No Business without Communication

Communication about Intercultural Communication – A Preface in Honor of Michael B. Hinner

“Intercultural communication is a subject that was introduced in Germany relatively recently by researchers who had visited North American universities” (Hinner, 2017, p. 1). As it turned out, Freiberg, Saxony, was the place where this introduction happened. Moreover, above-cited Michael B. Hinner was the researcher getting the job done. Naturally, someone who had been at a North American university not as a temporary guest researcher but as a full member of a faculty turned out the perfect solution to overcome the missing link. Twenty-five years later, we now celebrate the silver jubilee of Michael Hinner’s career as a full professor of a German university as well as the introduction of intercultural communication in Germany. This collection of papers authored by various distinguished researchers belonging to his network of leading intercultural and communication scholars from around the world is an impressing acknowledgment of his contributions to teaching and researching intercultural communication. It is not only my pleasure but an honor to contribute this brief preface.

Born in Germany but having grown-up on the East Coast of the United States, Michael Hinner studied Anthropology, Comparative Studies, English, German, History, and Linguistics at the State University of New York (SUNY) and Law at St. John’s University, School of Law. After receiving his master’s degree and a Ph.D. from SUNY Stony Brook, he moved back to Germany, where he relocated in the Hannover region to work for corporate employers and, more importantly, for various academic institutions. He then joined the Faculty of Business Administration at the Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg in 1997, taking the position as head of the Chair of Intercultural Communication. Having detected the shortcomings of Economics/Business Management programs concerning communication (for details, please see Hinner, 1998, 2002. The gap detected already back then has not been closed yet – please see the recent analysis of Hinner, 2020c, esp. pp. 228–229), he undertook to fill the gap in the ways a university professor can pursue: by teaching, researching/publishing, and as a member of various institutions of his university’s self-administration.

Having excelled in teaching at Stony Brook already, Michael Hinner quickly became a highly appreciated lecturer and has been awarded by considerable numbers of students taking his courses – and requesting thesis supervision – ever since. His lectures, especially those on Professional Communication, Business Communication, and Intercultural Communication, attracted students from Freiberg’s German bachelor/master classes and international MBA programs. Whereas the lectures mentioned above represent traditional parts of his chair’s curriculum, it also contained a most unusual element in the best possible sense: the film seminar, during which the student participants produce a short film, including a movie poster. The public presentation of the movies “started as a byproduct of a course [and] evolved into an exciting spectacle that draws large audiences and evokes public notice. A jury […] awards Ottos in such categories as “Best Actress”, “Best Actor”, “Best Supporting Role”, “Best Production”, “Best Humor”, etc. The Ottos are then awarded during the public showing of the films in the university’s Alte Mensa.”¹ Supported by the enthusiastic team of his chair, Michael Hinner thus established a true Freibergian institution, making the award ceremony of the “Otto Night” a highlight of any academic calendar until 2019, when the final curtain fell (Freie Presse, 2019).

Regarding topics, his earlier research concentrated on the intercultural aspect of communication problems, putting “Intercultural Competence in a Business Context”(see the eponymous book chapter by Hinner, 2014). Surrounded by chairs of business administration (“Betriebswirtschaftslehre”) and economics (“Volkswirtschaftslehre”) – and communicating with their team members –, he quite naturally applied his expertise to several areas linking him with these disciplines, such as (cultural aspects of) customers’ price/value perceptions (Hinner, 2016; Stępień et al., 2016), their (communication/consumer) behavior on social networks (Bartosik-Purgat et al., 2017), or the (cultural challenges of) mergers & acquisitions (Hinner, 2019). In doing so, he displayed his openness to current interdisciplinary research topics. The up-to-dateness of his research becomes extremely obvious in his recent papers on intolerance (Hinner, 2020b)² and prejudice (Hinner, 2020a), which he published in times characterized by new levels of these phenomena observable not only but most prominently in politics.

Regarding publication styles, Michael Hinner proceeded according to the culture of his discipline, meaning that he remained steadfast in his appreciation for books, be it monographs or edited volumes. He did so, and he does so, even when surrounded by the journal-paper-euphoria of our times. One prominent example is the series of books designed to provide “A Forum for General and Intercultural Business Communication” (“Freiberger Beiträge zur interkulturellen und Wirtschaftskommunikation”)³. Further prominent examples are the numerous book chapters authored by Michael Hinner, such as, most recently, his contributions to two volumes on cultural conceptualization (Hinner, 2020a, 2020c) or his four contributions to “The International Encyclopedia of Intercultural Communication” (Hinner, 2017)⁴.

Michael B. Hinner supervised an above-average number of Ph.D. projects dealing with intercultural communication problems. Following the traditional approach, all of them were book-based rather than paper-based, and several of these books achieved the highest degrees or even a university award (most recently, see Boehnisch, 2021; Meschke, 2021). Based on the hitherto achievements of his candidates, the probability of further outstanding dissertations written under Michael Hinner’s guidance appears significant.

Throughout the Freiberg chapter of his academic career, Michael B. Hinner also practiced communication in his daily university life. One prominent example is his membership in several institutions of Freiberg University’s self-administration. Besides the usual suspects, such as the faculty council (“Fakultätsrat”) or the university parliament (“Konzil”, today known as the extended senate), he also joined the Fulbright Selection Committee, the Study Abroad Selection Committee, and became Freibergs’s representative of the ERASMUS Sokrates program. Furthermore, he acted as a liaison between his students and the German-American-Chamber-of-Commerce, thus supporting students to achieve internships in the United States of America.

Altogether, Michael Hinner is an academic who has taught, researched, and lived communication in general, and intercultural communication in particular. He has done so for 25 years, and he already was an established member of Freiberg’s faculty of business administration when the author of this preface was allowed to join it. To be asked to deliver a preface to a volume he edited would have been nothing but an honor, and to deliver a note on the occasion of a silver jubilee nothing but pure pleasure. In the particular case of Michael B. Hinner, however, both come with a bittersweet taste, as they also mean a farewell. Consequently, this preface closes with a combination of congratulation and regret: Well done, but you will leave a gap – maybe in your field of research, definitely in our faculty.

Andreas Horsch

Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration

Technische Universität Bergakademie Freiberg

1 See the former Otto website of Michael Hinner’s chair, i.e., https://tu-freib​erg.de/faku​lt6/interc​ultu​ral-commun​icat​ion/otto-awa​rds (accessed Nov 17, 2021).