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Makes the case that companies intending to become globally competitive must recruit and develop the most talented people, men and women. Describes the experience of one company in developing women for global leadership positions. Shows how this initiative integrated organizational development, team and network building and individual leadership development.

Graduates of cross-cultural management (CCM) courses should be capable of both tackling international and cross-cultural situations and creating positive value from the diversity inherent in these situations. Such value creation is challenging because these situations are typically complex due to differences in cultural values, traditions, social practices, and institutions, such as legal rules, coupled with variation in, for example, wealth and civil rights among stakeholders. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The authors argue that a scientific mindfulness approach to teaching CCM can help students identify and leverage positive aspects of differences and thereby contribute to positive change in cross-cultural situations.

Scientific mindfulness combines mindfulness and scientific thinking with the explicit goal to drive positive change in the world.

The authors explain how the action principles of scientific mindfulness enable learners to build positive value from cultural diversity. The authors then describe how to enact these principles in the context of CCM education.

Illustrates how good HR practices can help when a company becomes engulfed in conflict with neighboring communities.

Describes the case of Aracruz Celulose which, while feted with awards for its best practice on sustainability and HR, was involved in a 30‐year conflict over land ownership.

Argues that HR managers can: ensure that the firm's talent pool has the requisite leadership skills for future challenges; play a role in educating managers, workers and stakeholders so that their mindsets are changing with the times and current realities; take steps to ward off or ameliorate the effect of societal conflicts and targeting by non‐governmental organizations; educate and advocate that HRM best practices with employees and other stakeholders hold equal importance to best practices in internal operations; establish social‐performance tools to audit how well the company is doing in terms of corporate social responsibility and stakeholder relations.

Reveals that best practice in operational areas under a company's control cannot always protect firms from risks related to wider societal dilemmas.

Cautions against allowing claim and counter‐claim to fuel a festering dispute.

The purpose of this paper is to add a process perspective to the literature on repatriate knowledge transfer (RKT) and to understand how the knowledge transfer process unfolds in the repatriation context. Thus, this qualitative study uses existing knowledge transfer process models to assess their applicability to the context of repatriation and explain the micro-processes during RKT.

To provide a rich understanding of these processes from the repatriate perspective, critical incidents reported by 29 German and US American repatriates were content-analyzed.

The findings are summarized in a proposed RKT process model, which describes the roles and knowledge transfer-related activities of repatriates, recipients and supervisors as well as their interaction during four transfer phases: assessment, initiation, execution and evaluation.

The experiences of repatriates from different geographic areas as well as the perspectives of knowledge recipients and supervisors were not studied but should be included in future research. In addition, future research could test the applicability of the identified micro-processes to different knowledge transfer contexts.

Managers can use the findings to facilitate the RKT process more effectively because the type of organizational support offered can be aligned with the changing needs of repatriates, recipients and supervisors during the four identified phases.

This is the first study that takes a process perspective to understand RKT. The integration of the current findings with the existing literature can enable a more nuanced view on RKT.

The purpose of this case study is to illustrate the global risks facing an award‐winning company known for best practices in sustainability and HRM that, nevertheless, is challenged by a contentious land dispute with indigenous communities and numerous stakeholders.

This is a case study based primarily on secondary sources, such as reports and web sites of the company and its stakeholders.

Aracruz Celulose SA, a Brazilian pulp company founded by a Norwegian, owns legal title to land claimed by indigenous communities. As a result, they face a complex array of additional stakeholders with contradictory perspectives: local and international non‐governmental organizations, various Brazilian and Norwegian Government entities, the World Bank, and investors. The company runs the risk of losing land and assets, reputation, and investors. There are few simple solutions to the dilemma of unresolved property rights and agrarian reform problematic in much of Latin America. Even Aracruz's hoped – for court ruling may not guarantee an end to conflict without a creative solution.

The controversy is ongoing and the outcomes are not yet determined. Based on one case, limited generalizations can be made.

Numerous best practices in the operational areas under a company's control cannot completely protect firms from risks related to larger societal dilemmas and the need to negotiate win‐win solutions with stakeholders.

This paper aims to understand how these competencies gained will help human resource (HR) leaders become more strategic about when and how to use global mobility for talent development.

In this paper, the author defines the construct of cultural agility and describes the theoretical mechanisms through which employees can gain cultural agility through culturally novel situations such as global mobility. Cultural agility enables individuals to work comfortably and effectively with people from different cultures and in situations of cultural novelty. People with cultural agility have task-management competencies (cultural minimization, adaptation and integration), self-management competencies (tolerance of ambiguity, resilience, curiosity) and relationship-management competencies (humility, relationship building and perspective taking).

This study aims at focusing on the development of cultural agility, this paper focuses on four cascading features of a culturally novel experience that can help individuals gain this competence: (1) the level of cultural novelty in the experience, (2) the readiness of an individual for that level of cultural novelty, (3) the individual's level of awareness of the cultural norms and values inherent in the culturally novel experience and (4) the level of social support offered to that individual to learn how to understand and respond in that experience.

Each feature is discussed, concluding with the implications for future research and practitioners in global mobility and talent development.

Compares Latin American graduate students in management with work experience in government and business. Explores similarities and differences in work‐related incentives between public and private sector groups. Finds that while administrative reforms in developing countries may assume differences in the importance of job security across the two sectors and neglect the possibility of a national or community service orientation, these assumptions are not supported by this study. Discovers that although the two groups showed no difference in the importance of salary, financial incentives related to performance were significantly more important to private sector respondents as a reason to stay in the sector. Finds differences between the groups on public service motivation, an issue not previously explored in this region. Claims these findings have important implications for Civil Service reform and development of incentive systems for privatization strategies.

This article deals with the importance of managing cultural differences in developing countries for twenty‐first century organisations. With increasing business globalisation and different cultures we have in this world, maintaining and managing cultural differences becomes a challenge for managers and supervisors in the twenty‐first century. Thus, managing cultural differences is an essential skill all managers must master if they are to be successful in the global marketplace. This article also addresses how lack of understanding of cultural differences can cause serious mis‐communication, which can hinder the growth and the productivity of an organisation or company. It looks at how one’s own culture plays an important role in the way one manages, one must strive to learn, not only about the different culture which exists in the country where one wants to do business, but also, how to see one’s own culture in an objective manner. Finally, the article concludes by stressing why organisational leadership in a developing country requires a strong commitment to a high standard of conduct and being able to design and implement a bottom‐up management system which includes a two‐way exchange of ideas, values innovation and creativity that nurtures flexibility and offers members the freedom to experiment.