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Aim: Culture is becoming increasingly important in relation to end of life (EoL) care in a context of globalization, migration and European integration. We explore and compare socio-cultural issues that shape EoL care in seven European countries and critically appraise the existing research evidence on cultural issues in EoL care generated in the different countries. Methods: We scoped the literature for Germany, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Portugal, carrying out electronic searches in 16 international and country-specific databases and handsearches in 17 journals, bibliographies of relevant papers and webpages. We analysed the literature which was unearthed, in its entirety and by type (reviews, original studies, opinion pieces) and conducted quantitative analyses for each country and across countries. Qualitative techniques generated themes and sub-themes. Results: A total of 868 papers were reviewed. The following themes facilitated cross-country comparison: setting, caregivers, communication, medical EoL decisions, minority ethnic groups, and knowledge, attitudes and values of death and care. The frequencies of themes varied considerably between countries. Sub-themes reflected issues characteristic for specific countries (e.g. culture-specific disclosure in the southern European countries). The work from the seven European countries concentrates on cultural traditions and identities, and there was almost no evidence on ethnic minorities. Conclusion: This scoping review is the first comparative exploration of the cultural differences in the understanding of EoL care in these countries. The diverse body of evidence that was identified on socio-cultural issues in EoL care, reflects clearly distinguishable national cultures of EoL care, with differences in meaning, priorities, and expertise in each country. The diverse ways that EoL care is understood and practised forms a necessary part of what constitutes best evidence for the improvement of EoL care in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contrast to most studies on cultural globalization, this article examines the dynamics of cross-cultural exchange between and within (Western) nation-states. Through content analysis, the authors study the extent and composition of newspaper coverage given to literary authors of non-Western ethnic origin—both foreign and domestic—in four nations across 50 years.The analysis reveals, among other things, that newspaper attention to ethnic minority authors appears related to various features of a nation’s ethnic minority population, the extent that a given national literary field is receptive to ethnic diversity, and the relative position of that nation in the literary world-system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article, the authors address the question of whether and how the appreciation of popular music consumers has globalized in the four decades since the mid-1960s. They use information from American, Dutch, French, and German popular music charts from 1965 through 2006. They find no corroboration for an overall trend toward an internationalization of hits. However, important shifts are noticeable underneath the surface. For the period up until 1989, the authors find increasing international diversity as well as increasing Americanization. From the 1990s onwards, they find a growing popularity of national music in all three European countries in the study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The study had the goal to compare love expression in the United States and Germany. The data offer insight into love expression as a cultural script and symbol of culture change, suggesting competing ways of using the locution “I love you” in the two cultures. Not only is verbal love expression less central in Germany, but for the German, the locution “I love you” is traditionally reserved for private disclosure of a formal love, governed by a communal imperative for feelings of meaningfulness. This is juxtaposed with an American desire for disclosing love in expressive ways and in a broad range of contexts, including nonromantic relationships. Globalization issues, such as the universal (expressive culture) versus the particular (reserved culture), are evoked, and the spreading in Germany of an expressive culture across a variety of settings suggested. Spurred by the use of telecommunication technology and often met with resistance, the tensions arising from these semantic and pragmatic changes in the use of love expression represent one of the interesting aspects of this paper. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Pressures from within (Islam) and without (globalization and European integration) have made Germans and the French feel apprehensive about their national identity and culture. Both countries are visibly struggling to defuse the potentially explosive mix of nationalism and fear of the Muslim "stranger," while defining citizenship for their marginalized and disenfranchised immigrants. The issue is no longer the building of "defensive citadels" of "Frenchness" or "Germanness," particularly since Germany has finally come to grips with the reality that the Gastarbeiter (guest workers) are there to stay. The challenge for Germany and France today is to define what kinds of values are essential for their countries' secular model of society and what kinds are negotiable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article charts key developments and cross-national variations in the coverage of foreign culture (i.e., classical and popular music, dance, film, literature, theater, television, and visual arts) in Dutch, French, German, and U.S. elite newspapers between 1955 and 2005. Such coverage signals the awareness of foreign culture among national elites and the degree and direction of "globalization from within." Using content analysis, we examine the degree, direction, and diversity of the international orientation of arts journalism for each country and cultural genre. Results denote how international arts and culture coverage has increased in Europe but not in the United States. Moreover, the centrality of a country in the cultural "world-system" offers a better explanation for cross-national differences in international orientation than do other country-level characteristics, such as size and cultural policy framework. Recorded and performance-based genres differ markedly in their levels of internationalization, but the effect of other genre-level characteristics, such as language dependency and capital intensiveness, is not clear. In