TABLE OF CONTENTS An inclusion effort that addresses the workforce diversity challenge has sprung up as well. It has become a major influence within the company. As a result, Your Company, Inc . has been able to develop and retain staff from around the globe, while building sustainable corporate knowledge within the firm.
It is a competitive reality that today s global businesses cross both borders and cultures. The increases in the offshoring of work and the softening of trade barriers are strong indications that the trend will not end any time soon (see India sidebar for a current example). As a result, staff members hail from all sorts of ethnic, educational, and socioeconomic backgrounds, forming a broad and bright mosaic within the Best Practices Enterprise . This medley of skills and talents promotes new ways of thinking and executing. Accordingly, the corporate culture is shifting, evolving, and improving.
Cross-cultural workforce inclusion is the best practice covered in this chapter-(see Figure 8.1). It is included because it is important to shed some light on what firms can do to rethink their existing cultural paradigms and recast them in ways that will help organizations benefit from the individual differences that exist among the workforce. The time has come for firms to come to grips with the underlying attitudes, beliefs, and expectations of its personnel and provide the thought leadership needed to ascertain success in the new epoch.
