This keynote presentation opens a window into the process of applying for a research grant offered jointly by the governments of Japan and India. Research grant proposals should be recognized as a genre for publications of reference to younger scholars. A grant is not just fixed-term funding but rather a whole process of organizing researchers and a proposed vision that maps onto the procedures and conditions set by the agencies offering competitive grants. Dimensions addressed in this presentation and the Proceedings article include documentation and publications, the cultures involved, intercultural communication challenges, and definitions for the research topic of humanizing online educational experiences.

1. Photo of Greek art about 500 BC by Douris, by Pottery Fan, 2009, CC BY-SA3.0
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Douris_Man_with_wax_tablet.jpg
A keynote address by Steve McCarty
for the Contemporary Studies in Management
(CoSiM) online conference based in Germany
26 November 2023, 9 AM CET / 5 PM Japan

2. ABSTRACT
This keynote presentation opens a window into the
process of applying for a research grant offered jointly
by the governments of Japan and India. Research grant
proposals should be recognized as a genre for
publications of reference to younger scholars.
A grant is not just fixed-term funding but rather a whole
process of organizing researchers and a proposed vision
that maps onto the procedures and conditions set by
the agencies offering competitive grants.
Dimensions addressed in this presentation and the
Proceedings article include documentation and
publications, the cultures involved, intercultural
communication challenges, and definitions for the
research topic of humanizing online educational
experiences.

3. KEYWORDS
India, Japan, cultures, intercultural communication
(for international fields including management)
grants, documentation, publications,
research diary, blueprint
(for scholars – see Proceedings article for details)
definitions, disciplinarity
 Asian humanism
 online education – see “Online Education as a
Discipline” at https://doi.org/10.20935/AL434
(for teachers, scholars, and those involved with Asia)

4. CULTURES
Indo-Japanese cultural differences revealed in …
 different application forms of the two countries that
purportedly match
 Indo-Western abstract thought ⇒ theory
Japanese concrete thought ⇒ implementation
 different processes of applying for the grant and
organizing group members
 different assumptions about time, status in
hierarchies, roles and ways of participating
… providing a natural experiment showing different
cultural approaches to the same challenge

5. PASSAGES
 from the summary of the research grant proposal
“Indo-Japanese Collaboration to Humanize Online
Educational Experiences”
 surprising intercultural communication research
findings – India and Japan are similarly balanced
between individualism and collectivism
 a major goal of the research project is to design
humanistic virtual reality (VR) and artificial
intelligence (AI) online learning environments

6. CONCLUSION
 importance of research grants and international,
interdisciplinary collaboration on projects
 developing intercultural communication skills
 vital role of the organizer or intermediary
between cultures
THANK YOU!
See the author’s highly cited publications on Japan,
online education, bilingualism, and the academic
life, starting from https://japanned.hcommons.org