Leadership quality, customer focus and the unremitting pace of globalization are among the top challenges facing competitive organizations in 2005, according to a panel of eight business management experts interviewed recently by BetterManagement, the comprehensive Internet resource for decisive leadership.

“We asked thought leaders from around the world to describe the most significant challenges facing competitive organizations in 2005,” said Jeanette Slepian, President of BetterManagement. “The panelists agreed that globalization continues to radically transform the business environment. As a result, leaders everywhere face unrelenting pressure to achieve more with less, to maximize the value of customer relationships and to realize the full potential of human capital investments.”

John Brandt of the MPI Group predicted that managing globalization will continue to create headaches for corporations throughout the world. Relationships between stakeholders become more complex. Increased global trade often causes local problems, said Brandt.

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New Yorkers who do not speak English face enormous problems communicating with medical professionals at the city’s private and public hospitals, a report released yesterday reveals.

Nearly 75% of the 51 hospitals surveyed by the city controller’s office failed to provide Spanish-language services to callers to one or more of the hospitals’ departments.

“Here in New York City, the world’s melting pot and home to over 2 million foreign-born residents, it is unconscionable that basic health care services remain out of reach for citizens who don’t speak English,” Controller Bill Thompson said.

According to the 2000 Census, nearly 40% of the city’s population is foreign-born, with 52% of those residents coming from Latin America.

“But while the face of New York is changing every day, our hospitals are trapped in an English-only time warp,” Thompson said.

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There’s a difference between the pre-packaged Shanghai stir-fry vegetables in my refrigerator and a McDonald’s restaurant in Brazil.

On a trip to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, last year, I visited Rocinha favela, one of the largest hillside shantytowns in the world. As I walked into the hillside community, surrounded by street children digging through garbage for their next meal, I noticed a McDonald’s restaurant on the corner.

The golden arches stood out amid the noticeable poverty of the community.

When I asked a resident about the presence of McDonalds, he replied that the favela residents pleaded for a McDonald’s restaurant because it made them feel connected to the rest of the city of Rio de Janeiro, and by extension, to the global community.

The golden arches symbolize inclusiveness in commercial society. Attached to the brand McDonald’s is a particular idea of modernity and development. Rocinha favela residents desired to participate in a global culture that eats McDonald’s hamburgers.

Suddenly, the difference between the pre-packaged Shanghai stir-fry vegetables in my refrigerator and the McDonald’s restaurant in Brazil is obvious.

When I take my Shanghai Stir-Fry vegetables out of the microwave and savour the exotic flavouring, I do not feel a part of Shanghai culture. By contrast, a McDonald’s hamburger carries a symbolic value to a low-income Brazilian. The hamburger symbolizes inclusiveness to a global consumer culture that can afford to purchase a hamburger.

The food we eat not only contains nutrients and minerals to keep our bodies healthy but also contains a psychological element, reflected in how we perceive our economic status in the world.

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I spent the first eight years of my life in the United States, where I was born. The next eight years were spent in Venezuela, my father’s native country. While living in Venezuela, I witnessed the arrival of Burger King. The Venezuelan fast food chain Tropi Burger or any of the local Cuban hamburger joints served better tasting burgers than Burger King’s, which tasted like they had been shipped down from the United States frozen (presumably because they had). But there was something special about eating at Burger King. It was American. Same goes for chocolate. I grew up on some of the best milk chocolate in the world in cacao-producing Venezuela. Nowadays, Venezuelans are eating American chocolate and the founder of Tropi Burger brought T.G.I. Friday’s and Benihana to Venezuela. Why? Because they’re American.

Univision’s dominance of the U.S. Hispanic TV market isn’t deterring Spanish- and English-language competitors. More than five dozen cable and broadcast networks now are vying for a share of the market, according to industry reports, with the most recent new offerings aimed at an increasingly acculturated community.

The entrepreneurs behind the moves are banking that English-dominant Hispanics will prefer culturally attuned English-language shows over Spanish-language and mainstream network fare.

And the market continues to be increasingly attractive. Ad spending targeting Hispanics on all network and local TV is expected to reach nearly $2 billion this year – up almost 22 percent over last year. Many industry watchers see a growing market for relevant English-language programming to capture younger, acculturated Hispanic viewers.

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Census respondents could choose from six racial categories, including an interesting option listed as “some other race,” and could choose more than one category. That meant that there were 63 possible combinations of the six basic racial categories.

