On temporal aspects in cross-cultural e-collaboration between Finland and Japan research teams

Time is an essential dimension in cross-cultural e-collaboration among research project teams. Understanding temporal aspects and project dynamics in cross-cultural research e-collaboration and related processes can improve team members' skills in cross-cultural communication and increase their cultural competence. The present case cultures are Finnish and Japanese, and the case universities are the University of Jyväskylä (Finland) and Keio University (Japan). Three issues are addressed in this article. First, cultural dimensions and time models in the cross-cultural e-collaboration context are discussed. Second, temporal aspects related to e-collaboration activities are introduced. Third, formal, ontological approaches for identifying and describing temporal entities in cross-cultural e-collaboration are presented and examples of applications are given. The objectives of this article are (1) to deepen the knowledge and understanding of temporal aspects (informal and formal) in a cross-cultural e-collaboration environment (CCeCE) and (2) to create know-how for designing CCeCE-like systems.