Notes on a conference on "Managing Diversity" in Berlin, 2001 ...
News of the Academy (www.interculturalacademy.org)
Newsletter for July, 2001
Memories of a Diversity Conference in Berlin
Harry C. Triandis
Professor Emeritus
University of Illinois
I was invited to a conference (July 5, 6, 2001) on "diversity" in Berlin. Since I like Berlin and had not been there since 1992 I eagerly accepted. The conference was organized by the University of Potsdam, which used to be in the East German part of Germany before the wall came down, and three other Berlin universities and financed by major German corporations, such as Siemens Electric.
[...]
At the conference I gave the first paper, a warmed up version of my chapter in the 4th volume of the Handbook of Industrial / Organizational Psychology, with some additions that discussed social identity theory, the curse of categorization ("us" and "them"), dominance theory (Sidanius), ethnocentrism, and how to overcome the problems that these factors create in dealing with diversity. Of course, there was some discussion of cultural distance, and how cultural differences of various kinds create difficulties in dealing with diversity. No questions were asked by the audience.
[...]
Then came a paper by Prof. Dr. G. Krell, on the current situation in managing diversity in Germany and Europe. Basically, up to about 10 years ago these issues were ignored. But now they realize that they do have a diverse work force. It will be more diverse in the future, because with a stagnant population they are bringing new blood in the form of computer professionals from India and other places. So, now they want to develop some literature on the subject. They think that a conference like this one can result in a book that will be the first one dealing with this topic in Germany, and possibly in Europe.
Then came a paper by one of the two graduate students, who organized the conference. In fact, he had just passed his final exam for his doctorate the previous week. He said that he obtained the first doctorate in Germany on diversity. His topic was mostly economic, What are the costs and economic importance of dealing with the topic?
[...]
The next speaker was Prof. Dr. Zahra Rahnavard, who is a Minister in Iran. She is in charge of women's problems in Iran. She wore a scarf over her hair, and was accompanied by her husband and some body-guards. Her topic was "Diversity in gender, religion, and art: An Islamic-feminist perspective." I was, of course, very eager to hear that one. However, she spoke in Farsi, and was translated into German. My German is good enough for everyday conversation, but it can not deal with scientific topics. I stretched to listen carefully. I did not hear a thing about women! I heard that the Quoran is holy, and there were extensive quotes from it. But nothing about women! I thought that I might have missed something, so I asked a German professor sitting next to me. "Did she say something about women?" "No. She did not even say "she"," said my neighbor. So, I asked the graduate student who organized the conference. He has dual citizenship in Iran and Germany. He said: "In that culture it takes time to get through the preliminaries. Since she had 50 minutes for her talk, and it was translated, she had effectively only 25 minutes for her talk. She just did not get to the part of her lecture where she talked about women."
[...]
At that point the conference went into German. They discussed "best practices" in managing diversity in Germany. Representatives of several German corporations, such as Lufthansa, Daimler-Chrysler, Deutsche Bank, Shell, Ford, British Telecom, each had something to say on various panels. As I said I struggled to understand. I finally asked if this is going to continue. The organizers said: "We are very sorry. We thought that everybody would speak in English, but we can't control these people." So, I can report that this is a hot topic, many German corporations have departments for dealing with it, mostly associated with the personnel department. But I did not get most of the details. Too bad. I wish I could give you a better report.
Newsletter for July, 2001
Memories of a Diversity Conference in Berlin
Harry C. Triandis
Professor Emeritus
University of Illinois
I was invited to a conference (July 5, 6, 2001) on "diversity" in Berlin. Since I like Berlin and had not been there since 1992 I eagerly accepted. The conference was organized by the University of Potsdam, which used to be in the East German part of Germany before the wall came down, and three other Berlin universities and financed by major German corporations, such as Siemens Electric.
[...]
At the conference I gave the first paper, a warmed up version of my chapter in the 4th volume of the Handbook of Industrial / Organizational Psychology, with some additions that discussed social identity theory, the curse of categorization ("us" and "them"), dominance theory (Sidanius), ethnocentrism, and how to overcome the problems that these factors create in dealing with diversity. Of course, there was some discussion of cultural distance, and how cultural differences of various kinds create difficulties in dealing with diversity. No questions were asked by the audience.
[...]
Then came a paper by Prof. Dr. G. Krell, on the current situation in managing diversity in Germany and Europe. Basically, up to about 10 years ago these issues were ignored. But now they realize that they do have a diverse work force. It will be more diverse in the future, because with a stagnant population they are bringing new blood in the form of computer professionals from India and other places. So, now they want to develop some literature on the subject. They think that a conference like this one can result in a book that will be the first one dealing with this topic in Germany, and possibly in Europe.
Then came a paper by one of the two graduate students, who organized the conference. In fact, he had just passed his final exam for his doctorate the previous week. He said that he obtained the first doctorate in Germany on diversity. His topic was mostly economic, What are the costs and economic importance of dealing with the topic?
[...]
The next speaker was Prof. Dr. Zahra Rahnavard, who is a Minister in Iran. She is in charge of women's problems in Iran. She wore a scarf over her hair, and was accompanied by her husband and some body-guards. Her topic was "Diversity in gender, religion, and art: An Islamic-feminist perspective." I was, of course, very eager to hear that one. However, she spoke in Farsi, and was translated into German. My German is good enough for everyday conversation, but it can not deal with scientific topics. I stretched to listen carefully. I did not hear a thing about women! I heard that the Quoran is holy, and there were extensive quotes from it. But nothing about women! I thought that I might have missed something, so I asked a German professor sitting next to me. "Did she say something about women?" "No. She did not even say "she"," said my neighbor. So, I asked the graduate student who organized the conference. He has dual citizenship in Iran and Germany. He said: "In that culture it takes time to get through the preliminaries. Since she had 50 minutes for her talk, and it was translated, she had effectively only 25 minutes for her talk. She just did not get to the part of her lecture where she talked about women."
[...]
At that point the conference went into German. They discussed "best practices" in managing diversity in Germany. Representatives of several German corporations, such as Lufthansa, Daimler-Chrysler, Deutsche Bank, Shell, Ford, British Telecom, each had something to say on various panels. As I said I struggled to understand. I finally asked if this is going to continue. The organizers said: "We are very sorry. We thought that everybody would speak in English, but we can't control these people." So, I can report that this is a hot topic, many German corporations have departments for dealing with it, mostly associated with the personnel department. But I did not get most of the details. Too bad. I wish I could give you a better report.
posted by BW at 11:00 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home