domingo, 28 de febrero de 2010

Best blog visited

I was checking some of my classmate´s blogs and it was really good to compare my personal ideas with theirs. In order to accomplish the blog activity of this week I want to say that from those blogs that I visited the best one is the Maria Camila Ojalvo´s blog (http://camilaojalvo.blogspot.com/). As I just posted on her blog, I think she is pretty concise exposing her ideas and she really knows how to use didactic aid (images and videos), using them when it is necessary and not just putting a lot of visual information that may disturb readers. She goes to the point with strong arguments and in a pragmatic way

martes, 23 de febrero de 2010

Class Activity

Ranking

1. Sinbad: He took advantage of a desperate girl and use a dirty trick to get his own pleasure
2. Abigail: She provoked all the problem with her lack of right criterion
3. Slug: He was so offensive and hit Gregory who anyway had not asked Abigail to cross the river at any price
4. Gregory: He lacked some compassion for Abigail and even if he didn´t love her, he should have done something else for her and not just rejected her
5. Ivan: He just did nothing

sábado, 13 de febrero de 2010

Are corporations by themselves the only cause of our problems?

With the following lines I try to analyze until what extent we can blame Corporations as the only actor that has been damageing the life quality of humanity. The ideas presented here were generated from the film “The Corporation” which makes a critique of the role that corporations play in our societies (Achbar, Abbott, & Bakan, 2004)
Specifically, a lot of people argue that corporations are kind of monsters which just care about generate profits for their stockholders and they do anything, from manipulate consumers, do not respect public assets and common rights to harm the environment, when they are implementing their methods to achieve their goals.
I don´t totally disagree with the last statement because it is so obvious that corporations, many times, commit abuses that go against people well being. I am not going to talk too much about this aspect because as I said before it is so easy to notice and almost everybody agrees with that point.
However, I want to see the other side of the coin. I think it is a total mistake if we just affirm that Corporations are the only ones responsible for the current world´s problems and we ignored the positive aspects that have helped to improve our lives.
There is a basic principle in economy which says that in order to be a supply, there must be a demand. So, those corporations that damage the maritime ecosystem in order to fish some animals are not doing that just because they want to, instead, because they have a great market to serve. Of course, I understand that the great majority of people are not asking to stop that industry but to regulate its functioning in order to damage the environment as little as possible, but anyway, myriads of consumers continue consuming products from the fish industry even when they know how it operates. Fortunately, it seems that consumers are getting more aware of the situation and they are starting to appreciate those companies that work under friendly-environmental guides.
Consumers are a restriction or a limit for corporations because they are indispensable for the last ones. The final goal of corporations is to generate profits, but they can, by no means, do so if they are not supported or accepted by consumers who are the ones that decide how profitable a company should be
I think it is time to recognize (as consumers) our liability in the way that our world is being managed and also be aware that consumers have great part of the solution in their hands for what I just said in the last paragraph, we are indispensable for corporations. Of course, it has to be a common effort and not just an effort of some part of the population, as it is right now, because in that way it is impossible to think that corporations are going to treat our UNIQUE world in a better way
It is said that corporations, through their advertising campaigns, manipulate consumers; it is time for consumers to manipulate corporations in order to stop the devastation of the Earth.
I invite you to don´t forget that it is thanks to corporations that there are cures for many diseases that killed millions of people in the world, it is thanks to corporations that millions of people can go to work so that feed their families, it is thanks to corporations that great part of the most wonderful world´s constructions have been carried out

Bibliography
Achbar, M., Abbott, J., & Bakan, J. (Directors). (2004). The Corporation [Motion Picture].

domingo, 7 de febrero de 2010

Relationship between National Identity and Corporate Culture

It is so important for International Negotiators to understand two fundamental concepts which play a vital role when any business is planed to be taken beyond national borders. They are National Identity and Corporate Culture.

As we saw in the last class, National Identity is the construction of a specific kind of culture through the regulatory and socializing institutions of the states. For example, law, education system and the media.

According to Gregory (2007), Corporate Culture describes the whole collection of assumptions, practices and norms that people in an organization adopt over time. That means that employees have to buy into them, eventually getting to the point where they take them for granted and pass them on to new hires.
Taking into account the last definitions, I consider that the Corporate Culture is limited by the National Identity.

The last statement can be analyzed from four points of view, in my opinion. They are the three institutions that were cited as examples above and the effect that they produce over the national population, which eventually will become the labor force that has to adopt the Corporate Culture. In other words, the National identity can be regarded as a framework and the Corporate Culture must adapt to it.

 Law: It is so obvious that any company, before establishing those practices and norms which are going to compound its Corporate Culture, has to be sure that they get along with the law. For example, a company which is established in Colombia can not determined as corporate practices the payment of some salaries under the legal minimum wage. Neither could a company hire people under contracts of “Prestación de Servicios” and force them to work under specific schedules because it is against the Colombian labor law.

 Education System: How workers are educated is an important fact to have in mind when managers want their workers to fulfill the company´s assumptions and practices because there may be a difference between what managers consider are important aspects and what workers think since the educational system of the country doesn´t teach the importance of those aspects, it will be so difficult for them to change their customs since personal behavior is mostly shaped during the student times. For example, Latin American people don´t consider punctuality to be so important and even though we see how vital it is for other developed cultures, we just don´t change that bad habit because we don´t learn the importance of punctuality from the educational system. Of course, the academic aspects also play an important role. It is easier to build a good corporate culture in a country with a high quality educational system because it gives workers a better understanding of how important companies are for their nation development and the policies that companies have to undertake in order to be more productive.

 Media: Nowadays media acts as a judge. A company has to take care when defining its Corporate Culture in order to make it compatible with what media considers correct. I mean, a company cannot risk its image creating a practice that the media may consider unethical. The problem with media, at least in Colombia, is that, in great part, it doesn´t have any moral pattern of behavior and they just care about get news and they may manipulate the content of a fact in order to make it popular. Therefore, companies may find limitations when creating corporate policies because of the role of media. Anyway, media is a necessary disease.

 Now, talking to the effect that the last institutions can produce over the population of a nation we can consider some examples. For instance, a country which is so close and not open minded, because institutions spur such sentiments, may be a hard place for a foreign company to establish because workers could be reluctant to adopt new ideas that come from a place different than their country. Another example could be the following. A country whose population feel so engage with the development of their nation may be a good place for a company to build a corporate culture based on productive elements


Bibliography.
Millman, Gregory J. 2007. "Corporate Culture: more myth than reality?" The Free Library 23:44-47. Millman, Gregory J.

martes, 2 de febrero de 2010

Culture

• Culture is the group of lifestyles; beliefs (values), customs, knowledge and degree of artistic, scientific and industrial development of a community, country or region
(Vallejo & Zwerg, 2008)
• Culture is a collective programming of the mind that distinguishes the members of one group or category of people from another
(Texas A & M University)
• Culture is a shared, learned, symbolic system of values, beliefs and attitudes that shapes and influences perception and behavior
(Eastern Oregon University)


Bibliography

1. (n.d.). Retrieved February 2, 2010, from Eastern Oregon University: http://www2.eou.edu/~kdahl/cultdef.html
2. (n.d.). Retrieved January 31, 2010, from Texas A & M University: http://www.tamu.edu/classes/cosc/choudhury/culture.html
3. Vallejo, P., & Zwerg, A. M. (2008). International Business: The Pocket Guide. Medellín: Fondo Editorial Universidad Eafit.