The Corporation

Image taken from http://blog.wataugawatch.net/2009_09_01_archive.html

According to the video we watched in the last class here are some answers to important questions that are very interesting:

1) Should corporations be entitled to the same legal rights as individuals? Where should the line be drawn?
After watching the video “The Corporation”, it’s pretty clear that corporations are not individuals, and that’s why they shouldn’t be treated as if they were, so they shouldn’t have the rights that individuals have, because as they say in a documental corporations are like a big fish that if you give him the chance he will eat you. So it wouldn’t be fare that corporations have the same rights that individuals have because there wouldn’t be a balance in the society, and the power they will get if something like this happened would be incredible.
The rights we have as individuals are something that belong to us, and if we give them to corporations they will just increase their earnings and power and would start doing unethical things having the rights as a shield. It would be just unimaginable that companies have these rights because there wouldn’t be a drawn line between what a company can do or not, I think that if this happened all the effort that many unions and persons have made to keep the balance of power equal would be dropped in the trash.

2) How can we ensure corporations are held accountable for their actions?
In today’s world it is very difficult to ensure that the companies respond for their acts, because there are many interest that are moved behind the justice, but the solution for this problem is to put several laws for companies that take advantage of their power to make illegal acts. Another thing that the government should do to control this kind of acts is to give some tax benefits for companies that really concerned about their employees and the society.

3. Should individuals bear any responsability for the actions of a corporation? If so, to what degree
Us as individuals should respond for what we do, that’s why I think that individuals should be responsible for their acts but just if the individual acts with bad purposes. I think that the ones that administrate the corporation or the ones that have high charges inside it are the ones that should have more responsibility, because at the end they are the ones that take the decisions and the ones that lead the company for the good or bad way, but how I said before just if the person acts with bad faith.

4. What are the benefits of the corporate form? could an alternative model offer these as well?
The corporate form of organization has an advantage over its two rivals in at least three respects:
1) It diffuses financial responsibility,
2) It survives the death of its owners
3) It permits of larger accumulations of capital
(Taken from http://chestofbooks.com/finance/economics/Elementary-Economics/Advantages-And-Disadvantages-Of-The-Corporate-Form-Of-Organi.html)
We also have to recognize that there are some big companies like Microsoft or coca cola that are very concerned about their employees and about the entire society, so this kinds of corporations are just impossible to change because what they offer to the state and to the society its unbeatable for any other system or model.

Migrants and the IOM

Due to the process of globalization, it is pretty easy to travel from one country through another without many restrictions and to make a life in every part of the world, that’s why migration has increased a lot in the last two decades, and has became a really big problem for many developed countries.

Institutions like the International organization for migration (IOM) are extremely important to help these migrants to have rights and better life conditions, specially for the female migrants that are the most affected one because of the gender discrimination
(Image taken from www.wordpress.com)
The IOM is an institution that works to help ensure the orderly and humane management of migration, to promote international cooperation on migration issues, to assist in the search for practical solutions to migration problems and to provide humanitarian assistance to migrants in need, including refugees and internally displaced people (Taken from http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/about-iom/lang/en)
For the IOM it’s very important that female migrants have the better conditions and that’s why they have a lot of campaigns to protect the rights of the women migrants and the most important thing to capacitate them to make a better job in what they do an example of this campaigns are:

- In siria for example the IOM gives the female migrants short-term assistance to reduce their vulnerability to trafficking and exploitation.

- In Italy there is a campaign called "Migrant Women for Development in Africa" (WMIDA), which support West African women migrants interested in using their remittances to establish small or medium enterprises in their countries of origin through joint ventures with Italian partners and host communities. (Taken from http://www.iom.int/jahia/Jahia/migration-development/pid/2027)

- In Costa rica, El Salvador and Nicaragua the IOM have a campaign called "No More Human Trafficking" or "No más trata de personas", which has the propose of fighting against the human trafficking in Central America and Mexico.

