Cultural communication patterns: A way how management and engineering can improve their mutual understanding

Abstract

In the age of digital disruption, technology is no longer only a tool to improve organizational effi ciency. Technology becomes a key success factor and enabler for radically new and innovative products and services, new organizational processes, as well as totally new business models. With the emergence of ubiquitous information technologies, organizations no longer just use technologies as tools or sell them as products, but increasingly depend on certain technology as the backbones and lifeblood of key organizational processes. The sciences as well have been disrupted, new tools enable advances in theory, and the scope of what science can do as well as the time it can do it in has changed beyond recognition. New branches of sciences and a tighter feedback loop between scientifi c advances, technological innovation as a result of applied science, as well as business innovation have been the result. To be able to develop innovations on a global scale on all those levels, good communication across disciplines, like IT, Engineering and Management and across countries and cultures becomes more and more a key success factor. In this article we want to elaborate both on the importance and the problems of interdisciplinary communication. Since the discussion cannot be exhaustive, we want instead to focus on three important aspects of communication which are often neglected: embodiment, process orientation, and the importance of motives and motivation. In a second step, we propose the concept of pattern language as an idea to think about a framework for creating understanding and fostering cooperation where translation and control are impossible.