Global skills

Global skills is the multidisciplinary expertise that connects disparate cultural and commercial ecosystems into a cohesive and interactive web. This knowledge combines management, anthropology, economics, political science, philosophy, religious studies, linguistics, and other disciplines as they pertain to the manner in which people around the world view themselves and others.

Global is different from the economic term of Globalization. Aristotle’s politics states that "In a global system the “house / home is the world itself". The challenge today is both to recognize the complementary nature of human belief systems and to define the quintessential skills for 21st century people - Global Skills.

Manfred B. Steger defines globalization as follows: "Globalization refers to a multidimensional set of social processes that create, multiply, stretch, and intensify worldwide social interdependencies and exchanges while at the same time fostering in people a growing awareness of deepening connections between the local and the distant."

The main element of Global Skills is the ability to synthesize different pockets of knowledge into a coherent theoretical and practical system - what is called a global knowledge system. The major aspect of Global Skills is therefore the ability to synthesize divergent disciplines, without undermining unique identities and cultures; the ability to keep such differences as a positive resource. From a Hegelian perspective, Global Skills synthesize elements that, if considered in themselves, might appear antithetic.

From a historical and philosophical perspective, Global Skills defines a complex system of knowledge inspired by a tradition beginning with ancient discourses including the Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddimah, Bhagvad Gita, Confucian Analects, Japanese Zen and the seminal classics of other geographies. It goes on to explore Greek cosmopolitanism, Renaissance humanism, the eighteenth century Enlightenment and the contemporary phenomena of metanationalism and transnationalism, among others. At the same time, the notion of Global Skills enables people to overcome the dichotomy West vs. East, the tribulations of history and the resurgent claims of nationalism.

Origins
The notion of Global Skill is formed by two concepts:

#Skill is metabolized or internalized knowledge, which is applied automatically to determinate and particular situations.
#Global defines the socio-cultural - and not merely geographical - dimension of 21st century human inter-relations.

The notion of global skill is based on the concept of code-switching, a term in linguistics referring to using more than one language or dialect in conversation. Bilinguals have the ability to use elements of both languages when conversing with another bilingual. What is said is syntactically and phonologically appropriate; that means that even if words from another language are included into the sentence, they will be adapted to the grammatical rules of the first language. Code-switching is now considered to be a normal and natural product of interaction between the bilingual (or multilingual) speaker's languages.

The concept of Global Skills and its link to code-switching was first developed by World Wise in 1999 in designing courses to develop a globally-minded workforce.

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