Intolerance or lack of information

Do you know of other cases of indigenous communities that have gone through the same process? Mentioned them.

It’s tough to read about the stolen generation, especially when you do not feel identify with the reasons that drove the Australian government to act in this way.
In his book called Race, Ethnicity, crime and Justice, Dr. Shaun Gabbidon refers to Australia in a particular way:

“Australia is labeled by the author as a land of contrasts, not only in geology and geography but also in its inhabitants. The Aborigines of Australia, as per Gabbidon, are the world's oldest culture and religion”1.

Why do we fight trying to make them exactly as the rest of the people is. Who is the retrograde and closed mind here? The indigenous people that tries to keep their culture alive, or we, people who can not share the same territory with others and want that everybody think and act in the same way?

I know about other case, the Cherokees in US that were forced to move from its land to another place, forced by the white people, and during this movement a lot of indigenous died. All these actions for what?

I want to share a video that shows the case of the Cherokees in America and try to think what it’s the real meaning behind that? Under a shiny name: “The trail of tears” Americans hide this horrible abuse.

http://videos.howstuffworks.com/hsw/17386-how-the-west-was-lost-the-cherokees-trail-of-tears-video.htm retrieved in May 3, 2010.

1. Holness, N.. (2009). RACE, ETHNICITY, CRIME, AND JUSTICE: AN INTERNATIONAL DILEMMA. Journal of Cultural Diversity, 16(4), 187-190. Retrieved May 3, 2010, from ProQuest Medical Library. (Document ID: 2004794771).

Trade Unions in Europe

Based on a previous research on Trade Unions in Europe, it is interesting to found that continents with such a deep differences in extent of development, cultures and Corporate Practices agree in something as important as Trade Unions.
In Latin America as in Europe, trade Unions play an important a determinant role in the industrialization process, in other words, in the economy.
It’s quite particular to see the importance of trade Unions in a Continent which is well known for promoting individual rights and favoring the best working conditions.
Addressing the current crisis, Trade Unions have enforced their roles in an attempt to protect their interest and guide the practices of governments to desirable outcomes that benefit the current position in today’s economies. This position is reflected into the new practice of companies and unions, a “neoprotectionist” way.

"European Trade Unions have made a very clear choice inspired by a vision of continuity rather than of innovation. This choice belongs to a tendency which manifests itself also in continents very different from Europe, such as Latin America. Here in the countries with the strongest trade unionist tradition, we witness the deepest differences and most contrasting dynamics of trade unions' activities. This is due to the role which the political classes still play in the system of industrial relations, a role that has been on the decline in Europe (Astudillo 1999). For this reason, it is necessary to proceed on the basis of comparative studies more intensively than has occurred so far.11 In Europe, as in South America, labour unions aim at strengthening statist neoprotectionist tendencies as well as strengthening the resistance against globalization. As a consequence, unions try to promote at the industrial relations level policies consistent with the above tendencies rather than with the orientations favoured by business associations and by the micro-molecular entrepreneurs who support all-out deregulation. Labour unions have historically implemented their strategy in a well tested manner. Whenever their power of representation was strong and the fragmentation of that representation was limited, unions attempted, often with success, to trade social peace and moderation in contractual and wage bargaining, for a co-management of the processes regulating industrial restructuring and the other changes underway, resulting in 'neocorporatist pacts'. The mechanism known as 'supply side corporatism' arose from the process outlined above."1

1Sapelli, G.. (2009). Industrial Relations and the World Economic Crisis in the Context of Globalisation: From Europe to the World. The Economic and Labour Relations Review : ELRR, 20(1), 111-122. Retrieved April 28, 2010, from ABI/INFORM Global. (Document ID: 1961405251)

BOBS 2010 awards: Talk Morocco, Great Blog

Hi Everyone,

I found this Blog "Talk Morocco" a very good example of how to use this tool in a right way, it provides a very important space to Moroccans, and it is kind of tricky what the description of the Blog says: "bloggers often tackle subjects the main press cannot", it's a way to express yourself freely.

