Introduction to Part I

Abstract

The performance of companies and of training departments are influenced by a set of contextual factors. Looking at the world economy today with its extreme dynamics between east and west, and between north and south, we see an enormous impact on the behavior of people in companies and outside of them. Migration is one of the economic factors undergoing uncertainties. Migration itself will cause effects in the demographic composition of different countries and has a substantial effect on the skill formation of a country, and also within a company. Processes of migration in Europe, for instance, lead to cultural conflicts, changes in the workforce, multilingual settings and thus communication problems.