Fons Trompenaars is recognised around the world for his work as consultant, trainer, motivational speaker and author of various books on all subjects of culture and business. As founder and director of Trompenaars Hampden-Turner (THT), an intercultural management firm, he has spent over 25 years helping Fortune 500 leaders and professionals manage and solve their business and cultural dilemmas to increase global effectiveness and performance, particularly in the areas of globalisation, mergers and acquisition, HR and leadership development.
Fons co-founded THT (then known as Centre for International Business Studies) in 1989, with Charles Hampden Turner and together they pioneered the Seven Dimensions of Culture and Dilemma Reconciliation philosophy into a powerful approach for reconciling cultural differences. With his growing team of consultants, Fons has translated this approach into innovative, practical and profitable results in all areas of international business for such companies as: BP, Philips, IBM, Heineken, Applied Materials, AMD, VNU, TRW, Mars, Motorola, General Motors, Dow Chemical, CSM, Telfort, Wolters Kluwer, Gerling NCM, Merrill Lynch, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, ABN AMRO, ING, PepsiCo, and Honeywell.
He is currently co-Director at the Servant-Leadership Centre for Research and Education (SLCRE) at the Free University Amsterdam, a Member of Advisory Board Webster University Leiden, and distinguished Advisor of Centre for TransCultural Studies at Temasek Polytechnic, Singapore and International Director at the International Society for Organisational Development. He is faculty member at the Global Institute for Leadership Development (GILD) and also judge of the Fons Trompenaars award for Innovation and Creativity at the Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI).
Fons is the author/co-author of 13 books, including the best seller and “Book of the Year” Riding the Waves of Culture, Understanding Cultural Diversity in Business (1993). His other books include: the Culture for Business series, which comprises four books (2004-5), Riding the Whirlwind: Connecting People and Organisations in a Culture of Innovation (2007), and Innovating in a Global Crisis (2009). His most recent publication is The Global M&A Tango (2010). In 2011, the Harvard Business Review published his co-written article with Peter Woolliams entitled “Lost in Translation” regarding culture and failure.
Fons began his career in the Personnel Division of the Royal Dutch Shell Group in 1981, where he worked in job classification and management development at the Shell Research Laboratories in nine different countries. He studied Economics at the Free University of Amsterdam and later earned a Ph.D. from Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Listed regularly in the past decade as one of the world's most influential, living, management thinkers, he has been awarded the International Professional Practice Area Research Award by the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) in 1991, voted one of the top 20 HR Most Influential International Thinkers 2011 by HR Magazine and ranked in the Thinkers50 as one of the most influential management thinkers in November 2011.
