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The concept of cultural diversity has emerged as an influential one having impact on multiple policy and legal instruments especially following the adoption of the UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions in 2005. The discussions on its appropriate implementation are however profoundly fragmented and often laden with political considerations. The present brief paper offers some thoughts on the meaning of cultural diversity and its implementation in the digital networked environment, taking into account the effects of digital media upon cultural content creation, distribution and consumption. The paper was meant to be part of a document prepared by a civil society organisation for the OECD ministerial meeting in Seoul 2008 on the future of the Internet.

The Arizona Schools for the Deaf and the Blind have a multicultural population of students that has led to multiple opportunities to enrich the school programs and enhance each student's life. This article describes two such programs: multicultural diversity and vocational planning and work experience.

Contributed articles with special reference to India

The aim of this introduction is to contextualise the multifarious notion of cultural diversity by analysing, firstly, its relations with globalisation as well as the different normative actions undertaken by UNESCO to protect it against the negative impacts of the globalisation processes. This introduction also explains how globalisation can be beneficial for cultural diversity and contribute to new, fluid and deterritorialised phenomena. Finally, fear of cultural diversity, characterised by ethnocentric attitudes that attempt to preserve "authentic identities", is briefly touched upon, along with the obvious limitations of such stances. The second part of this introduction presents the articles selected for this issue among the background papers commissioned by UNESCO to help to draft the 2009 World Report on cultural diversity. Each article sheds light on particular dimensions of cultural diversity: in combination, they provide a valuable overview of its multiple meanings and contexts.

With the rhetoric in international management espousing the value of being able to access and capitalise on the knowledge of a workforce with international experience in order to compete globally and the need to embrace diversity (including cultural or ethnic diversity) in and across organisations, this paper discusses the findings from a qualitative research undertaking where senior and middle managers working for multinational organisations in a cross-section of industry sectors were interviewed. A total of twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with "foreign" managers based in Europe, the majority hired on local contracts. The findings presented in this paper outline the value of following an international career from the personal viewpoint. The interviewees' perceptions of their additional competency of multicultural experience and the corresponding value recognition by their employers are also described. While most participants in the study acknowledge their international status as having been a factor in their recruitment and professional role within the organisation, the opportunities for hierarchical advancement within their employing organisations are contingent on the respective country job market conditions and policies and internal politics which at times appear prejudiced against the "foreign" workforce. This naturally has repercussions for the retention of key employees which have the international acumen supposedly of major importance for multinational organisations operating in the global economy. Where strategic human resource management propounds the competitive advantage organisations can achieve through the effective use of their human capital, this paper discusses the "reality" as perceived by the interviewees in this study, outlining the implications for strategic human resource management in practice.