South Africa’s cultural diversity and generally positive approach is gaining increasing world recognition, with big business beginning to tap into it.

This emerged early this month after AutoUni, the VWAG-owned higher education institution in Germany, announced it had chosen South Africa as the “ideal” venue for the presentation of one of its higher education management development programme modules from next year.

The institution said its South African subsidiary would host the module on “managing diversity” beginning next year.

AutoUni, based in Wolfsburg, is VW’s own post-graduate learning institution which offers Master’s degree programmes globally for VW managers and other specialists in the automotive sector. It was established two years ago.

With effect from next year, a module on “managing diversity” would be part of a Master’s degree programme on “Leadership in a Global Context”.

The module to be presented in SA is aimed at teaching fundamental skills to managers within the group who must rapidly adjust to changing planning margins, perspectives and technologies, as well as operating effectively in various cultures.

The module was developed in collaboration with German diversity consultant Michael Stuber and the University of Stellenbosch, one of AutoUni’s academic partners.

Prof Walther Zimmerli, the founder-president of AutoUni described the module as necessary because VW was “increasingly becoming a global player”.

“We have always been international but not really global. When we were asked to set up AutoUni, we assessed the situation and said that one of the most important things is to prepare future managers to become aware of the problems of diversity and become proficient in managing it,” he said.

“South Africa was chosen because of its history and challenges in managing diversity as we move from apartheid to the ‘Rainbow Nation’,” said Joan Peters, head of VWSA’s leadership and management development institute in South Africa.

In preparation for the launch of the course here next year, an international delegation consisting of 21 participants from the VW group, four AutoUni staff and a team of teachers visited Port Elizabeth to take part in a “prototype” of the module for evaluation.

Zimmerli said South Africa “is a laboratory of diversity”.