Here is a pretty interesting video that describes the situation of migrants in Thailand:

India a desirable market

India is one of the biggest countries in the world, and that’s why big companies and firms from every part of the world are trying to merge into this market with different corporative strategies like acquisitions and merging. It is important to say that acquisition and merging are completely different strategies and not the same as many people think; The main difference is that “Acquisition is when a new company takes over another and clearly establishes itself as the new owner, and a merger happens when two firms agree to go forward as a single new company rather than remain separately owned and operated” (taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mergers_and_acquisitions). Althoyght both strategies are very used, its more common to see an acquisition than a merging.

Image taken from http://www.pharmainfo.net/luckypharmacist/mergers-and-acquisitions-trends-pharma-sector

In the last 2 decades India has been a country where merging and acquisitions have incredible grown, as a consequence of the government’s politics that have been implemented. There are perfect example of acquisitions and mergers in India, big companies like telecom, finance, FMCG, construction materials and automobile have entered to the Indian market by adquiring companies or by merging.

Here are the main acquisitions and mergers that have entered to India:
“Hindalco acquired Canada based Novelis. The deal involved transaction of $5,982 million. Tata Steel acquired Corus Group plc. The acquisition deal amounted to $12,000 million. Dr. Reddy's Labs acquired Betapharm through a deal worth of $597 million.Ranbaxy Labs acquired Terapia SA. The deal amounted to $324 million. Suzlon Energy acquired Hansen Group through a deal of $565 million. The acquisition of Daewoo Electronics Corp. by Videocon involved transaction of $729 million. HPCL acquired Kenya Petroleum Refinery Ltd.. The deal amounted to $500 million. VSNL acquired Teleglobe through a deal of $239 million.”(Taken from http://www.economywatch.com/mergers-acquisitions/india.html)

Ubuntu a competetive advantage

Before start talking about the benefits that this theory can give to managers, I think it’s important for you to know what it is.

Ubuntu is a theory created in South Africa, which argues that when a manager takes into account how people think and behave between each other, will have a competitive advantage and will avoid many problems that have relationship to employees like strikes, low production, attitude of the workers and others.

image taken from http://www.globaltrainingsystems.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=ArticleList&SectionID=164

Unbuntu theory tries to understand the culture, values, norms, and beliefs held by the largest segment of the population, the philosophical thought system itself is a product of various factors including history, folklore, mythology, culture, norms, values, and religious beliefs, and this way know how to manage the employees.

I think the benefits of this theory can be huge for a company because when you understand the culture of your employees, you would be able to know in what situations they feel comfortable in which not, what to do to make them work harder, what to do to avoid conflicts in the organization, how to improve the efficiency etc.

Here I will put some of the competitive advantages that ubuntu theory can give in the different areas of the company:

- Relationships with others: People are intrinsically motivated to contribute more when they are valued

- Language and communication: Shared understanding of deeper meaning supports complex consensus. Ubuntu communication means concerted action that is adaptable.

- Time: Punctuality is a virtue, but time's healing dimension is a hidden competitive advantage for ubuntu.

- Productivity: Sustainable competitive advantage comes from strong loyalty to group goals in ubuntu.

Reeferences:

document Building competitive advantage from ubuntu: Management lessons from South Africa

San Jacinto Hammocks

Image taken form http://www.absolut-colombia.com/hamacas-de-san-jacinto-tradicion-de-la-costa-caribe/

Using a metaphor to attract new clients is one of the most efficient strategies that a manager can use, because by mixing different things you would have more impact in the client.

