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 Complying with cultural diversity, whether at the management, human resources or marketing level, can reap big dividends for businesses, according to a wide-ranging United Nations report on intercultural dialogue released today.
“The business world is beginning to understand and respond to the challenges of cultural diversity as a key factor of economic success,” says the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Report Investing in Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue.
“In an increasingly global marketplace, the capacity to create a universe with which consumers can identify adds significantly to a product’s value. Today, cultural diversity has a central role to play in the conception, brand image and marketing strategies of products that are successful in the global market,” it adds.
Multinational corporations are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of diversifying and customizing their products to penetrate new markets and meet the expectations of local consumers, according to the report, which covers a raft of issues ranging from migration, to languages, education, sustainable development, and democratic governance.
“As a result, cultural diversity today figures as prominently on private-sector agendas as it does on those of political decision-makers at the national or international level,” it says, citing major global brands, such as Nike and Coca-Cola, which spend millions of dollars advertising and promoting their products to align with the cultures, needs and aspirations of consumers.
Cultural diversity, too often reduced to the protection of heritages in danger, is also the development of intercultural skills, the search for an antidote to expressions of cultural isolationism, the lever of the effective exercise of universally recognized human rights and a means to reduce imbalances in the world trade in creative products, it adds. continue reading article at source
Key figures from the report:
Estimates set at 6,000 to 8,000 the number of languages in the world today, which – although one language does not necessarily correspond to one culture (several cultures can speak the same language, and in one culture different languages may be spoken) – gives an idea of cultural diversity.
There are many imbalances in the global trade of creative products: Africa’s share remains marginal (at less than 1% of exports), despite its abundance of creative talent.
Most of the 75 million children who did not go to school in 2006 (55% of whom were girls) were from cultural ‘minorities’, indigenous populations or nomads.
Half of the languages in the world are spoken by linguistic communities of less than 10,000 people.
While in 2000 53% of Internet users were English-speaking their number fell to 29% in 2009.
Developing countries’ exports of cultural and media equipment increased rapidly between 1996 and 2005, growing from US$51 billion to US$274 billion, which showed the emergence of so-called “counter-flows”, which are countering the extreme concentration of media ownership.
Crafts and tourism are a major source of revenue for developing countries: crafts production and tourism represent more than 25 % of the GDP of Morocco, for example. Get the report here (pdf) read more about the report here
Fair trade has grown rapidly, by an average of 40% over the last five years.
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