“Global” Diversity Management: The Case of Automobile Manufacturing Companies in Japan

Diversity management has been extensively studied in domestic settings. However, domestic diversity management research is inadequate for understanding diversity management concerns of global firms at the level of their strategic decision-making and cross-national coordination activities. The aim of this paper is to examine Japanese global firms in the automotive industry with a view to reveal their reasons for adoption, diffusion and implementation of global diversity management activities. The field research assumes a multi-party, multilayered approach, incorporating interviews with decision leaders in key institutional actors, including diversity managers, trade union and employers’ association representatives and, subject specialist scholars. The research also involves a case study of global diversity management in the Japanese automobile industry from a multi-stakeholder perspective. Despite their global outlook, the automotive companies still retain multinational rather than global approaches to diversity management, proposals of some remedies for overcoming current tensions in effective implementation of global diversity management activities.