Corporations

Image taken from: http://www.lifeinthemixtalk.com

“Corporations are artificial creations, you might say they are monsters trying to devour as much profits as possible at anyone`s expense”.

(Achbar, M; Abbott, J; Bakan, J.(Producer/Director). (2003). The corporation (Achbar 2003). [Documentary]. Canada: Big Picture Media Corporation.)

The economy is the engine of the world. Many aspects of a person’s life are determined by money. We need money to have a place to live in, to buy food, to pay for education, to buy cloths, to have access to technology, to go to the doctor if you are sick, and even to rest and have fun. Money is necessary to fulfill the basic needs of all human beings but, at what cost are we willing to make money? How much money is enough? What things are more important?

Big corporations are the entities that make more money in the world. They use all kinds of tactics (many times unethical) to make more and more money looking for cheaper ways of producing and selling more.

Economic power can be translated in political and social power. Corporations are in many cases more powerful than governments. This unmeasured power and capacity to influence others allows them to do many things that thinking objectively, are against human beings and nature.

Corporations are entitled the same legal rights as humans as they want to take advantage of the benefits it gives to them, but at the time of getting the same responsibilities and duties they are different from humans. If a person hurts someone he or she is condemned and punished by the law depending on the seriousness of the action and of the harme caused. We see how companies cause illnesses that lead to death and other serious problems on people and nature and they are not punished with the rigorousness they should.

Responsibility of corporations is huge because they have huge power. They have power to induce people to buy a product trusting in the quality and integrity f the good or service they provide. In many cases they take advantage of their powerful position and of their credibility and they step on everybody to reach their main purpose: make money. They don’t care if they are hurting humans, animals, or the environment while they increase their profits. They don’t stop to think in persons, in their health, in fairness, in justice, in long-term well being of the environment, in future generations, they want money, and they want it now, no matter what.

Since they are powerful and able to affect billions of people, corporations should be punished harder than individuals. The damage they can cause is huge and the consequences of their decisions can affect a lot of living beings, but many times it is cheaper for them to ignore this. Humans shouldn’t pay for the irresponsibility of corporations and in order to avoid this, the persons in charged of making decisions and saying if something will or not be made are the ones who should be judged by the law when corporations incur in practices that can result to be harmful for somebody else.

Not only should damage to humans and nature in terms of illnesses be punished but also abuse. Workers are the ones generating value for the corporations, without them producing would be impossible and they should be rewarded with dignity for their work. Policies where higher percentages of the sells price of products should be paid to them, it would be fair and it won’t damage this gigantic companies.

Women Migrants:

Migration is a social, economic, politic and cultural phenomenon. This is a decision made voluntarily by a person or a group of persons looking for better possibilities, for a better quality of life, escaping of poverty, social repression, discrimination, etc.

It is a social phenomenon because it implies the movement of human beings from one country to another one. Also the reasons why a person or a family decides to move can be social: discrimination, violence against a gender (almost always women), wars and intern violence.

Politics have a lot to do with migration because totalitarian regimes and socialist governments are the reason why many people choose to leave their home country. Politics bring consequences to economic and social aspects. This is the case of one of the countries with higher rates of migration even though they can’t leave their own country: Cuba.

Culture is a very important aspect because people migrating many times come from a very different culture than the one of the home they migrate to. As they are human beings they shouldn’t be discriminated for coming from different countries or cultures but it happens.

Economy is a reason because poverty and unemployment can be two of the main reasons why people seek for better conditions of life. Looking for jobs and economic independence isn’t always as they imagine. Conditions for migrants in foreign countries aren’t the best always. Discrimination towards women mainly is very common in developed countries.

Women are a more vulnerable population, they migrate with their families and they need desperately a job. Employees that need persons in the manufacturing process take advantage of immigrants and make them work more hours for less money. This is what happens in Sri Lanka where immigrant women work many hours for little pay. Gender norms, lack of participation of women in politics and the division of labor are some aspects that bring as consequence the poor standards of work for women. (Gamburd. R, Michele, Advocating Sri Lanka migrants workers, Critical Asian Studies, 41: 1 (2009), o61-088)

In order to protect and watch for the rights of migrants an international organization appeared: the IOM. IOM works in the four broad areas of migration management:

1. Migration and development

2. Facilitating migration

3. Regulating migration

4. Forced migration.

In order to achieve their goals they work with the promotion of international migration law, policy debate and guidance, protection of migrants' rights, migration health and the gender dimension of migration. (IOM. Retrieved on October the 9nth, 20101, from http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/about-iom/lang/en)

This international organization is very important because it works for the most unprotected and vulnerable human beings: migrants. These persons are alone, in a different country, away from their family, they have no job, no home, nowhere to go and many persons take advantage of their situation and exploit them. From these persons the ones who need more help are women.

