Corporation strategies, useful or damaging?

The main purpose of any company and the reason why it was created was to generate profits, big corporations generate work and move economy but the question is at what expenses?, this huge entities seem to have forgotten the moral values an d the human rights while they seek for more profis and power.

In order to reach their goals and increase the profits, organizations implement tactics that are not always ethical and that have colateral negative effects.

Competitors are a reality that all corporations have to face every day but sometimes the strategies that they use to compit in the market are lead to eliminate the competitor like dumping (selling under production costs) and disloyal competition. Big companes are always tryig to absorb the samller competitors in order to get bigger and more powerfuli the market and in society.

But the competitors are not the only victims of these tactics, corporations also hurt employees when they contract labour hand in poor developing countries, because it is somuch cheaper dued to the condtions these persons livei n and the necesty they have, so they work for amisery salary or even just for food.

They also hurt customers with their agressive marketing campains that create false needs taht has to be satisfied; for example blackberry, who needs to be online and have access to internet all the time?, we can definitelylife without it, but they make customers think they really need this phone. They hurt customers too when the products they buy dont have the quality they expected, because of the constant reducing costs strategiesthat end up in not only custumer disatisfaction, but also in illness and even death (for example in the pharmaceutical and food industry).

Corporations have huge reponsibility over environmental damage, because they contamnate the ir and the water with their trash, which is not always correctly treatedin order to save money.

The reason why corporations are becaoming richer and more powerfull in societyis that they are treated like persons now, because they are considered legal persons, so they have the same rights of any hman being, but they are not punished as human beings are when they make mistakes.

Despite the size and the power of corporations it is our responsibility as consumers and future managers to chnge the way they make profits, by reminding them that altough money is unexpendable to life, giving back something to society has more value.

Women and Migration

Migration is a phenomenom that affects people in many different ways, like social, economic, cultural and emotional. It consists on people leaving their home countries voluntarily with the purpuse of finding a better quality of life, more job opportunities, and even more cultural and religious freedom.

There can be many reasons why persons decide tomigrate to another country, sometimes they are merly economic, when people find better wages, other times they are more drastic, like political and cultural persecution, political instability, violence, poverty and discrimination.

Inmigrants are a very vulnerable segment of the population, they are sometimesdiscriminted by they culture, as it is the case of Muslim peole in the United States; they also have less job opportunities because they are often exploited by big companies who hires them as cheap labour hand with terrible job conditions that does not allow then to reach their expected gosls, by the contrary, the live in conditions of misery and extreme poverty.

Inmigrant women are even more vulnerable, they are weaker and more propense to sexual abuse, violence and explotation, specially in countrieswith lawas that doesn`t protect them from gender discrimination as it is also the case of Muslim countries. An example that perfectly ilustratesthos is the situation of women explotation in Sri Lanka, where they work many hours for a minimun pay and the country government doesn`t do very much about i.

In Order to fight against these situations many NGO`S have taken actions but the one that has done the must important job in this field is the IOM (International Organization for Migration) who cares and works for the migrant persons to have better life conditions, it fight for their rights, health and gender discrimination by promoting the international migration law.

The role of this organization is more important every day because we are facing globalization and the movement of people from one country to another as human assets for companies is very common and important.

It is also important the concern for human righs of inmigrants because violence is increasing and it forces people to scape in order to save their lifes and in many occasions people take advantageof them.

Image taken from : skyscraperlife.com

Ubuntu is an African concept of 'humanity towards others'.

Ubuntu is an African concept of 'humanity towards others'.

African culture is very exotic and different to the western culture, their background, history, believes, traditions, believes, values and specially the way they see life are definitely a legacy to the world, a clear example of this is the philosophy they came up with, it is called UBUNTU” and it consists in the importance they give to the relations we have with each other, it is based on the community life and the sense of carrying for the other; all of this can be summarized in a phrase they use: "umnu tungumntu ngabanye", it means that “a person is a person trhough others” (Mangaliso, P. Mzamo, (2001) Builgind competitive advantage from ubuntu: Management lessons froms South Africa, Academy of Management Executive, vol 15 no 3, pag 24).


