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A Symposium on preservation of mobilisation requirements was held in late October at the United States Naval Civil Engineering Research and Evaluation Laboratory, Port Hueneme, California. The question was very fully discussed and abstracts of some of the more important lectures, which will interest our readers, are given below.

ALTHOUGH the element silicon is second only to oxygen in order of abundance in the earth's crust the chemistry of its compounds and in particular of organo‐silicon compounds had developed but little before the turn of the century. It is true that the German chemist Friedel and his students Crafts and Ladenburg and later Polis prepared a few isolated organo‐silicon compounds during the latter half of the nineteenth century (1863–1886), but the land mark in this field is undoubtedly the classical work of Professor F. S. Kipping and his school at University College, Nottingham. This work extended over nearly forty years from 1899 to 1937 during which time a systematic study was made of this branch of chemistry.

Silicones were developed by the Dow Corning Corporation and have been manufactured in the U.S.A. for several years. More recently they have become available in Great Britain. One of the several uses is in the sphere of lubrication. Experience with these relatively new materials shows that they possess a combination of properties which go a long way in eliminating some of the problems encountered by the lubrication engineer. In this article, MR. WILLIAMS, a consulting chemist, who has been responsible for considerable original research on oils, describes some of the advantages and disadvantages that these new materials possess and points out that their particularly good viscosity index, low pour point and excellent chemical stability will make their adoption for various lubricating purposes increasingly inviting.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a scene-setting viewpoint that critically examines various diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) blind spots within the field of international business (IB). These include issues such as social justice, intersectionality, de-colonization, the co-creation of inclusive research practices in indigenous spaces, social dialogue and the gap between DEI rhetoric and reality. An additional aim of the viewpoint is also to contextualise the discussion of DEI blind spots in terms of the six papers which make up the first part of a two-part special issue on DEI in IB".

The authors build on existing DEI overview works and comment on specific DEI blind spots. The authors also discuss the role of positionality as critical reflexive scholarship practice, which they see as an essential step in problematizing structural inequalities. The authors then discuss six specific areas where DEI blindspots persist within the IB literature and link their discussion to the six papers included in the first part of their DEI special issue.

Addressing the contradictions between the business and social justice cases for DEI requires addressing the ontological contradictions between the two perspectives through problematizing structural inequalities. A key contribution of the paper is also the discussion around positionality in DEI research and the relevance of positionality statements as part of critical reflexive scholarship in support of a socially just DEI research agenda.

The authors discuss the role DEI research plays and can play within the evolution of the IB discipline. The authors apply a critical management studies perspective to pervasive DEI issues, as well as engage with the topics in the special issue through a unique critical reflexive epistemology which includes their own positionality statements as guest editors and researchers. Their critical discussion and recommendations for future research serve as a kind of whetstone to sharpen IB’s DEI research tools and in turn for IB to help sharpen DEI research’s tools, supporting it to become more socially just.

Multicultural individuals are those who identify with two or more cultures, such as Chinese-Canadians, Turkish-Germans, or Arab-Americans. They are more likely to see multiple sides of an ethical dilemma than monocultural individuals, who identify with one culture. This tendency toward ethical relativism – where ethics are seen to be relative to the context – could help multicultural individuals excel as ethical global leaders. Global leaders must manage the ethical tensions inherent in their multinational operations by understanding multiple ethical perspectives. Multiculturals’ inclination toward relativism may be driven by the structure or content of their cultural identities. The identity structure argument is based on the patterns in which individuals mentally organize their cultural identities, while the identity content argument is based on the degree to which individuals endorse relativism as a result of having internalized cultural schemas with relativist norms. We offer an exploratory test of these dual hypotheses, and find evidence to support the identity structure, but not the identity content argument. Specifically, multicultural individuals who separate their cultures are more likely to exhibit relativism in decision-making than those who integrate them. This indicates that identity patterns can drive relativism. In contrast, individuals who identify with high relativism cultures are not more likely to endorse relativism than those who identify with low relativism cultures, indicating a lack of evidence for identity content driving relativism. These findings have implications for hiring or placement managers who seek global leaders who are likely to see more than one side of an ethical issue.

Global leadership involves the ability to connect with individuals from different cultures. Connecting is an actionable process that creates mutual understanding, positive feeling, and a common approach to collaborate. Forming interpersonal connections can be an effective way for global leaders to cut across cultural differences as it is based on a universal human need for belonging. Our study aims to understand the specific actions global leaders engage in to connect with people across cultures. Furthermore, we examine how identity experiences of multicultural individuals contributed to their capabilities of connecting with people from different cultures in their role of global leader. Through a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews with multicultural individuals in global leadership positions, we develop a model of connecting across cultures involving specific leadership actions that lead to emotive, cognitive, and behavioral dimensions for connection. Our model also illustrates how multicultural identity experiences equip global leaders with qualities such as empathy, perspective-taking, and integration, which enable them to engage in actions for connecting to people across cultures. The research in this chapter contributes to a better understanding of global leadership with novel insights into how global leaders connect to people and sheds light on the advantages of multicultural identity experiences in this process.

This chapter examines the complexity of global leaders themselves. As global leadership research has begun to move beyond a limiting overemphasis on skills and competencies, we merge one focus on the deep structure of leader cognition with a focus on cultural identity that has matured largely independently. In so doing, we seek to push the field toward answering the broader question of what makes a global leader sufficiently complex to handle the vast complexities of the role. We place the construct of self-concept complexity as central to the performance of global leaders in ways ranging from organizational performance to social and community responsibility. By advancing our understanding of the role of self-concept complexity in driving global leadership outcomes, this research seeks to spur further theoretical development and practical application toward a deeper comprehension of the complexity of truly global leaders.