Image taken from: http://www.corbisimages.com/Enlargement/Enlargement.aspx?id=IH081187&tab=details&caller=search

UBUNTU

South Africa is a great country with whole different history, folklore, mythology, culture, norms, values, and behaviors than other countries in the world. As a result of the previous, as result of their way to see life, they have developed a philosophy called UBUTU.

UBUTU can be defined as humaneness- a pervasive spirit of caring and community, harmony and hospitality, respect and responsiveness- that individuals and groups display for one another (Mangaliso, P. Mzamo, (2001) Building competitive advantage from ubuntu: Management lessons from South Africa, Academy of Management Executive, vol 15 no 3, pag 24) This philosophy also implies that “a person is a person through others” this means that a person becomes a person only through his or her relationship with and recognition by others (Mangaliso, P. Mzamo, (2001) Building competitive advantage from ubuntu: Management lessons from South Africa, Academy of Management Executive, vol 15 no 3, pag 24).

This philosophy and the statements and behaviors around it have several implications for companies and organizations. Understanding the whole thoughts can be the key for the success of a company in southern Africa and this model can be applied to every place of the world.

As in every new country you want to move your company to, in South Africa it is important to understand their culture and it is very important to be aware of the influence the UBUTU philosophy has in people belonging to this culture. We know that there are some aspects we have to keep in mind when treating with other cultures, because we are not all the same. In this case it isn’t different. As the social level is so important to them, managers should treat them as persons, not as parts of the company`s system, to communicate with them, to hear them, to give importance to their problems, and to understand their behavior through their ideology.

In organizations around the world, this philosophy can be applied in order to reach better relationships between the individuals and improve the working environment. The postulates of the UBUTU philosophy can be adopted as general rules of behavior towards others in organizations. Treating others as you would treat your own family, feeling part of the community and caring for them as it was you, communication, choosing carefully the words you say, taking time to make clever decisions, solidarity and social harmony as key points for increasing productivity, thinking rewards and punishment must be shared because all the members belong together and are part of the same, and recognizing the importance of age, of wisdom, of the wisdom acquired through time can be determinants of better working teams and in result of better organizational performance.

Image taken from: southafricaproject.org

Flowers paint your life with beautiful colours.

Image taken form: blog.hola.com

Businesses have to look for new ways to be remembered by customers. Sometimes the brand isn’t enough and they have to link it with sounds, pictures, colors, and metaphors in order to be related to those things. Music, promotional songs, colors and metaphors give information of the brand or the products sold by the company.

Creating metaphors isn’t an easy job. In order to reach the impact you want in customers you have to study their values, attitudes and tastes to make them feel familiar or identified with your idea.

Trying to create sensations and emotions that result from a brand experience, music, songs, mottos, metaphors, and even smells are used. In Colombia we have some clear examples of the previous. Tennis, the clothing brand has a specific smell and they give out air-fresheners in shapes of hearts with this characteristic smell. A clear example of music is Pilsen. No matter where you are at when you hear that sound you know it`s theirs. Internationally, Nike has one of the most known slogans in the world: Just do it.

Metaphors are very useful when you are trying to position a brand because it gives you the possibility to make a comparison between two things that can share a characteristic. They make easier for the reader understanding the message or something about the principal idea. In this way you can talk about a characteristic of the product you are trying to sell using something everybody knows as reference.

In this case I decided that I want to export flowers to northern countries where they don’t have the quality, the quantity and the variety we have in Colombia and in other tropical countries the whole year. The metaphor I would like to use in order to position my product and my brand is:

“Flowers paint your life with beautiful colors”

Through this metaphor I want people to perceive that flowers provide colors to any space, that even in winter when everything is grey and cold, flowers can make any place, any room of their houses warmer, happier, colorful.

We associate colors with happiness, joy and spring. All the beautiful things and moments are usually associated with many vibrating colors and that is what I am trying to take advantage from through this metaphor.

Other`s Blogs.

Reading other's blogs is very interesting because you can see how they approach the same task you had in a different way. Even though we all had to write about the same topic, we all came up with different ideas and examples.
I chose 5 Blogs I thought were very interesting and I posted my comments in them:

• The first Blog I commented in belonged to Sara Baena (http://miragemblue.blogspot.com/). I liked this blog because it was very organized and attractive for the reader. I chose to comment in "Business implications of cultural differences" because I agreed with her ideas and I thought she developed them in a clear way.

• I commented in Daniel Velasquez's Blog (http://danvelis.blogspot.com/) in the publication belonging to the Pygmalion effect because I liked very much the examples he gave about expectations and I agreed pretty much with everything he said.

• I commented in Mónica Giraldo's Blog (http://monicagiraldoc.blogspot.com/) because I liked very much the video she published at the end of the text about the Pygmalion effect. I think it was an interesting comparison between water and human beings and how words can affect us both.

