The next head of General Electric will be somebody who spent time in Bombay, in Hong Kong, in Buenos Aires. We have to send our best and brightest overseas and make sure they have the training that will allow them to be the global leaders who will make GE flourish in the future Jack Welch, […]
Read More… from Multicultural Experience: Better Performance, Better Job Prospects
Spending time overseas has long been associated with the development of a more open and optimistic view of humanity and the world. In his 1869 autobiographical work Innocents Abroad, Mark Twain described travel as “fatal to prejudice, bigotry and narrow-mindedness”, arguing that “broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating […]
Read More… from How Travelling Abroad Builds Trust and Tolerance
Recent decades have seen increased focus on corporate governance and business ethics — and an increased number of ethics-based courses at business schools. While this is true of countries across the world, South Africa can be considered a special case. In South Africa, dramatic changes to the corporate governance regime have coincided with — and, […]
Read More… from Changing Attitudes to Business Ethics: Insights from South Africa
Despite decades-long efforts to eradicate it, corruption continues to be a serious business risk in emerging markets. Policies by national and international governments have had only limited success; so, too, have strategies by companies. The difficulties are often said to be particularly great in Russia, where the rule of law has been diverted by a […]
Read More… from Reflective Leadership to Counter Corruption in Emerging Markets
A successful global leader is someone who can operate effectively across national boundaries and cultures, defining goals that will appeal to a diverse set of people, whether individuals in their own company or external groups and organizations. And although many skills are equally relevant to domestic leadership (i.e. business acumen, flexibility, interpersonal skills) there are […]
Read More… from The Role of Cultural Self-awareness in Global Leadership
Africa’s growth and development prospects over the past decade have attracted the attention of investors, development agencies and governments across the world. ‘Traditional partners’ — i.e. the Americans and the Europeans — have been joined by new ‘players’ from Asia and Latin America. China, unsurprisingly, leads the emerging-power league: trade between the country and the […]
The migration of nationals from less-developed countries, once thought of as ‘brain drain’, has been ‘re-framed’. A new concept, ‘brain circulation’, has taken root — and with it the idea that members of the diaspora can be ‘mobilised’ to benefit the economy back home. Interpersonal ties are increasingly seen as a way to diffuse […]
Read More… from Knowledge Sharing Networks Between Developing and Developed Countries
"Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" – A person is a person through other persons. (from the humanist African philosophy Ubuntu) The ‘bottom of the pyramid’ (BoP), the world’s poorest socio-economic group, as defined by business thinker C. K. Prahalad and his colleagues, has received much attention from marketing academics and practitioners in the past 10 years, both […]
Read More… from Collectivism and Consumers at the ‘Bottom of the Pyramid’ in South Africa
A growing body of literature demonstrates the positive impact of regional clusters and networks on innovation. Including links to government agencies and research institutes as well as to similar companies and their distributors and suppliers, intra-cluster ties (ICTs) are seen as a gateway to technical know-how, trade contacts and capital for small businesses. They encourage […]
Read More… from Innovation and External ‘Clusters’ in Emerging Markets
Many research studies provide evidence of the impact of culture on leadership. For example, the Global Leadership and Organizational Behaviour Effectiveness study or GLOBE, one of the most extensive comparative leadership research projects, has recently shown that while ideal characteristics are the same in all countries, some leadership styles are endorsed more in some cultures […]
Read More… from Global Leadership: One Size Does Not Fit All
