Protocol, Intercultural Communication and Diplomacy for Business
Favorite quotes on protocol and international relations topics - new quotes are included monthly in The Executive Diplomat, the e-newsletter for Garza Protocol Associates.
January 2010
Ljubljana, 6 January (STA) – Delo, Slovenian newspaper, “… leading politicians have recently been bombarding the Slovenian public with the importance of the concept of business diplomacy as if this realisation was some kind of major achievement. It is no such thing, it is simply a much needed coming to senses.”
February 2010
In a recent article, Victor C. Johnson, senior public policy adviser for NAFSA: Association of International Educators, stated that he believes an overseas experience soon will no longer be an option in lining up a good job. “This is the next digital divide,” Johnson said. “The kids who graduate from school who have international experience are going to have a leg up in gaining successful lives.”
Employers are looking to hire people who understand the economies and cultures of the world, he added. “We just hear CEO after CEO saying that the work force of the future, really, the work force of the present, has to be a cross-culturally competent work force. Work forces are cross-cultural; businesses are global,” he said.
March 2010
"We must do a better job of listening, learn how people in other countries and cultures listen to us, understand their desires and aspirations, and provide them with information and services of value to them," said Judith A. McHale, undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs.
April 2010
"It's not a secret that the demographics are changing hugely, and what is considered a majority or a minority population is going to be in flux over the next five to 15 years," says Wharton marketing professor Americus Reed, who teamed up with Stefano Puntoni and Peeter W.J. Verlegh from Erasmus University's Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands to conduct a study on marketing to people with bicultural identities. "It is incumbent on marketers to address these differences."
"We have been saying it's time for marketers to start addressing these differences for over 30 years, and yet they don't! And I think it's because they are used to just putting us all in simplistic buckets that don't make sense anymore. We need to stop using old, stereotypical definitions of groups--such as "general market" and, yes, "multicultural market" (neither of which mean anything, really)--and start thinking about consumers and treating them as real people going through real life stages whose cross-cultural identity affects the way they consume products or services, communicate and behave."
May 2010
“The basic purpose of official entertaining is to help achieve policy objectives and to further interests. Entertainment is an indispensable tool for developing relationships with the cultural, political, economic, and social communities.
"A friendly conversation at a dinner party may do more to resolve differences of viewpoints than weeks at a conference table.”
Protocol The Complete Handbook of Diplomatic, Official and Social Usage, Mary Jane McCafree and Pauline Innis