This week finds me in Glasgow running training course for a, mainly, Scottish group who work for an international organisation and find themselves interfacing on a daily basis with people from just about every corner of the world. The main thing that struck me with the group was the pride in ‘Scottishness’ they displayed – they are working in a global role, talk to people in Pakistan and Moscow on a daily basis but are still firmly rooted in their own national identity. What defines them is not the international nature of the work they do on a daily basis but more parochial, local issues.

This seeming paradox between the local and the global makes me think of a question I am constantly asked by people all around the world when running training programmes on the impact of cultural differences on international business.

The question usually goes something like this – ‘With the growth of the internet, global travel, international companies etc., doesn’t this eventually mean the inevitable eradication of local or national cultural characteristics?’

As I am constantly asked the questions, I have naturally given the answer a great deal of thought and after long and earnest consideration my profound answer is that I really don’t know what is going to happen. It is certainly true that there are tremendous pressures coming to bear from economic and market forces for a more globally homogenous world (it’s no longer possible, for example, to sit in an airport lounge and play ‘spot the nationality’ from the clothes people are wearing as everybody now wears exactly the same things). However, when I travel the world and watch the news, I see another global force at work – this brings me back to the Scots I was with today – and that force is the growth of regionalism and independence movements. From Kosovo to Scotland, from Quebec to the Horn of Africa people are asserting their rights to their own independence. People feel passionately that they don’t want to be subsumed into a greater whole.

Which of these competing tensions will win out in the end? Will we end up with some kind of global cultural soup where everybody dresses, acts and communicates in the same way or will people’s pride in their own cultural identity fight against this tide? I suppose only time will tell.

If I do eventually work out what is going to happen in the future, I’ll let you know.