My idea is to sell hammocks from San Jacinto Colombia in United States , the metaphor I will use in this case would be telling the buyers the tradition that this product has in Colombia and of course the uses that the product has. The idea is to design a special package with pictures from San Jacinto, and a text that tells about the tradition of the hammocks in Colombia, it would say something like:

“San Jacinto hammocks are made from a web of interweaved threads and they come in various colors. The most curious thing is that you can see them in homes located in every corner of Colombia, especially near the Caribbean Coast and in other regions with warm weather.
These hammocks are ideal for outdoor areas, because they can be used as a bed, a sofa and even as a swing.
The origin of these hammocks can be found in the Indian civilizations, where they were called “INI”. When Christopher Columbus saw one for the first time, he was surprised and then took some of them to be used by the sailors, which helped reduce the space used for beds on the boats and kept the marines fresh during their resting hours.
Right now the hammocks are produced in a small town called San Jacinto, therefore the name of San Jacinto Hammocks.”
The images of San Jacinto will be important too to get the attention of the people, these will be the images:



Images taken from:
http://www.eluniversal.com.co/v2/%C2%A1que-suene-la-gaita
http://colombia.acambiode.com/producto_5654254566668655652532600303225.html
http://www.colombia.travel/es/turista-internacional/actividad/historia-y-tradicion/artesanias/tejidos-colombianos


This product is really original and will be exhibit in the malls of United States; it will help the Colombian companies that to be more recognized and to have amazing sells.

References
http://www.absolut-colombia.com/hamacas-de-san-jacinto-tradicion-de-la-costa-caribe/

The pygmalion effect

The Pygmalion effect or most known as the Rosenthal effect says that “one's expectations about a person can eventually lead that person to behave and achieve in ways that confirm those expectations”

taken from http://www.users.muohio.edu/shermalw/edp603_group2-f00.html

The Pygmalion is one of the key elements that a manager should take into account when managing consumers, employees, potential clients, bosses etc. because this way the expectations that this entire people have about you or the expectations that you have about them would have a very big chance to become truth. For example if I am the owner of a company and I talk to my employees in a certain way that make them think that I expect a lot from them, they will work harder and better, because they may think “my boss expects a lot from me I have to give everything in my work”. If you havent undestand yet how to create expectations in the other people and how the pygmalion effect works, i recomend you to see the movie pursuit of happyness with will smith, here i put a part of the movie that really teach me how to create expectatives. I think this movie is a pretty good example of the pygmalion effect because at the end all the expectatives that this guy has become truth.

I think that it is really important for you to take into account this statement not just for work but also for life , because it makes you see how important are emotions in humans, and that if you know how to manage this emotions, you will have more chances to succeed in your life

Business vs. cultures

After being on a very interesting conference given by Nick B Meyer in Universidad EAFIT about cultural dimensions all over the world, I realized the importance of this topic when doing business with different cultures around the world, and the importance of studying the person with the one you are going to do the business, for example is not the same thing to do a business with a Colombian guy (which have my same culture) than with a Chinese guy (has different culture), off course if you have a meeting with the colombian guy and you be late for 15 minutes it won’t be a big problem, but if you be late with the Chinese the business would be in risk.

In the conference Meyer talked about different cultural dimensions, but there was one that caught my attention because of the importance it has in today’s world:

- Masculinity vs. Femininity: It talks about the role of the genders in every culture, after doing a research studies found that female roles tend to be similar in the different cultures they tend to be modest and care. In the other hand masculine gender tend to be different, but with similarities like competitiveness and hungry for success.

For example Japanese people (Masculinity 95 on the scale of Hofstede) may be different than the Chilean people (Masculinity 16 on the scale of Hofstede), in this case Japanese people tend to be more competitive and ambitious than the Chilean people.

(stadistics taken from http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/masculinity/)

For concluding my intervention I would talk a little about the role that the manager of a company has to take when dealing with other cultures. I found in the interenet a very interesting paragraph that describes how fro me a manager should think when doing business that says “For those who work in international business, it is sometimes amazing how different people in other cultures behave. We tend to have a human instinct that 'deep inside' all people are the same - but they are not. Therefore, if we go into another country and make decisions based on how we operate in our own home country - the chances are we'll make some very bad decisions” (Taken from Geert Hofstede cultural dimesnions, URL: http://www.geert-hofstede.com/).

I think that is important that comapanies develop cultuaral skills in their employees (sepcially the ones who negotiate) because this way there will be more possibilities of succes .