Search results for "Common ground"
showing 6 items of 26 documents
Finnish-Chinese intercultural negotiation : power positioning and search for common ground
2018
‘Rising China’ is a term that has come to refer to China’s march to being number one, the speed of its economic growth, and its investment around the world during last two decades. In Finland, government agencies have been established to promote investment, trade, and co-operation with China, while regional and local governments are also actively involved. Meanwhile, much of the world is now competing for the attention of China, so the power dynamic is tending to shift in favour of the Chinese. This developing context has been examined in previous studies primarily from the perspectives of politics, economics, and management studies. The overarching aim of this study is to investigate emerg…
China-Finland Co-operation, Trade, and Investment: In Search of Common Ground
2015
The importance of co-operation with China has been growing in Finland and the rest of Europe in view of the rising global economic and political status of China and the interest in attracting Chinese investments. In Finland, government agencies have been established for this purpose, and regional and local governments are also actively involved. Delegation visits between China and Finland have been intensively on-going for some years, but matching interests and finding common ground for co-operation, trade and investment often still proves to be a challenging task. Based on interviews with Finnish representatives and on observing delegation visits, this paper explores the difficulties that …
Heading at Enabling Settings for Learning
2021
The paper draws on two cases of learning settings that were converted to meet up-to-date educational requirements within these learning contexts. The authors address the role of stakeholder perspectives. Focusing on the learning situation, they present an articulation tool to aid dialogue between key stakeholder perspectives in a (re)design process. Dialogue is a way to figure out relevant issues and to establish the common ground between participants. The goal of a redesign process is that user requirements are well understood, and the design is embedded into local practices, informed of constraints and aware of potential opportunities regarding educational technology.
The Simple and the Complex Nature of Humor and Laughter in Finnish-Chinese Negotiations
2016
This paper explores humor and laughter as sites of search for common ground and power positioning in the context of Finnish-Chinese co-operation. It is mainly based on the data obtained by interviewing individuals who work either for local governments in Finland or one of the state agencies responsible for attracting foreign investment. The study uses Positioning theory by Harré (1991) and Politeness theory by Brown and Levinson (1987) when analyzing expressions regarding humor between the Finns and the Chinese. Humor and laughter are seen as integral to co-operation and at times can assist in finding common ground and improving the atmosphere at meetings. At the same time, perceived differ…
SearchBot: Supporting voice conversations with proactive search
2018
Searching during conversations and social interactions is becoming increasingly common. Although searching could be helpful for solving arguments, building common ground, and reinforcing mutual assumptions, it can also cause inter-actional problems. Proactive search approaches can enrich conversations with additional information without neglecting the shared and established social norms of being attentive to ongoing interaction. This demo showcases SearchBot, a tool that minimizes the issues associated with the practice of searching during conversations. It accomplishes this by tracking conversational background speech and then providing continuous recommendations of related documents and e…
“Opportunities, but Nothing Very Concrete” : The Challenge Finns Face with Chinese Delegations’ General Level of Interest in Finland
2015
This paper explores the challenge of finding common ground between the Finns and the Chinese in the context of co-operation, trade and inward investment facilitation related to general lack of specific interest displayed by the Chinese. The article is ethnographic in nature and is mainly based on data obtained from interviewing individuals working for local governments in Finland and one of the state agencies responsible for attracting foreign investment. The study uses Speech Codes Theory (Philipsen, 1997) when analyzing the cultural aspects of expectations regarding communication between Chinese and Finns. According to interviewees, lack of serious interest, vague government guidelines, t…