Excellence Centre for Intercultural Management, Diversity and Inclusion

Welcome to the website of the Excellence Centre for Intercultural Management, Diversity and Inclusion at ESCP Business School! The goal of our institution is to deepen the understanding of intercultural, diversity and inclusion-related issues in organisations and to translate the latest scientific insights into practice.

In the 1980s, the American economist and Harvard Business School professor Theodore Levitt popularised the term ‘globalisation’ by writing about emerging global markets and the advantages of standardised consumer products. More than thirty years later, this very phenomenon – globalisation – has had profound effects on business operations across the globe, and the cross-border activities of companies have made the concept of culture highly relevant to organisations and managers.

In addition, trends like the ever increasing workforce mobility or digitalization further diversify the workforce composition of companies, which is not only limited to cultural diversity, but also includes gender, age, LGBTQ+ or even personality. A promising approach that allows companies to not only cope with a highly diversified workforce but also leverage its potential is inclusion, which also represents a major cornerstone of our Excellence Centre.

Nowadays, global managers have to take account of regional or country-specific cultural characteristics, as neglecting these social peculiarities might result ultimately in failed business strategies and economic loss. At the same time, the workforce has grown increasingly diverse and leaders and employees have to work with people from countries other than their own. In order to navigate successfully the challenges associated with these developments, managers and organisations have to acquire a sophisticated and comprehensive intercultural understanding.

The Excellence Centre for Intercultural Management aims at supporting these needs by helping students and professionals develop their intercultural competences. We offer innovative learning formats that enable individuals to become culturally competent global leaders. In addition, we conduct high-profile academic and practice-oriented research projects in the field of intercultural management, and aim at collaborating with a large network of academics and organisations.

Learning

We offer a variety of educational programmes that address the role and the potential of diversity, culture and inclusion in organisations.

Expertise

We offer expertise to organisations and help them cope with the challenges of an increasingly diverse workforce.

Community

We are building a large network of partners working in the field of intercultural management, diversity and inclusion.

News

Watch Free Webinar on Culture Serious Games – International Human Resource Management Conference 2020

Professor Marion Festing shares her knowledge and experience in digital teaching innovations from developing the culture serious game Moving Tomorrow – An Intercultural Journey. “Serious games offer opportunities to incorporate real life experience in teaching” explains Professor Marion Festing on the International Human Resource Management (IHRM) Webinar 2020. Professor Marion Festing was a keynote speaker at the IHRM Webinar 2020. […]

A Cultural Journey – Part 3

Challenges of an international workplace – creating an inclusive world All good things must come to an end. After walking through 100 years of cultural research history and understanding recent cultural frameworks together, we will end this three-part blog by taking a look into the future, presenting how latest research can help us to navigate a rapidly changing world. Societies […]

A Cultural Journey – Part 2

In the last blog, we visited the bustling market square of Marrakesh and walked through 100 years of cultural research history together. Today, we will continue our journey where we left off, uncovering the shortcomings of past frameworks and exploring some recently developed frameworks that compensate some of the weaknesses of past research. First, we take a look at the […]