2×2 Matrices

From Chetan Bhagat’s One Night @ the Call Center (2005):
“‘Maybe I can explain this to you with the help of a 2×2 matrix,’ Bakshi said and bent down to write ‘High‘ and ‘Low‘ along the boxes. I had to stop him.“

The dirty little secret for all you potential intermulticultural hucksters out there is to simply articulate your scheme into a 2×2 matrix that is easily penetrable into the managerial brain. It’s that easy.

The Cultural Perversity Agenda

From M.R. Hammer’s The Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI): An Approach for Assessing and Building Intercultural Competence, in M.A. Moodian (Ed.), Contemporary Leadership and Intercultural Competence: Understanding and Utilizing Cultural Diversity to Build Successful Organizations (in press) :
“Individuals at the Acceptance level are typically curious and interested in cultural differences and committed to the cultural diversity agenda.“

An infamous charlatan on the intercultural scene, who uncannily bears a resemblance to Dr. Monroe on The Simpsons, makes much talk about aligning the global workforce to the “cultural diversity agenda”. The presence of a definite article directly implies that we should all understand what this agenda is, and indirectly implies that we should accept it as a good thing. He’s even got 2×2 matrices to hammer these implications in, no pun intended.

Now, before we take the sage’s regimen of psychometric tests and debriefing sessions, and weaken our resolve until we no longer question, let’s take time to ask:

What exactly is this cultural diversity agenda, anyway?