Together with Professor Ernst Struck, Professor Christoph Barmeyer organized an international conference on "Towards Constructive Intercultural Management. A conference on research approaches and perspectives" at the Turkish-German University in Istanbul from October 7th to 8th, 2021.

Internationally renowned researchers from Turkey, UK, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland and South Africa as well as PhD students and undergraduates participated in the conference and presented and discussed the state of research from different disciplinary, paradigmatic, thematic, and methodological perspectives. The focus was also on cultural pluralism in the sense of multiple cultures, dynamic aspect of interculturality in organizations. Constructive Intercultural Management (CIM) deliberately focuses on constructive aspects of interculturality and understands the encounter of cultural difference as a resource, for example, in the joint negotiation of management and organizational practices. In this way, it explores how cultural differences can be enriching and complementary and create added value for individuals, organizations, and societies.

After a short address by Professor Barmeyer, TDU Rector Professor Halil Akkanat and Professor Rita Süssmuth, former president of the German Bundestag, opened the conference. Professor Ernst Struck led into the theme of the conference with an opening presentation about TDU and the double master program Intercultural Management.

In a first substantive lecture, Professor Sonja Sackmann from the University of the Bundeswehr, Munich, then outlined the complexity of culture from a structural and dynamic perspective and provided a more differentiated view of the concept of culture in the context of organizations. Professor Lena Zander from Uppsala University, Sweden, gave her presentation on Constructive Intercultural Management at the workplace and outlined inclusive practices in organizations. In the poster session that followed, Madeleine Bausch, Sina Grosßkopf, Constanze Ruesga Rath, Tuzienka Chenet Ugarte, Birgit Gabriel, Özge Çetin and Selim Çalık presented their research findings and future research projects in the form of scientific posters.

Professor Claude-Hélène Mayer from the University of Johannesburg then created a link to digitalization and the digital revolution in her online lecture on the perspectives for constructive management of 4IR processes (Fourth Industrial Revolution) in organizations and intercultural management practices within a German multinational technology company in South Africa. The first day of the conference ended with a presentation by Dr. Martina Maletzky de Garcia from the University of Passau on the role of mobile workers in creating an intercultural educational space at the Turkish-German University.

The day ended with a buffet cruise on the Bosphorus. The boat trip, sponsored by Siemens, started in Beykoz at the harbor and showed the participants the most beautiful parts of Istanbul.

The second day of the conference started with a presentation by Professor Dilek Zamantılı Nayır from the Turkish-German-University on "Frameswitching of boundary spanners: Turk biculturals in German multinational subsidiaries" and how boundary spanners understand and operate knowledge transfer across intra- and inter-company boundaries. Following this, Professor Syeda Arzu Wasti from Sabancı University gave a presentation on the topic of trust as a common language and an essential element of healthy interpersonal and inter-organizational relations. The presentation by Professor Eric Davoine from the University of Fribourg then focused on the role of HR and personnel departments in sociocultural integration processes. From Brunel Business School London, Professor Mustafa Özbilgin, gave a talk on the role of exceptional leaders in promoting equality, diversity, and inclusion. The presentation by Professor Sylvie Chevrier from the University Gustav Eiffel, Paris, presented a socio-cultural approach to intercultural management research and addressed it from an application-oriented perspective based on bicultural teams.

Afterwards, Dr. Ödül Bozkurt from the University of Sussex gave a lecture on culture and the future of international business and management research together with Professor Mike Geppert from Friedrich Schiller University Jena. Intercultural practical references, especially Turkish-German, were created, among others, through a round table discussion on best practices in human resource management, in which HR managers from the companies Bosch (Umut Güvenç), Mercedes (Betül Çorbacıoğlu), and Siemens (Aslı Kunur) participated. It was moderated by Dr. Fritz Audebert (ICUnet AG) and Professor Levent Yilmaz (Turkish-German University). The conference ended with a presentation by Professor Günter Stahl of the Vienna University of Economics on possible future research directions in Constructive Intercultural Management.

Future research should not only consider culture as an important factor but should explore culture primarily from a qualitative and emic perspective and examine individual, organizational, and societal phenomena in their context.

At the Turkish-German University, founded in 2010, in which the University of Passau participates with a double master program "Intercultural Management", German, Turkish and German-Turkish students and scholars work together. Professor Struck and Professor Barmeyer were assisted by Kira Braun and Melih Pehlivan in organizing the conference.

We thank TDU for providing the basic version of this article: http://www.tau.edu.tr/de/news.read/id/865