Archive for August, 2009

By Beth Cabrera, Thunderbird senior research fellow

Companies are facing a significant brain drain of female talent. Somewhere around 42 percent of professional women voluntarily leave their careers, at least temporarily. And only 5 percent of highly qualified women looking to re-enter the workforce would consider working for the company they left. Organizations willing to rethink the traditional career model can reverse these trends and gain a competitive advantage. To help understand how, I interviewed 25 women graduates of Thunderbird School of Global Management who voluntarily left the workforce and later returned to part-time or full-time employment.
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Henkel, the name behind popular brands such as Purex, Persil and Dial, has come a long way since the German family business opened its first detergent factory in 1876. Today the company sells home care, personal care and adhesives products in more than 125 countries. Henkel Consumer Goods President and CEO Brad Casper says the challenge now for the Global Fortune 500 company is to solidify its position as a true multinational powerhouse. Many senior executives guiding this process have gathered at Thunderbird in a custom leadership development program launched in 2007. The newest group of Henkel executives will arrive on campus in October, followed by a fourth cohort in November.
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Thunderbird’s Oath of Honor provides an anchor for the school’s graduates in an era of rapid change that has industries such as health care scrambling to adjust, the president of a hospital network said Aug. 21 during commencement exercises. “The village has gone global faster than we can keep up,” said Linda Hunt, service area president for Catholic Healthcare West Arizona, which includes Chandler Regional Medical Center, Mercy Gilbert Medical Center and St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix. “It demands a new breed of innovative leaders.”
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Companies worried about lost productivity through employee absenteeism might want to focus instead on the potentially bigger problem of “presenteeism,” Tignum co-founder and Chief Performance Officer Scott Peltin said Aug. 18 at Thunderbird. Presenteeism refers to employees who show up at the office but can’t perform their best due to depression or other ailments. “When you look at things like diabetes, high blood pressure, arthritis, back pain and depression,” Peltin said, “those all have a direct influence on your productivity.” Tignum, a global company that teaches sustainable high performance strategies, has launched an ongoing program at Thunderbird geared toward students, faculty and staff. Click here to learn more about the Thunderbird collaboration, or watch the video: Does your company suffer from ‘presenteeism’? (1:42)
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Women outscore men in their passion for diversity. But men surpass women in most other categories of global mindset, researchers at Thunderbird School of Global Management said Aug. 8 in Chicago at the world’s largest annual gathering of management scholars. Other factors besides gender that help predict a person’s global mindset include time spent abroad, foreign language proficiency, age, company size and job level. But Thunderbird Professor Mansour Javidan, Ph.D., said the way these factors correlate to global mindset is sometimes surprising, perplexing and counter-intuitive.
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Business travelers reveal plenty about their global mindset by the way they handle unfamiliar situations at international airports, Thunderbird Professor Mansour Javidan, Ph.D., said Aug. 8 in Chicago at the world’s largest annual gathering of management scholars. “The way you deal with a situation where you’re outside your comfort zone tells a lot about you,” Javidan said during a presentation at the 69th annual meeting of the Academy of Management, an association of more than 19,000 scholars and business leaders from 108 nations. | Video: Do you pass the Global Mindset airport test? (2:08)
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Global leaders who thrive in cross-cultural environments tend to be people bursting with energy, Thunderbird Professor Mansour Javidan, Ph.D., said Aug. 8 in Chicago at the world’s largest annual gathering of management scholars. “Your level of energy is a critical predictor of how good you are as a global leader,” Javidan said during a presentation at the 69th annual meeting of the Academy of Management, an association of more than 19,000 scholars and business leaders from 108 nations. | Video: High energy global leadership (1:48)
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By Olufemi A. Babarinde, Thunderbird professor

For decades African countries have been off the radar screen of many non-African corporations with global operations. Negative images in the media of famine, genocide, civil war and HIV/AIDS contribute to the marginalization of Africa. But global corporations that bypass Africa are missing tremendous business and investment opportunities on the continent. | Video: Africa shoots for World Cup windfall (3:01)
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By Darien Carroll, Thunderbird student

New Thunderbird graduates joined the alumni network this spring, educated and motivated to influence the professional community with their global outlook. But one group in particular, Global MBA On-Demand V, has stood out at Thunderbird with Global Mindset Inventory scores surpassing all other student groups. Global mindset, measured with a scientific self-assessment developed at Thunderbird, describes the global curiosity and open-mindedness that allows business leaders to influence others from different cultures and backgrounds.
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Early in her career before she became an academic, Thunderbird Professor Karen S. Walch, Ph.D., worked as an investment consultant in Puerto Rico. One client was a U.S. millionaire who wanted to locate his business in Puerto Rico. Walch says the man failed to appreciate the cultural differences in the territory and quickly became disappointed with things. Before long, his disappointment grew into frustration, judgment, paranoia and finally aggression. Walch wishes she knew back then about the Cultural Orientation Indicator (COI), a self-assessment tool that Thunderbird uses in its cross-cultural communication and negotiation classes. Among other things, Walch describes the COI as a conflict management tool that can help prevent situations like the one she encountered in Puerto Rico. “If we can manage our disappointments before they get to aggression, we can actually get business done,” Walch says. Learn more in this podcast (3:16), or visit the World Cafe blog on the Thunderbird Knowledge Network for additional podcasts on the COI from Thunderbird Professor Denis Leclerc, Ph.D., and five Thunderbird students.

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