Open-Mindedness, Empathy and Gender Issues: Going beyond National and Corporate Cultures

DS 58-9: Proceedings of ICED 09, the 17th International Conference on Engineering Design, Vol. 9, Human Behavior in Design, Palo Alto, CA, USA, 24.-27.08.2009

Year: 2009
Editor: Norell Bergendahl, M.; Grimheden, M.; Leifer, L.; Skogstad, P.; Lindemann, U.
Author: Stal - Le Cardinal, Julie; Minzoni - Deroche, Angela
Series: ICED
Section: Human Behavior in Design
Page(s): 5-14

Abstract

It has become commonplace to speak about national culture and corporate culture. In last ICED, a workshop ended up by a debate about the impact of deeply rooted national culture characteristics on designers? attitudes. We decided to focus in this paper on the evolution of the perception of the concept of culture. Does the difference made between national vs. corporate culture still make sense in today?s working environments? Which are the new trends regarding the concept of culture when used by corporations in understanding knowledge sharing, diversity or design processes? We present here a gender oriented point of view of the perception of culture in design environment. This proposition is based on the analysis of cross-disciplinary research references about culture and on answers given by executive women engineers.

Keywords: gender, culture, empathy, human behaviour, design

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