of what ‘intercultural competence’ means. This book presents a novel, bio-cultural approach towards intercultural competence, arguing that a relevant perceptual architecture must be set up via acting competently in various contexts and situations over time. The enactive framework propose...
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... This leads to specific social phenomena, such as that in present-day societies, responsibility and accountability is conveyed to the creative people behind the campaigns. In order to link creativity, ethics and culture to analyse dynamic perceptions and mindsets for social change, we draw on the enactive, bio-cultural framework of Intercultural Competence® (in short: ICC®, read: 'Intercultural Competence revisited') and its Culture and Creativity Model (Breninger, 2020). ICC® considers the co-emergence of ' ethical creativity' to be pivotal for cultural expertise, which again is necessary to act for the ' common good' of a multicultural society. ...
... It is argued here that an integrated perceptual architecture has to be functional on an individual level in order to stimulate change for the social good through products (for example, advertising campaigns). To elaborate on this we draw on selected ideas from the bio-cultural framework of Intercultural Competence® (Breninger, 2020) linking cultural expertise to actions that are informed by a genuine pursuit of creating more caring, equal and just societies. ...
... Such processes are supported by a vast amount of enacted understanding in specific (professional) as well as unspecific (private) contexts. The resultant 'new way of seeing' is based on a basic change in perception in regard to the main axis of cultural otherness (Breninger, 2020). Cultural expertise (that is, intercultural competence as defined in ICC®) is conceived as the successful integration level of relevant experiences of cultural others (people) and cultural differences (events and objects) in various situations and contexts into the dynamical PACA-system. ...
Few phenomena have incited as much passion as the unravelling of ‘creativity’ and few disciplines have brought about so many controversial expressions of it as advertising. In the bio-cultural framework of Intercultural Competence® the co-emergence of ‘ethical creativity’ is conceived to be pivotal for intercultural expertise. We suspect that interculturally competent individuals more habitually engage in ethical creativity, that is, the co-activation of a creative mindset and a benevolent moral mindset informed by a difference-oriented mindset towards the ‘familiar other’ as well as the ‘unfamiliar other’.
In this framework, action is directly linked to perception, which, in turn, is influenced and shaped by the active creative mindset. To analyse ethical creativity as an intersecting process with the development of intercultural expertise, we designed and piloted a qualitative perceptuo-cognitive experiment including various advertising items to document the differences in perception of 34 leaders of small and medium enterprises and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs). The experiment consisted of 40 affective and culturalised visual items analysed with SR Research’s Data Viewer software. The eyetracking data were translated and clustered into gaze types and combined with the response patterns from the questionnaire for analysis. ‘Ethical creativity’ is regarded as a dynamic process emerging through the co-activation of benevolent, moral mindsets. A specific perceptual architecture emerges from the convergence of various sets of expertise. The process of becoming interculturally competent and being able to enact ethical creativity is linked to advertising campaigns. Such interactions (of perception with activation of mindsets) have the potential to profoundly shape the behaviours and understandings of consumers.
The ability of leaders to thrive in current VUCA environments is pivotal for acting in fast moving, global settings. We introduce the idea of ‘perceptual leadership wisdom (PLW)’ as one of the relevant bio-cultural strategies to thrive in uncertain, multicultural settings. In this framework wisdom is approached from a perceptual stance for it must be built into the individual’s neurological wiring. It is suggested that the relevant perceptual architecture has to be functionally set up via the integration of cultural differences by the respective individual acting in multiple professional situations and contexts. The convergence of several sets of expertise that have fully been integrated across the axis of cultural differences will then give rise to ‘perceptual leadership wisdom’. Gender sensitivity is considered to be one such set of expertise. In order to eliminate gender bias in wisdom measures, gender sensitivity is conceived as a value-informed process that has to suffuse the perception, affect, cognition and action systems of the respective individual. It is further proposed that ‘perceptual leadership wisdom’ as a specific kind of wisdom, is not only culturalized but profession-specific and has to be developed for today’s multicultural business realms in order to be able to act successfully on uncertainty for the ‘common good’. An experimental pilot (n = 34) was designed by combining eye tracking and questionnaire with expert wisdom ratings. Selected initial protocols from the perceptuo-cognitive experimental pilot are introduced and show promising avenues for using visual analysis in future multi-methodological designs when analysing leadership in real-life contexts.KeywordsWomen’s empowermentLeadershipWisdomGenderPerceptionCultureBio-social framework
The declining informal collaboration corresponds to less civic engagement, political equity, solidarity, trust, and tolerance as well as associational life. In 2020, a case study of two NPOs revealed that one was adopting a strong entrepreneurial orientation, while the other integrated the traditional community orientation with more professionalization, confirming to partial marketization tendencies. The NGO-ization of society, visible in the increasing number of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) at the national and transnational level, tend to somewhat contradict Putnam’s thesis. On the other hand, the number of NGOs is not per se revealing of the quality of citizen participation in those organizations. The terms NGOS and nonprofit can be applied to the same organizational forms – some authors tend to consider the former as a type of nonprofit. Interestingly enough, in the diversity of approaches, and even definitions of this object, there is a common use of the excluding element to classify it: nongovernmental and nonprofit.
This handbook brings together multidisciplinary and internationally diverse contributors to provide an overview of theory, research, and practice in the nonprofit and nongovernmental organization (NGO) communication field. It is structured in four main parts: the first introduces metatheoretical and multidisciplinary approaches to the nonprofit sector; the second offers distinctive structural approaches to communication and their models of reputation, marketing, and communication management; the third focuses on nonprofit organizations' strategic communications, strategies, and discourses; and the fourth assembles campaigns and case studies of different areas of practice, causes, and geographies. The handbook is essential reading for scholars, educators, and advanced students in nonprofit and NGO communication within public relations and strategic communication, organizational communication, sociology, management, economics, marketing, and political science, as well as a useful reference for leaders and communication professionals in the nonprofit sector.