each country, international coverage remains concentrated on a few countries, of which the United States has become the most prominent. Although the global diversity of coverage has increased, non-Western countries are still underrepresented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of magazines - and particularly the history of magazine design in the 20th century - can be characterized as a mutual relationship with different media outlets influencing each other in their visual appearance. This article focuses on the cross-national diffusion of graphic design between German and American magazines in an early period of globalization. The explanatory framework for this dynamic is constituted through emerging "global players" in terms of publishers acting on both markets, through an orientation on national and international target groups, or through individual artists and art directors migrating between both countries. As a consequence, innovations in editorial content as well as in magazine layout traveled between both media systems, simulating an "international language" of modern magazine visuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines how television advertisements differ across various cultures. It provides a statistical analysis of the relations between face-to-face communications and technology based communication. It argues that the processes of globalization have produced contradictory consequences and that the term "globalization" should be reexamined to include more specific details. The analysis provided in the article uses contrasting examples from Germany and Ecuador concluding that the media models used failed in reframing and reinventing

This paper frames the architectonics of memory in Berlin through two controversial memorials initiated after German unification. An interpretive framework of building memory guides the question of how the authority of Berlin's present is made vivid through commemoration. The Neue Wache and the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe reflect two distinctive instances of the reconstruction of the past for a new generation of Germans. Consideration is given to the primacy of the will to architecture itself as an eventful feature of the present through the contrasting approaches to commemoration. The cases described are the remaking of The Neue Wache as a national memorial, and the unmaking of National Socialism in the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe as two shapes of a common process of reconstructing the past from the vantage point of the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As part of the GLOBE project, we collected data on culture and leadership in Germany from 457 middle managers in the telecommunications, food processing, and finance industries. The most pronounced German cultural value is performance orientation. The hallmark of German cultural practices is high levels of uncertainty avoidance and assertiveness, along with low levels of humane orientation. At work, compassion is low and interpersonal relations are straightforward and stern. It seems that conflict and controversy are built into the German societal culture. As has been shown in the GLOBE project by using data from 61 countries, characteristics attributed to a country's outstanding leaders match closely with its cultural values and practices. This holds true for Germany. Effective German leaders are characterized by high performance orientation, low compassion, low self-protection, low team orientation, high autonomy, and high participation. Conflict and controversy seem to be built into the German leadership culture as well. A “tough on the issue, tough on the person” leadership approach appears to explain Germany's economic accomplishments in the second half of the 20th century. However, it does not seem to be a promising approach to meet the challenges of globalization in the 21st century. Are Germany's societal, organizational, and leadership cultures prepared for an adaptive change? A “tough on the issue, soft on the person” leadership approach seems to be the right recipe for German managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Berlin as a place for a lot of changes in the structure of its government, society, culture. With the collapse of the wall in Berlin, newness can be seen everywhere. Berlin is geared to be the economic center of a new Europe. The ideological fusion of George Bush's New World Order and the aspirations of the European Union are the factors that push Germany to do a lot of changes in their system.

The development of the international economy over the past twenty years has bred considerable diversity in the form and substance of employment relations (labour-management relations, human resource management practices) throughout the world. Cases of 'social partnership' are today found in the 'free market' United States economy; some companies operating in Germany's 'social' market economy are rejecting traditional forms of social partnership in the name of more unilateral strategies. This paper examines (a) the extent to which 'strategic diversity' - variation in human resource strategies and policies - is possible within the heavily institutionalized, co-operative and codeterminative German economy, and (b) how managers perceive the effects of different kinds of HR approaches on organizational change and industrial adjustment. It is based on empirical evidence drawn from seven large chemicals companies operating in Germany - three of them US-owned firms and four German-owned. The main conclusions are that considerable strategic diversity is possible within the German context, and that managers perceive distinct costs and benefits to specific aspects of the typically American 'unilateral' style and the more German 'negotiated' approach to structuring the relationship with human resources. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these trade-offs for the transferability of HR strategies across international borders, giving special attention to policies to avoid some of these potential costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the ascent of the concept of globalization in the 1990s and its implications for German studies. Compared to Germanistik and the humanities in Germany, German studies in the United States have been more hospitable to the use of postmodernism. Author Paul Jay sees that globalization studies have transformed from an initial interest in the emergence of global economy into an interest as a cultural phenomenon. The concept of globalization helps focus on the dynamics of the Europeanization of cultures.