Mighty Is the Mongrel

In California, Jagau thrived. His easy manner and infectious laugh won over Americans -- and put at ease, too, the many Mexican immigrants who worked in Hadco's factory. He had a knack for understanding the way machines work. In training classes, he said little but understood a lot. After work, in a bungalow that he shared with five other Malaysians, he made detailed drawings of the arcane machines that were used in the factory. He pored over manuals written in dry English; he memorized daily routines.

Jagau was about to begin living simultaneously in two worlds. In California, he could pretend that he wasn't a Bidayuh, plucked out of the jungle by some mysterious American corporation and transported to Disneyland. He could imagine himself as a member of any of the dozen nationalities that were represented in the factory. He belonged there, as much as the Mexicans or the Vietnamese belonged there. His English was even better than that of most of the other immigrants. But back in Kuching, he could not escape his past -- his ties to the Bidayuh, to his parents, and, most of all, to his wife, Lucy. "I am modern; she is not," he told me as we made the short walk from the factory to his bungalow. He had an email account, and the person he cared most about had never heard a dial tone.

Returning to Malaysia, Jagau resumed work at Hadco, whose factory was ready to launch. He and Lucy lived in a tiny shack. But at the factory, he ate breakfast -- often pancakes, which he had grown to like in the United States. After breakfast, he put on his work clothes, and the fun started. He was good at his job. His machine enveloped his mind; it was no surprise that he often dreamed about it. After six months, Hadco asked him to begin training others. The company even began hiring people on his say-so -- people from his village or from neighboring villages.

It is easy to paint Jagau as an Asian Horatio Alger, a creature of a U.S. multinational. Cynics paint such corporate behemoths as bloodsuckers, but I have seen countless examples of how they can transform the material and psychological lives of their employees. And not just in developing countries: The best multinationals are agents of change that create insurgents within the societies that they invade or, at the very least, that foster centers of excellence. Those insurgents then fan out across a society, carrying a greater sense of professionalism and more powerful technical skills than people who operate in a strictly local economy.

Jagau is my favorite example of this phenomenon, if only because he has traveled further -- from his childhood until now -- than anyone I know. He is a multinational corporate asset. And, as that asset, he has not only seen California but also traveled to London and Edinburgh for training on new machinery. Jagau has moved into the world of achievement, where his sense of self derives from what he has accomplished and what he owns.

The trappings of modern life, though, do not diminish Jagau. His experiences in America, his mastery over one aspect of a bewildering technological jungle, his rising material life in Kuching, his growing sense of self-worth -- all of these factors make Jagau more, not less, than he was before. To him, affiliations can be piled up like chips on a card table. They are not enemies of his inherited identity. Even as his horizons broaden, he retains his passion for his village, his parents, and his Bidayuh past.

Roots are not a zero-sum game. One attachment does not lessen another. Indeed, people can have both roots and wings. They can be proud of their background but unafraid of adding to their identity. By having both roots and wings, they help to preserve the groups to which they belong while at the same time realizing their individual freedom and exposing their groups to nourishing outside influences. Hybrid lives, therefore, are good for individuals and good for the groups to which they belong. In short, hybridity pays. And, in the present economic moment, hybridity pays well.

Strategy: The Cosmopolitan Corporation

Hybrids are everywhere, but multinational corporations are hybrid hothouses. The best corporations set the pace in diversity. Their mission is to match people and needs, regardless of nationality, race, or ethnicity. And the best managers want employees to retain their differences in order to make the most of their uniqueness and the most of the creative tension spawned by those differences. Employers don't want hollow harmony. They want a cosmopolitan corporation.

Hybrid teams are the new corporate ideal. Indeed, careers are now made or broken over diversity. The triumph of English as the language of business has made it easier for corporations to hire the best and brightest from around the world and then to mix those people together. International mergers have also spurred the trade in managers, which in turn promotes mixing. The mongrelization of management goes all the way to the top. An unprecedented number of foreign-born CEOs run major companies in the United States, Britain, and several other countries, according to a study by Denis Lyons, an executive recruiter in New York City. "The dawn of the millennium is ushering in a true global marketplace for CEOs," he writes.