Diversity and inclusion: a local or a global issue?

Abstract

Objective: This teaching case focuses on a multinational insurance firm from a developed country that decides to implement a global human resources program for diversity and inclusion (D&I) across all its branches, after realizing that some of them were already developing successful local initiatives on their own. This case is designed for graduate or undergraduate students in International Business or Human Resources disciplines, in Management and Business Administration courses. Method: This is an armchair case, based on both primary and secondary sources of information. Fictional company and character were created to illustrate the case, based on empirical evidence about many multinational insurance companies operating in Brazil. Relevance / Originality: This teaching case seeks to engage students in a discussion about how important it is to implement a D&I agenda in today’s companies, and how multinational enterprises (MNEs) should manage the duality of establishing a global program in such a sensitive matter, in which local diversity is so crucial. The case provide instructors with is a dynamic and active-learning way of teaching traditional global strategy concepts. The contemporaneity and importance of the D&I thematic allows for interesting discussions of traditional concepts. Theoretical contributions: Students are put in the protagonist’s shoes, thereby training their decision-making skills. Through dealing with issues of diversity and inclusion, students are expected to learn concepts of global strategy related to global integration (GI) versus local responsiveness (LR) strategies; subsidiaries and headquarters’ roles and contexts and traditional and reverse transfer of practices/knowledge.