Developing a Global Mindset

Chapter twelve examines management theories about globalization and the management skill of developing a global mindset. Globalization has fundamentally altered the business landscape. Not in a literal sense per se, but for all practical purposes it is a small world after all. More than ever organizations operate across national borders and information travels the far reaches of the globe at a faster pace than it once did between neighboring villages. In fact, one would be hard pressed to identify an organization that does not have an international competitor, supplier, customer, contributor, or stakeholder among its ranks. As such management can no longer be viewed as a local phenomenon but rather a transnational profession that challenges its members to understand, adapt, and learn from a seemingly countless variety of cultural contexts. Even if one artificially constrains their focus on the purely domestic arm or sphere of a business, they will almost certainly encounter an internally diverse set of employees who have been born in, educated by, or otherwise intertwined with globally relevant differences in, for example, ethnicity, race, gender, religion, values, language, communal norms, and socioeconomic background. There is simply no escaping the fact that the modern manager must execute the functions described in this book with a careful eye to their relevant cultural contexts. Therefore in this twelfth and final chapter we look at how organizations can adopt and perpetuate a global mindset so to respect, respond, and leverage a complex and multidimensional mixture of characteristics in this age of increasing diversity in the workplace environment.