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This chapter focuses on the diversity management concept which emerged in the United States at the end of the 1980s. As a strategic tool for effective use of the diverse workforce, the concept started to diffuse globally in recent years. However, there are concerns about the transferability of diversity management as a readymade practice. From this point of view, this chapter questions the universality of diversity management by providing evidence from the Turkish context. Findings reveal that due to cross-national differences and the local sensitivities, diversity management is subject to customization in the different contexts. In a sense, the local context reconstructs the content of the practice. On this basis, the chapter demonstrates the need for a context-specific diversity management approach.

Diversity management in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is of particular importance given the fact the UAE is the sixth country in the world for hosting the largest number of international migrants in 2017. The purpose of this exploratory study is to understand how diversity is managed in the public and private sector and to identify the most important factors to diversity manangemet in the UAE context.

A Grounded Theory approach to research was used to explore this very sensitive issue for the case study. In the absence of robust data on diversity management in the UAE, this inductive qualitative method was preferred since it does not presuppose a hypothesis and allows a contextually relevant theory to be derived from the data, which were collected through interviews with the participants from the public and private sector. An open-ended interview schedule was emailed to the purposefully selected group. Careful thematic analysis was undertaken to identify the resonant issues related to diversity management in this context.

This heralds increased demographic diversity in the public sector, even if only at a strategic level in order to achieve political and social objectives. Further, as the UAE embarks on being a Smart nation, successful diversity management will be a critical indicator of public sector reform.

The study analyzed the perceptions of the participants using a qualitatitve method which might not be considered to be as objective. Hence a confirmatory follow up study using quantitatve design will be required to verify the findings.

This chapter will explore the diversity management in the public and private sectors of the UAE, the role leaders and managers have to play, challenges faced, and what is on the horizon in this new public–private partnership environment.

This chapter suggests the need for a unified understanding of diversity management among leaders in the public and private sector of the UAE as a crucial enabler of productivity, development and social cohesion.

This heralds increased demographic diversity in the public sector, even if only at a strategic level in order to achieve political and social objectives. Further, as the UAE embarks on being a Smart nation, successful diversity management will be a critical indicator of public sector reform. This chapter will explore the diversity management in the public and private sectors of the UAE, the role leaders and managers have to play, challenges faced, and what is on the horizon in this new public–private partnership environment.

Since Richard Florida’s book The Rise of the Creative Class published in 2000, our attention has been drawn towards a peculiar characteristic of the cities where such a creative class thrives, and that is tolerance. We intend to explore in this paper whether one can use Hofstede’s “Uncertainty Avoidance” dimension to ponder if societies that are “Uncertainty avoidant” can provide a nurturing soil for a creative class to emerge within their bosom. To discuss this question, we examine the case of the Province of Québec (Canada) and most specifically, that of the city of Montréal, a city that has been dubbed by many observers as a creative city. In other words, our question is can a creative class thrive in a city that is located in an “Uncertainty avoidant” cultural and political unit?

The recent trend in globalization has had a positive impact on international education, in that it has compelled many societies to transcend national boundaries in an effort to exchange knowledge and expertize in teaching, curriculum and education policy. The practice of cultural borrowing and lending, in which one country adopts or borrows policies and practices from another, is a significant feature of international education, and has been accelerated by these globalizing trends. According to Tilly, internationalization of “capital, trade, industrial organization, communications, political institutions, science, disease, atmospheric pollution, vindictive violence, and organized crime has been producing a net movement toward globalization since the middle of the twentieth century” (Tilly, 2004, p. 13). In the area of international education, an intensification in international communication and cooperation has had a positive impact on educational research, planning and policy development (Schriewer & Martinez, 2004), and may, as some have argued, brought about a convergence of patterns in the organization of education across national boundaries. Nevertheless, globalization in education carries with it the potential to undermine developing and transitional societies in their efforts to maintain indigenous approaches to educating future citizens – a potential that may contribute to the “clash of localities” that is inherent in the globalization process, in which local tradition is frequently at odds with international trends (Mitter, 2001). A measured approach to transnational projects in education development will ensure that the process of cultural borrowing does not lead to the inadvertent export of ideas and values that are at variance with a given country's social, political and historical context, while simultaneously allowing for knowledge transfer across borders. Cultural borrowing is a necessary element in the transfer process, as it may provide the transitioning society with a model in the form of a curriculum, set of standards, or practices. However, as Dewey points out in Democracy and Education, any model or “ideal” must be adapted to meet the needs of the local context:We cannot set up, out of our heads, something we regard as an ideal society. We must base our conception upon societies which actually exist, in order to have any assurance that our ideal is a practicable one. But, as we have just seen, the ideal cannot simply repeat the traits which are actually found. The problem is to extract the desirable traits of forms of community life which actually exist, and employ them to criticize undesirable features and suggest improvement. (Dewey, 1997, p. 45)

Critical race theory (CRT) seems to face a never-ending baptism by fire. When the Trump administration sought to ban CRT from American federal training courses in 2020, this may have come as a shock to few (Lang, 2020). Perhaps of greater surprise was that mutual sentiments resonated with the UK Minister for Equalities Kemi Badenoch, a black female, who appears to oppose the teaching of CRT in principle (Thrilling, 2020). The resurgence of such denunciations is problematic in a Western world which is primed for social activism, particularly for scholars in higher education institutions, where CRT has been gaining traction as a guiding framework for research into antiracism, fairness and affirmative action. This chapter suggests that the condemnation of CRT is neither unexpected nor is it altogether absurd. Nevertheless, it aims to provide a balanced metatheoretical ‘criticism’ of CRT and offer a view on the suitability of, and prospects for, its activist research agenda in higher education. Quite often, criticisms of CRT reflect issues with its origin as a troubled bricolage of conveniently assembled ‘tenets’, which do not lend themselves easily to the burden of evidentiary production required in higher education research and practice. In this review, I analyse CRT, through its bricolage-style characteristics, as primarily an explanatory theory, with respect to its application against racialised issues in higher education policy. It is hoped this chapter offers academic and activist researchers a way past the shadow of CRT's bricolage, by defusing some of the misgivings towards its inherent limitations.