The Census Bureau recognized that in a diverse country, Americans should be given the liberty to identify themselves on their own terms, not the government’s.

Tafoya found that of those choosing to identify themselves as Hispanic, 48 percent identified as white and 42 percent saw themselves as “some other race.” In fact, the vast majority of Americans choosing “some other race” were Hispanics.

In Texas, where Latinos experienced both Southern-style racial segregation and the civil rights movement, 63 percent of U.S.-born Latinos identified themselves as white. In the rest of the country, particularly California, 45 percent of native-born Latinos identified as white.

Tafoya explored the differences between Hispanics who described themselves as white and those who did not. Through a 2002 National Survey of Latinos, she found that those who are more educated, affluent and involved in their communities and who consider themselves Americans are more likely to identify themselves as white.

Millions of Latinos who were younger, less educated, poorer and less likely to speak English tended to find themselves socially and economically marginalized and chose “some other race.”

Tafoya’s report highlights the danger of viewing Latinos as a homogeneous population.

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Influenced by the growing Spanish community, the importance of Spanish food in the cuisine of other Hispanic groups and more aggressive marketing by Spanish food manufacturers, more and more South Floridians are discovering the taste of Spain.

While some stores have long stocked a few Spanish products such as olive oil or the nougat candy turron, now an avalanche of products from la Madre Patria — as Hispanics call the Spanish motherland — are making their way to South Florida homes and there are even stores that carry Spanish foods exclusively.

Imports from Spain more than doubled from $332 million to $679 million at the Port of Miami-Dade from 2002 to 2003, according to the most recent figures available. Food and beverage imports accounted for more than 20 percent of the increase.

Food industry analysts say Spanish delicatessen foods and wines are now competing for the same shelves that French and Italian products have occupied for decades.

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When Jorge Fiterre started his company Condista to distribute Spanish-language television channels in the United States, he had one client in hand and had to hunt down more. Now he’s representing 15 channels and they come to him.

“Five years ago, it was a nice idea to have some Spanish-language programming. Now it’s a must-have for the cable operator,” said Fiterre, who’s based in Coral Gables.

To say Hispanic pay television is booming may be an understatement. There are now 75 networks, both Spanish-language and English-language, catering to U.S. Hispanic viewers, according to Multichannel News and Broadcasting & Cable.

Nineteen networks were launched in 2004 alone. And they followed 14 new entries in 2003. Still more are coming — five channels are slated to go up this year by the trade journals’ count. The new Hispanic entries represent just a fraction of the hundreds of English-language channels available and going on line, but it’s a hefty number for a market that’s still emerging.

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Latin American countries have grappled for years with the need to provide basic services to the poor. Skewed income distribution leads to luxury apartments and flashy shopping districts a few miles from shanty towns and stolen car-parts markets. Corrupt and undependable police forces add little sense of security. Few of these problems will change in the coming year.

Politics throughout the region have shifted, however. Voters have chosen left-of-center governments in a half-dozen Latin American countries in recent years and may continue to do so. They want leaders who will pay attention to immediate social problems even if that means veering from privatization and globalization policies popular in the 1990s. Most voters feel such trickle-down policies have made little difference in their pocket books.

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Living in Puerto Rico and learning of open source made me curious. What is the state of open source in the world? After doing some research, I was impressed with what I found and I now believe that the biggest adoption rates of open source will be in China, India, Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, Southeast Asia, and the former Soviet Republic. As an example, today another Chinese Linux group joined the Open Source Development Laboratory (OSDL).

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If you want to be like Dr. Dolittle and talk to the animals, it might help to know that rats can tell the difference between languages.

Spanish researchers found that rats were able to use rhythm and intonation speech cues to distinguish between spoken Dutch and Japanese. This makes rats only the third type of mammal — along with humans and Tamarin monkeys — who have been shown to possess the ability to recognize different speech patterns.

The findings appear in the January issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Animal Behavior Processes.

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The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association has more about speech and language.

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Justice, just as crime, comes in all languages.

Without question, much of the work of Hampden Superior Court would come to a grinding halt without interpreters.

Take a recent Wednesday, when seven co-defendants in a cocaine trafficking case are standing in front of Judge Constance M. Sweeney with their lawyers, for a hearing on motions filed in the case.

All are listed on the court docket as “interpreter needed.” Three Spanish interpreters stand amidst the crowd, with each simultaneously interpreting for two or three defendants. Defendants look toward the interpreters to find out what is being said about this important point in their lives.

