ABSTRACT
The engineering and construction sectors have experienced a large surge in global projects. A common complaint is that American engineers are not ready to work globally because of their insensitivity to cultural differences. In this paper, we report two case studies of undergraduate engineering students in the U.S. collaborating with fellow students in Brazil, Israel or Turkey. We used survey, interview and observational methods to understand how cultural differences affected the quality of team interaction. We focus specifically on how culturally based differences in mental models of the work process (e.g., team structure, task processes, social conventions, knowledge/expertise) can account for problems that arise during engineering collaborations. The results can be used to design training software and materials to better prepare engineering students to work in a global context.
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Index Terms
- Bridging the gap: discovering mental models in globally collaborative contexts
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