This is the link: http://www.talkmorocco.net/ go ahead and get the opportunity to know about it.

Middle East: Why do we clash?

It is hard to identify with somebody from the Middle East, who prays five time a day,like contracts to be fare and base almost all his life in its religion: The Islamic Religion.
According to the reading of E-Commerce, Muslims use it and they are getting more in contact with the outside world and so on, but the thing is that they understand the concept and use it in a different way from westerns. People from Uk, Us or France tend to think only in themselves when they are doing business, meanwhile, Arabs due to its strict compliance to their religion, tend to be more fair. that's when you found clashes within a business and misunderstandings that lead to mispercepetions about each other.
It is really interesting how Islam sets the parameters to run the muslims' lifes, but it is even more interesting the way Muslim agree Upon respecting and following the principles of the Quran, that are present in its sacred law.
I will like to encourage you to read this article: "ARAB IDENTITY AND CULTURE THROUGH ROMANIAN EYES" about the roots of Arabs in order to have a more clear perception about them. It's something different but interesting to read.



Zainul Norazlina, Osman Fauiziah, Mazlan Siti Hartini. (2004). E-Commerce from an Islamic Perspective. Science Direct, Elservier. Retrieved April 18, 2010. zainul_osman_mazlam_islamic ecommerce 10[1].pdf
Lakatos, A.. (2010). ARAB IDENTITY AND CULTURE THROUGH ROMANIAN EYES. Journal for the Study of Religions and Ideologies, 9(25), 200-203. Retrieved April 18, 2010, from ProQuest Religion. (Document ID: 1985531841).

Colombian Salesperson

According to the reading of Leadership Behavior and Organizational Commitment: A Comparative Study of American and Indian Salespersons, I will try to define the Colombian Salesperson taking into account the variables that they talk about in the reading.

According to Hofstede, Colombia has high power distance, but low individualism. In Colombia people prefer to work in groups and they respect the hierarchy of the Company and comply with it. In this specific case, it applies that cultures with high power distance tends to have low levels of individualism.

Related to the H1 of HPD/LI where Colombia will fit, I think it applies that there is a negative relation between initiation and role of ambiguity. This could be seen in some cases when managers delegate and directly assign the tasks for their subordinates and these subordinates have not other path than start doing what they are ask for without questioning and asking for advices, that’s why I think, it’s really common within our culture that people make mistakes while they are performing their tasks, because they are not trained to ask when they have doubts or dichotomies.


1. Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions. Itim International. Retrieved from: http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_colombia.shtml
2. Agarwal, S. DeCarlo, Vyas, S. Leadership Behavior and Organizational Commitment: A
Comparative Study of American and Indian Salespersons. Journal of International Business Studies; 1999 4th Quarter, Vol. 30 Issue 4. Retrieved from: agarwal_decarlo_vyas_1999 sasia tema 8.pdf

About my mates's blogs

From all the blogs I visited, I found that this activity has been a really interesting way to express our points of view and our ideas, leading to a very critical and objective analysis of all the subjects we have aborded.

All the blogs are really attractive and mostly the comments, they spark objectivity, analysis and research activities.

The Sebastian Posada blog was one of the most amazing, because it was nice to look at, not only for his analysis but for the design and gadgets he put into it. I found something in common with him, he really loved the movie "The Corporation" just like I did, and his arguments were really direct showing that there is not something wrong about be against those "monsters" as he called and that it starts from people like the ones who made that film, to create a concience about which world we want and what are we going to do about it.

Managing Diversity - Exercise

Regarding the case that we developed in class we ranked the 5 characters of the history from 1 to 5, being 1 the less offensive and 5 the most.

Simbad: 5
Abigail: 4
Gregory: 3
Ivan: 2
Slug:1

We think that the proposal that Simbad did to abigail was inmoral but at the same time abigail shouldn't have agreed to that proposal and neither shouldn't have showed good about Slug beating Gregory. Gregory also had a wrong position because if he loved abigail he shouldn't have rejected her so easily.
Ivan and slug, both have questionable attitudes but there are not such offensive as the attitudes of the other 3. That's why we ranked Ivan 2 and Slug 1.

