Pathways Towards a Shared Future: Changing Roles of Higher Education in a Globalized World

Managing cultural diversity in the era of globalization of business has become a critical competency for today’s businesses. The role of universities in producing the human capital required by internationalizing businesses requires them to become more culturally diverse, including both the student body and their faculty. Managing this increasing cultural diversity and producing graduates with multicultural competencies is therefore a major academic issue and of increasing economic impact. The capacity of Asian universities to achieve this involves fundamental changes which are opposed by the existing national cultures. Introduction On center stage, in this globalizing twenty-first century, is the challenge of attracting, retaining and effectively using people in all kinds of organizations ranging from high tech firms to universities. This challenge is compounded by the increasing diversity of people with the skills to do the worlds work, as our students enter the high mobility international job market, and the market for international education in Asia continues to expand. The trend of increasing diversity reflects in part the diversity of Asia as more countries accelerate their development and enter the new global system. Diversity viewed in this context on the individual level may be defined as the variation social and cultural identities among people within an organization or a particular market. Diversity creates challenges and opportunities which do not exist within the homogenous workgroups of the past. The challenge of managing diversity lies in creating conditions that minimize