What an afternoon! The second round of panel presentations has just ended, and as earlier today here are some ideas we took from them.

Petra Köppel: Diversity Management in den DAX 30-Unternehmen und Fallbeispiele zu Kultur und Religion – Vielfalt als Erfolgsbasis

Petra Köppel

Petra Köppel started off the afternoon presentations by talking about Diversity Management programmes in the Dax30 companies. She argued that due to moral obligations, demographic change and the predicted benefits for business value diversity management and the general conscience for diversity issues is on the upturn; making diversity a hard factor, not just a soft topic.

Clemens Werkmeister: Diversity reporting in Germany – an empirical investigation of DAX companies

Clemens Werkmeister

Clemens Werkmeister gave the audience deep insights into his studies concerning diversity reporting in Germany and the Global Reporting Initiative. His presentation showed what processes are in place and how numbers, or respectively structures (he claims that diversity reporting are mostly stories and nice pictures but no facts), are collected and described, in how far they can be compared to each other, enabling the audience to better evaluate the given “facts” in the future.

Ekaterina Svetlova: Complexity and Diversity in Financial Markets

Ekaterina Svetlova

Ekaterina Svetlova took the audience into a whole new approach to diversity. She argued that complexity is generated while market participants handle it in different ways; hence due to their general diversity and the diversity of their expectations. Still, according to her, any participants have a certain freedom and are free to make decisions within a certain frame.

Meera Velayudhan: Pluralist traditions, craft communities and development initiatives in Kachchh (Gujarat, Western Inida)

Meera Velayudhan

Meera Velayudhan, Senior Policy Analyst, introduced in an interesting manner Pluralist traditions, craft communities and development dialogues in Kachchh (Gujarat, western India). She outlined a variety of factors impacting diverse (craft) communities in Kachchh as well as implications for contending development dialogues. She placed great emphasis on connecting her research to contemporary and historical trendsin Kachcch. Thank you for your contribution.

Daniela Gröschke: Perceive it or forget about it – the difference between objective and subjective diversity

Daniela Gröschke

Daniela Gröschke, Assistant Professor of Intercultural Business Communication at the Friedrich-Schiller University in Jena presented aspects of the difference between objective and subjective diversity. Thereby she provided an overview on different perspectives on diversity, how to measure diversity and how diversity is perceived and approached in organizations. The interesting presentation ended in a fruitful group discussion, leaving a lasting impression.

Viktoria Jamsanova: Unterschiede in deutscher und russischer Einstellung zur Geduld

Viktoria Jamsanova

Viktoria Jamsanova from the University of St. Petersburg is primarily interested in intercultural communication. In her inspiring presentation she emphasized differences of German and Russian attitudes concerning patience and humility. Numerous examples form German and Russian texts and sayings highlighted her research results and implications for international teamwork.

We have had an extraordinary day with our friends from all across the world. Many new ideas, deep insights, inspiring lectures, exciting conversations and happy “togetherness” have marked this first day of our (re)Thinking Diversity conference. We are glad to present such enthusiastic speakers at Karlshochschule International University, illustrating a great variety of approaching diversity.

We are looking forward to its continuation during the dinner event and to an amazing second day tomorrow.

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