Global Literacies: Lessons on Business Leadership and National Cultures

Cutting-edge corporations are talking more and more about the emergence of a true worldwide marketplace, and about how it is dramatically reshaping the way they do business. Global Literacies, by psychologist and businessman Robert Rosen, takes this conversation one thought-provoking yet practical step further by comparing the process to a child's gradual mastery of words and ideas. Accordingly, he suggests, businesses venturing onto the global stage first "must learn to read the world's new language" if they really hope to succeed. He combines a worldwide survey of more than 1,000 corporate leaders, in-depth studies of 28 national cultures, and one-on-one interviews with 75 multinational CEOs (such as Leo van Wijk of Royal Dutch Airlines, Canon's Ryuzaburo Kaku, Sir Peter Bonfield of British Telecommunications, and Coca-Cola's M. Douglas Ivester) to show how pacesetters "see global challenges, think with an international mindset, create fresh leadership behaviors and mobilize people in culturally mindful ways." The road to success via literacy that he subsequently develops and explains in this book includes "unlearning our past assumptions," cultivating a "flexible mind" that is comfortable with chaos and change, and discovering how differences among people, companies, and countries affect the institutions we build and the strategies we employ. --Howard Rothman