The general objective of the EuroKEY Project is to contribute; enhancing the labor productivity, ensuring competitivenes and promoting a suitable environment for foreign and domestic investments create and improve business together by creating an open, accessible, knowledge and skill-focused vocational education environment. This vocational education environment is for changing target market through countries in SMA’s and digital enterprises. The strong structure of the consortium with 10 partners in 5 countries (Turkey, Iceland, Italy, Lithuania, Poland) consists of 3 universities, incubator, cluster, organized industrial zone directorate, 2 chambers of trade industry, 2 non-governmental organizations and the public. While forming the structure of the consortium, it’s taken into account consisting of institutions related to education, employment, entrepreneurship, policy making-decision making. Therefore, it’s contributed to ensuring better labor supply and demand equilibrium, strengthening the capacities of social partners and encouraging cooperation among labor market institutions. The project’s target group is the foreign related employees and directors of the firms which is currently active and want to be in global market, entrepreneurs in digital sector and the university students in the departments of advertising, marketing, communication and design. - Developing business models for SME’s which want to grow at international markets and digital entrepreneurs; this business model considers cultural differences that directly affects many important subjects like sales and marketing both at hosting countries and digital media. - Ensuring strong international cooperation between education providers and other stakeholders, strengthening harmony between education-training systems and economic development strategies (Comperative curriculum study) - Increasing the Cultural Sufficiency and management skills of international business environment of employees and entrepreneurs for using professional ability effectively at international businesses and for employing the students at these firms. - Contribute to increase the number of woman employee and director at international area. The project is based on having determinant cultural influence of the individual and society on the firms as well as the influence of the firms on individual-consumer in contrary to what is often conceived as one way cultural interaction between consumers and firms. In this context, the place of the culture will be determined in the changing period of international marketplace during Phase I, then the role of cultural influences in the design and application of product and marketing strategies will be investigated. Moreover, curriculums of the universities’ departments given in this area (e.g. business, marketing etc.) will be compared, and sales, marketing methods and good practices of the enterprises considering the cultural differences will be identified. The ability to adapt to different cultures of employees and managers at firms targeting international markets is an important issue for businesses. The selection of the right individuals to adapt to foreign cultures and employ of them affect the productivity of the enterprise. When employees are employed in a foreign culture or assigned to work in another culture, they are affected in every aspect. Therefore, the intercultural adaptation, a person becomes competent to perform the task effectively in an environment that is different from the culture socialized originally, is a complicated process. In Phase II of the project, the needs analysis and intercultural adaptation questionnaire for the intercultural competences of the staff working in the foreign operations of the enterprises as well as the university students will be done. In Phase III, training modules and tools to increase cultural knowledge, skills and personality harmony for intercultural competence will be prepared and applications will be performed. The project impact in short, medium and long term consists of employing in global businesses and developing basic, cross and soft skills of the target group by training; therefore increasing labor productivity, ensuring competitiveness, creating domestic and foreign investments together and promote appropriate environments for developing business are also expected.
EuroKey is an important project with the slogan ‘Eurokey: The key to Globalization for a Successful Business World’,with a vocational education program which aims to contribute the innovative enterprises aiming global competetiveness by creating culture – focused new market researches and marketing strategies, managing the multinational working environment and contributing to employees to develop cultural adoptation skills. Eurokey is also important for the training program and tools developed to understand the new markets occurred in global culture and with the important and detailed analysis made between globalization, culture, business world and vocational education. General aim of the project is to create open, accessible, knowledge and skill focused vocational training environment (CVET) for SMEs and digital enterpreneurs according to the country based target markets; providing competetiveness, providing contribution to prepare suitable environment for the cooperation of local and international investors. Target group is composed of the responsible employee and employer of foreign operations in companies who want to be in global market, digital enterpreneurs and the university students in management, marketing, communication and design departments. The project consortium is from 5 countries Turkey, Italy, Poland, Latvia and Iceland, with 3 universities, 1 Vocational Training Center, 1 Enterpreneurship Development Center-incubator, 1 Chamber of Commerce, 1 Cluster, 1 organised ındustrial Zone, 1 Business Women Association, 1 Governoship. And, -developing new business models - for SMEs and digital enterpreneurs who want to grow in global market - which focuses on cultural diversities that directly effect sales and marketing both in digital area and hosting countries. -Contributing the enterprises and enterpreneurs to prepare innovative marketing strategies focused on culture of hosting countries. -Sharing the best practises of companies who managed to be in the foreign markets in the field of management of multi culture working environment. -For employers and enterpreneurs – using vocational skills effectively and for students –developing cultural competences and managing multi-culture environment skills are the main special aims of the project. Eurokey project has been implemented successfully according to Result Based Management( Inputs-Activities-Outputs-Outcome- Impact) methodology. The inputs provided are, the quality of the consortium, effectively spent budget and right planning of activities and outputs have led to the planned results. And the outcomes of the project are helping the enterpreneurs and enterprises how to find a place in global markets with the trainings developing the competences according to the needs and motivating them to have a comteteive capacity.To reach this; A2 Eurok-KeyLab & Research Analysis activity has been realised and 4 outputs have been obtained as a result of this activity: O1 International Cultural Environment and SME’s Report O2 Succesful Organizations in Global Marketing 3 Multinational Focused Training in Global Strategies O4 The Management of (Digital) Multiculturalism at Entrepreneurship To reach these outputs, a comparative analysis the effects of culture in globalization has been made for 5 partner countries, 2 surveys have been implemented to 40 SME and start-up in 5 countries, 241 courses in 19 countries 66 universities have been examined and reported. Another outcome of the project was A3 Need Analysis Activity which is determining the needs of staff who are/will be working in multinational environment and foreign markets , with surveys. Two outputs have been obtained. O5 Intercultural Management Skills Needs Analysis O6 Intercultural Management Skills in a Multi-National Single Market Needs Analysis Report In this part a survey has been prepared to measure the management of international businesses of target groups with demographic variables, and the cultural intelligence and cultural sensitivity scales have been prepared according to countries. Surveys and scales have been implemented to 200 people from 5 countries and a skills map has been prepared. With the A4 Methodology & Design Of Training Modules Activity; to obtain the related outcomes, developing the skills of staff who work/will work in international operations of companies to manage the intercultural skills and by this way getting a competetiveness advantage, restructuring the human resources of companies in n integrated and global target focused the following output as been obtained. O7 Intercultural Management Skills Training Program Modules in Global Markets ; With A5 Training Material Development activity; O8 Intercultural Management Skills Manual O9 Multilanguage E-learning Platform O10 Digital Measurement Tool prepared using Game Mechanism (Gamification) outputs have been obtained. With A6 Pilot Implementation, online training have been implemented to 155 business owner, professionals and students from 9 countries for 3 days. And with Eurokey Training Platform, open training sources have been made. With “An İndustrial Policy For The Globalisation Era” which is a sub title of ‘EU Commission 2020 Aims Second priority Sustainable Development’ , it is mentioned that the environment for SMEs will be developed and a strong base for industry will be supoorted for global competetiveness. It is aimed to ease the mobility of labor , providing balance between labor suplly and demand, strengthening capacity of social partners, and a strengtehened cooperation between stakeholders