At the end of the process, Sweeney says to lawyers and defendants, “Thank you all very much. And thank you to the interpreters.”

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Once again, job seekers can look forward to prosperity in the biggest U.S. industry – health care.

Advances in medical technology are propelling a longevity and wellness revolution. In turn, the hiring climate heralds a robust 2005 for those who can deliver much-needed services.

“Health care workers are in demand, and they know it,” said a Career Builder.com quarterly employment forecast. “More than 300,000 jobs have been created in health care in the last year, with more on the way.”

A 2004 nationwide survey shows a $24.16 average hourly wage – almost a 20 percent jump from $21.26 in 2001.

Statistics like these should encourage more minorities to go into nursing and other medical fields, according to a diversity study released in February by Washington’s Institute of Medicine. Latinos represent 12 percent of the U.S. population but only 2 percent of registered nurses.

Brian Smedley, the institute’s senior program officer and the study’s director, said more workers are needed who can cross cultural and linguistic barriers.

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Five years ago, ProFlowers, an online florist based in San Diego, pumped $500,000 into market and technology research that would, the company hoped, help it move quickly into Europe and Japan. Within just a few months, staying in the United States market suddenly seemed much more appealing.

“We naïvely assumed that everybody would look at the Internet and see it the same way,” said Bill Strauss, chief executive of Provide Commerce, the parent company of ProFlowers. “But consumer behavior was absolutely different.”

This year, though, the company is joining the growing ranks of online businesses that are ready again to dip their toes into foreign waters, as sales growth in the American Internet market begins to slow.

Analysts and Internet executives who have experience with foreign retail operations, though, warn that such forays remain harder than they may appear.

“Long term, international is the place to be,” Mr. Strauss said.

Sales projections easily explain why retailers explore such measures. Over the next five years, Ms. Johnson said she expected the European electronic commerce market to grow at an annual rate of 33 percent – more than twice the rate in the United States. The percentage of Europeans who are online continues to grow, whereas the United States, by contrast, is adding relatively few new Internet users each year because most Americans are already online, Internet analysts say.

The success of Amazon.com’s international sales efforts has also helped spur the trend of online retailers expanding globally. During its latest earnings announcement in late October, Amazon.com said that its North American sales had grown 15 percent in the third quarter compared to the same period in 2003. Meanwhile, sales for the company’s British, German, French, Japanese and Chinese sites were up 52 percent in the quarter compared to the same period a year earlier.

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Wealth is soaring among fast-growing Hispanics — yet 56% have no bank accounts

When National City Corp. bank decided to roll out 78 new branches in Chicago two years ago, it went in knowing its market. With Hispanics expected to account for virtually all of the city’s population growth over the next decade, the bank hired dozens of Spanish-speaking staffers and printed thousands of glossy pamphlets, hawking savings accounts to new immigrants and explaining the benefits of IRAs to more established Latinos. This year, the nation’s 10th-largest bank will double its Hispanic marketing budget, targeting middle-class Latinos with direct mail offering mortgage financing and money-market accounts, all written en español. “A simple hello in Spanish,” says Christian Sandoval, vice-president of Hispanic marketing at National City, “can open the door to a Hispanic better than a product with a 4.5% interest rate.”

From Bank of America Corp. (BAC) to Banco Popular, tapping into the growing Hispanic market is increasingly key for U.S. financial institutions. Indeed, U.S. banks may soon go on a shopping spree in search of smaller regional players with ties to Latino communities. They’d better hurry: Foreign banks such as Spain’s Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria have already snapped up banks in Texas, California, and Florida. Now, predicts Jack M. W. Phelps, senior financial analyst for the the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., “we’ll see domestic banks buying small Hispanic-oriented banks to acquire their skills.”

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“A world of uncertainty” is how the Detroit Free Press introduces its “GM, Asia and the new reality” special section. The four-part series — online at www.freep.com/money/autonews/gm-intro20e_20041220.htm — looks at the General Motors Co. operations in Asia, India and Detroit.

The series covers the potential and hurdles that GM faces and includes reactions from employees, retirees and suppliers. Don’t overlook the graphics, editorials and letters to the editor. For example, the “China statistics” graphic shows a population of 1.29 billion and labor force of 778.1 million. China graduated 325,000 engineers in 2003; the United States had 65,000 such grads. Readers debate economics, business greed, union power and Buy America.

This series is valuable to anyone interested in how business is conducted in China or India, concerned about what it will take to keep the United States strong in the world market and worried about how globalization affects the U.S. middle class.

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