Cross-cultural design teamwork: researching at the edge between design and cross-cultural management

This short paper is to present an emerging area of research at the boundaries between cultural studies and design discipline. People working or studying nowadays in the design field are increasingly involved in cross-cultural collaborations, where they are expected to co-create with highly diverse others (i.e. different ethnicity, religion, language, gender, nations, professions, religions, backgrounds). The paper promotes the exploration of novel design research area to gain knowledge about cross-cultural design teamwork. To achieve this goal, the theories developed by the consolidated field of cross-cultural management can inform design. On the other hand, the establishment of a new area of inquiry can possibly provide new insightful knowledge to fairly and effectively manage these teams. The case study of Mybias, a tool designed for cross-cultural design teams, is presented in the paper to show how research in design and cross-cultural management can be intertwined.