Intercultural management for engineers - A teaching design for intercultural competences in a French graduate school of Engineering
Abstract
In this article, we outline a cooperative teaching project organised by a cross disciplinary and cross cultural team of senior lecturers and researchers from several Graduate schools of Engineering of the European University of Brittany (UBL). The international academic research team has been working for around 15 years with industrial partners on the intercultural competences of engineers. We will present and analyse an intercultural management training course designed for engineering students from an international graduate school of engineering located in Brittany. We will explain why companies such as Alcatel-Lucent, Naval Group or Thales have been taking part in the design, facilitation, participation and evaluation of the seminar for the last eight years. Finally, we will analyse why students face a difficult challenge when working in multicultural teams and being required to analyse their project practices and learning outcomes. We will also discuss to what extent experienced and successful engineers in an international context demonstrate specific intercultural competences.