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.