Abstract
Diversity management has emerged as a unique agenda of today's corporations in the global economy. One important area of corporate diversity management is supplier diversity, which is an inclusive growth program designed to help develop under-represented businesses into competitive suppliers of corporations. A major challenge of supplier diversity is that many minority suppliers lack the capability to deliver products which the corporate buyers need. Another major challenge is that few minority suppliers have the ability to participate in the global markets opportunities. We address these two problems by proposing an innovative “Flying High, Landing Soft” platform for international education in supplier diversity to help multinationals manage their global supplier diversity.
TopThe “Flying High, Landing Soft” platform, having two components “Landing Soft” and “Flying High,” is grounded in the theory of Input-Process-Output Model of Strategic Entrepreneurship (Hitt et al. 2011; Sirmon et al. 2011) and docility-based distributed cognition (Simon 1993; Secchi 2010). The framework has four major components: (1) docility-based learning communities with shareable networked resources as the inputs; (2) processes of resource orchestration with accessible social channels and effective coaching; (3) cultivating/advancing storytellers with effective storytelling of how they developed their businesses successfully as the outputs; and (4) fostering a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement of the platform by feeding back to the communities and enriching the networked resources.
Key Terms in this Chapter
MBE: Minority business enterprises.
Student Incubator: An incubator providing individual coaching and networking services to allow students to advance their business plans.
Supplier Connection: An initiative powered by IBM to help small businesses in US grow and create jobs by enabling them to connect with the supply chains of Fortune 500 companies, mid-market firms, and other enterprises.
Strategic Sourcing: Incorporating supply chain sourcing into the formation of company’s business strategy.
Supplier Diversity: An inclusive growth program designed to help develop under-represented businesses into competitive suppliers of corporations.
Soft Landings: A process to help a company from one country land softly – without crashing – into the market of another country through a designated incubator.
Mobile Classroom: A mobile vehicle effectively providing critically needed business counseling and related assistance for women- and minority-owned businesses in rural communities.
Strategic Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship culture developed in a large corporation as a part of its growth strategy.
Global Entrepreneurship: International entrepreneurship programs helping entrepreneurs connect with resources to grow their businesses globally.
Franchising: A business opportunity based on granting the business rights and collecting royalties in return.