• I liked Yveth Weissenborn's Blog (http://yvett-eafit.blogspot.com/) and specially the publication about the Pygmalion effect, because I found shocking a picture she has at the end. This picture tells a story about elephants that can be applied to humans as well. It shows us how not only other's perceptions can affect our behavior, but also our own perceptions towards our selves.

• The last Blog I commented in belonged to Maria Mercedes Agudelo (http://mariaorgcult.blogspot.com/). I liked the video she posted abut the Pygmalion effect because it shows how through a real example, an experiment, the Pygmalion effect occurs in real life.

References: Image taken from http://centrolenguaportuguesacc.blogspot.com/

The Pygmalion effect.

(Image taken from mayragarcia.v2efoliom.mnscu.edu)

Perceptions are the ideas we have about certain things, people or situations before we even knoe how they really are. Perceptions can be influenced by internal factors such as personality or previous experiences, and can be influenced by external factors such as the environment and the context.

When we are talking about companies or organisations where people from many different cultures are working together, perceptions are very important. Many times we use to think that people from certain places are in a certain way, that working with them is hard, that they don't work, that they are lazy, etc. Adopting these ideas as true can be very harmful for the organization's working environment as they affect personal relations.

There are several theories that try to explain how individuals perceive what happens around them, the perceptions thay have towards internal and external factors, responsibility, etc.
The Pygmalion effect is a theory that states that "the perceiver's positive expactation anhances the target's performance" (Inamori, T & Analoui, F (2010) Beyond pygmalion effect, Journal of management development Vol 29 No 4). This theory is important because it shows how negative predisposition or perceptions towards a person can affect the realtionships between both as the way the other person reacts is affected by the way I aproach him. This theory can be translated to organizations too. In this way "leaders generate subordinates' motivation and increase work performance for accomplishing a designated goal." (Inamori, T & Analoui, F (2010) Beyond pygmalion effect, Journal of management development Vol 29 No 4). This is the reason why friendly interatcion (derived from positive perceptions) betwen people is so important for an effective organisation.

Maintaining good perceptions about work, environment, expectation and stress is fundamental for successful management of people and operations.

Perceptions create expectations. When you have an idea about somebody's behaviour, you expect him to do certain things.

All the previous can be evidenced through an example. When people expect you to do things well, to accomplish certain goal, because they believe you are capable, because they have good perceptions of you, you make your best effort to don't let them down and when you do your best is very probable that you meet your goals.

Cultural diffrences as a determinant in international business

When we are talking about a globalized world, where countries and people are connected through many different channels, we must take into account that not everybody thinks or behaves in the same way. The behavior of the individuals depends in many cases on the way they have been raced and what they see around them.The different attitudes, beliefs, preferences or behaviour of people can be grouped under one world: culture. Cultures can change in the same country. As Nick B. Meyer explained in his conference "Dealing with Cultural Differences", National cultures are those present in the same country but different depending of the zone (Ex: Culture in the big cities is different from culture in a small town), there are also subcultures that vary depending on the social groups (Ex: Homosexuals, prison inmates, military). Finally, behavior and culture as a whole, can also change depending on the professions (Ex: nuns, militars).

Studying the differences in the behaviour and culture is important when you are thinking about working in a multinational corporation, taking a company to an other country, or selling a product abroad.

With the purpose of studying the behavior of people from different cultures working and interacting in an organization, culture is divided in several dimensions according to the model of Professor Geert Hoffstede (Ex: Masculinity vs. Femininity, Uncertainty avoidance, Individualism vs. Collectivism, and Confusian Work Dinamism).

In this case I am going to focus on Uncertainty Avoidance and I am going to try to ilustrate it with an example.

Guatemala, Greece, Portugal, Uruguay and Japan are the countries with the lowest tolerance to uncertainy as Singapore, Jamaica, Denmark and Sweden tolerate new ideas easier (Taken from http://internationalbusiness.suite101.com/article.cfm/risk_adverse_trade_cultures).

The Uncertainty Avoidance is a very important aspect to take care of in a big company where people from many countries are working together, and also if you are trying to open a new branch of your company in other place. Depending on this dimension you can anticipate somehow the way somebody reacts towards risk, problems and most important change.

In order to ilustrate the previous, lets imagine that a companie in Sweden wants to open a branch in Greece. First of all, the manager has to take into account that the behavior and culture in this countrie is not the same as the culture in Sweden. The manager reviews the dimensions suggested by Professor Geert Hofstede and when he studies the Uncertainty Avoidance dimension, he finds that in Greece the acceptance of uncertainty is very low. The manager has to create more norms, laws, standarize the processes, make clear goals, objectives and the way to reach them in order to reduce the uncertainty and create a more satisfactory working environment for the people. (http://www.via-web.de/uncertainty-avoidance/)

Every new project has to be analized from the culture of the people involved in the organization and the people out of it. Studiyng culture can be the difference between success or failure.