One issue that should rise to the top of the corporate agenda in 2008 is diversity -- or, more specifically, how managers and leaders deal with it. Diversity has been on the agenda for decades -- differences of class, gender, ethnicity, faith, culture, education and sexual orientation are well understood -- but diversity has taken centre stage in recent years due to factors such as advancing globalisation, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet the concept of humanity seems to have disappeared.
In our headlong rush to manage the challenges of multiculturalism, we seem to have forgotten this basic point. Globalisation has brought an added level of complexity to multiculturalism as talented international managers move around the world and competition grows from dynamic emerging markets. In the US, managers are increasingly reporting to foreign bosses with more international outlook. Take some recent senior appointments – Muhtar Kent, who holds US and Turkish citizenship, was recently named boss of Coca-Cola, while Vikram Pandit, Indian-born and raised in the US, and Sir Win Bischoff, German-born and raised in South Africa, have been recently appointed chief executive and executive and chairman of Citigroup respectively. Recent research by Heidrick & Struggles found that only one-third of Fortune 100 CEOs have international experience (defined as having worked at least a year on foreign soil), while four out of six chief executives in the FTSE 100 have served outside the UK at some point in their career.
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