Do you think corporations are the root cause of the problem, or is it consumerism, capitalism, or all three?

We face a vicious circle where there is someone who needs or wants something and there is another who offers you to produce it. There are several forces who potentialized this circle: consumism and capitalism. The boom of both of them has accelerated the circle and thus, the problems derivated from it.
Corporation are an important element of that circle and, therefore, they have a tremendous guilt, but capitalism,and our new life style is in part in charge of creating those holes over environment, human health and so on.
Corporation are not the root cause of the problems, it's more the existence of capitalism that triggers all those damages.
At least we do not realise about what is going on around as and the potencial consequences that our life style could bring, Corporations will keep acting as they act because, as Michael more said: they do not know how much is enough!
After all Corporations are managed by people, they are the ones who have to be aware about when they can not go further, and when they are causing damages over society. But this is really hard to achieve, because when you put all this things against the bottom line of the Corporation, sometimes weighs more to make more money than do it right.

What is the relationship between National Identity and Corporate Culture?

Both concepts have a common essence: Human being. We have the task to attach to one culture in particular, that is often your nationality and if you are working you should identify with that corporate culture that drives how things are doing at work.

But the relationship between this two concepts is from a point of view a subordinated relationship where Corporate culture has to fit under the National Identity that exist in each country where the Company is located or at list respect it if the company wants to success.

That's why according to Willman "The fact that corporate culture may be weakening could merely be evidence that a changing environment demands a different, more ad hoc organizational model" (Millman, 2007)he sees Corporate culture as the one in charge of accomodating to different cultures where that Corporation exists. Therefore, it's hard to maintain a single corporate culture that applies without changes all around the world and it has a brilliant perfomance.

Eventhough both concepts have their grounds in human being, this one has not has the same values, beliefs, customs and in some word culture in each country, that's why if a Multinational Company wants to enter to a new market, it has to redesign a little of may be to much their corporate culture mainly if the company has to hire local personnel they won't be identified with some things as schedule, teamwork, negotiation process, etc.

In words of Gancel "Corporate culture values are more superficial than national culture ones because they entail the survival and development of a company, not of an individual or the community's." (Gancel et al, 2002)

Bibliography

Millman, Gregory J. 2007. Corporate Culture: more myth than reality?. Financial Executive.

Mead, Richard. 2004. International Management: Cross-Cultural Dimensions London: Blackwell Publishing. Chapter 1.

Gancel, Charles. Rodgers, Irene. Raynaud, Marc. 2002. Succesful Mergers, Acquisitions ans Strategic Alliances: How to bridge Corporate Cultures. McGraw-Hill Professional.

Many sides of the same word: culture

The Culture Concept

1. "The very word culture meant “place tilled” in Middle English, and the same word goes back to Latin colere, “to inhabit, care for, till, worship.” To be cultural, to have a culture, is to inhabit a place sufficiently intensely to cultivate it—to be responsible for it, to respond to it, to attend to it caringly." "Traditional anthropological definitions of culture imply that cultures are bounded entities that are grounded in place, which allows for shared meanings to develop and be passed along."

Sorrells, Kathryn.(2007)."(Dis) placing Culture and Cultural Space in the Global Context". Paper presented at the annual meeting of the NCA 93rd Annual Convention, TBA, Chicago, IL.1-29.

2.. "That complex whole which includes knowledge, beliefs, art, morals, law, customs,and any other capabilities and habits acquired by man as member of society" (Tylor 1924:1)

Peterson, A., Richard. (1979). Revitalizing the Culture Concept. Annual review of Sociology, 5, 137-166.

3. According to Henslin, culture can be defined as: "the language, beliefs, values, norms, behaviors, and even material objects that are passed from one generation
to the next” (Henslin 2007:G3). "culture is manufactured by people in a society and used to regulate society’s members."

Myers, John.(2008). "Prisoners of Culture: Racial and Ethnic Oppression through Control of Culture and Collective Memory". Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Sheraton Boston and the Boston Marriott Copley Place, Boston, MA.1-20.