The JOIN Principle

An Approach for Facilitating Intercultural, Interdisciplinary Meetings

Master's Thesis from the year 2010 in the subject Communications - Theories, Models, Terms and Definitions, grade: 1,0 with distinction, University of Salzburg (Cultural and Social Faculty), course: Interpersonal Communication, language: English, abstract: This work describes the creation and first application of an approach for facilitating intercultural, interdisciplinary meetings. 'The JOIN Principle', or JOIN, for short is mainly based on the Theme-Centred Interaction (TCI) and Reteaming methodology. Highlights of this work are the extensive, integrated literature element on culture, communication, and organisational dynamics, as well as one of the few analyses of current literature on TCI in the English language. Additionally, the TCI group phase model by Angelika and Eike Rubner, including associated fears and wishes in each phase of the group development, are first published here in the English language. The description of JOIN is enriched with examples and guidelines on how to use this thesis as a handbook for the application of the principle. Finally, five intercultural, interdisciplinary workshops were conducted with JOIN and the data collected is analysed and documented in the work at hand. The conclusion and outlook chapter summarises the results, including personal quotations from the hiring executives of the workshops, and provides suggestions for future research.