The interdisciplinary symposium European Cultures in Business and Corporate Communication – Europäische Kulturen in der Wirtschaftskommunikation (EUKO), which will be held at the Salzburg University of Applied Sciences on November 14th to 16th 2007, is the seventh annual conference within the European research cooperation under the same name. The congress in 2007 has the main topic »Stakeholder oriented Communication – Anspruchsgruppenorientierte Kommunikation«.
The cooperation was inaugurated in 2000 through the initiative of the business and language section of the German
Department at Åbo Akademi in collaboration with the Aarhus School of Business and the University of Regensburg. So far
constantly active universities from 9 different European countries have participated and contributed to the development
of the cooperation. Even other universities have participated on a more casual basis. The present core organisation is
held through the universities of Turku (ÅA), Darmstadt, Regensburg, Nijmegen, Luzern, and Århus School of Business.
The aim is to enlarge the research cooperation over the whole of Europe throughout the years. The cooperation organises
conferences every year in different European countries on specifically chosen topics in the area of intercultural business
communication. The research cooperation gathers researchers and practitioners from different fields to deal with
up-to-date issues concerning specifically modern business life from an interdisciplinary and international perspective.
The cooperation also maintains an own scientific book series at the international Deutscher Universitäts-Verlag (DUV/Gabler).
It publishes congress proceedings, anthologies, dissertations and monographies. So far 9 volumes have been published,
all within the above presented field of business and corporate communication. The official languages used both on all
congresses and in the publications are English and German.
The reason for establishing and constantly enlarging this international cooperation is the insight, that today’s
internationalised and manifold business life is full of problems that cannot always be solved convincingly enough
solely from the perspective of one specialised field alone. Therefore the congresses are highly interdisciplinary and
intercultural. The combining factor between all participants is the interest in today’s internationalised business
life from an intercultural perspective. The cooperation aims at dealing on a systematic level with practice-based problems
that stem from everyday corporate life and strives at working out solutions that can be of interest for corporations.
The participants of the cooperation come from the fields of culture theory, marketing, controlling, intercultural
communication, linguistics, organisational theory, and cultural psychology, to name the most important ones.
This year’s conference aims at bringing together both outstanding international practitioners and researchers
(see enclosed list) as well as beginners and students. Therefore the congress involves both presentations and workshops
(see list on thematic range). Additionally, it is intended to develop the theme of this year’s conference toward a
specific research project inside the cooperation, deriving from the interdisciplinary perspectives present at the
conference. This will be done within an evaluating post-congress seminary between the constant members of the cooperation.
The congress is in search for synergies between the participating disciplines in order to develop issues of stakeholder
oriented communication and possible problem solving strategies that can be of specific relevance for today’s
business world. Additionally, the foundation of a new scientific internet journal in the field of the cooperation
will be discussed in detail at the post-congress seminary.
The congress 2007 aims at publishing chosen papers on the basis of international peer review in its above named series.