The word ubuntu comes from the Zulu and Xhola languages, and can be roughly translated as "humanity towards others." Ubuntu embodies all those virtues that maintain harmony and the spirit of sharing among the members of a society. It implies an appreciation of traditional beliefs, and a constant awareness that an individual’s actions today are a reflection on the past, and will have far-reaching consequences for the future. A person with ubuntu knows his or her place in the universe and is consequently able to interact gracefully with other individuals. One aspect of ubuntu is that, at all times, the individual effectively represents the people from among whom he or she comes, and therefore tries to behave according to the highest standards and exhibit the virtues upheld by his or her society.

During the 1990s, the concept of ubuntu was adapted as an ideology by post-apartheid South Africa, as a vehicle to bring about harmony and cooperation among its many racial and ethnic groups. The ethical values of ubuntu include respect for others, helpfulness, community, sharing, caring, trust and unselfishness. Ubuntu underscores the importance of agreement or consensus, and gives priority to the well-being of the community as a whole. (New world encyclopedia, 2008)

This theory gives the proper importance to the social level and involves many of all the values that the world seems to have forgotten and that if they were implemented in organizations people would perform their tasks easier because there would be more harmony, everyone would count on the support of the partners and they would love their jobs so much more. Every person needs to be feel part of something, the employees, for example need to feel their bosses care about them, managers should hear them and to care about their feelings and their problems to make them feel they are part of a family, not as part of the coompanies system
It is also important for companies, specially if they are globalizing, to learn from every culture and to include new points of view (if they are positive) in order to evolve and be more competitive, and hence make more profits, so the change is not only internal, but also external.

Bibliografía
New world encyclopedia. (6 de june de 2008). Recuperado el 24 de September de 2010, de Ubuntu: http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Ubuntu_(philosophy)

"Take the spring in a bottle with the new fragance eternal spring"

This task consists on creating a product that is produced by a colombian organization, which is trying to sell it abroad, it also necessary to come up with a metaphore taht helps in the internalization process.

When you are trying to create any bussiness or product it has to be taken into account the competitive advantage you have, this is something that only you have and it differenciate you from the rest of the competitors. In Colombia we have a lot of natural resources that are exotic or atractive for the rest of the world, one of them are flowers.

The idea is to sell a perfume called "Eternal spring"that is made with flowers, like roses, orchids, chrysanthemums and gerberas, it will smell fresh and clean, as the spring is perceived. The perfume will be made here, specifically in Medellin, because this is the place where we can find lots of flower cultives.

Before to start investing or operating we have to study your internal strenghts an weakneses an also the external opportunities and threats, also it has to be done a marketing research in order to know what would be our competitors and our target market and how we would get to those markets with publicity, advertisement, image, etc. You have to make your product look very attractive, this way you will create customer value and brand recognition in a longer term.

When talking about promoting and advertising, the slogan plays a very important role because it is the easiest way for custumer to remember a product and its main qualities (the ones you want them to remember), so this is why I picked "Take the spring in a bottle" because flowers are related to the spring and in Colombia they are produced in Medellin, which is the city of the "eternal spring", this is very romantic and this will attract women, because flowers are one of the favorite essences that women choose when buying perfumes.

(images taken from members.tripod.com)

The pygmalion effect

The pygamalion effect is a phenomenon that consist on affirmating that when the expectations put on a person are great, that person will perform better than if the expectations were low. It is also related with the constant need of looking for perfection (which does'nt exist), like the greek sculptorr of the story used to do, and he fell in love with a sculpture because no woman was perfect.

This facts are very easy to observe in people and companies, an example of it is Mc Donald's.

As it is already know there is no such a thing as perfection, there are not perfect markets or perfect clients, all of them have barriers (specially cultural) and that is why the company must addapt in order to succed, instead of looking for perfection. By the other hand when a company is big and importan as Mc Donald's people have huge expectations and the company itself have huge expectations upon the employees, this is some king of presure that can make them work more effiently.

An specifict case that perfectly ilustrates whas has been already saidis the entrance of Mc Donald's to the indian market, it wasn´t perfect at all, it represented a big risk because of the cultural barriers, but the company didn't back up, they moved forward, even when they coulden´t sell products with meal (because the cow is their sagred animal), so they came up with new products made with curry, soja, chiken and vegetables. The strategy was totally succesfull and the comapny had a godd customer acceptance in the country that has definitly contributed to its grow, this would have never happened if they had try to enter in a more perfect market for their products or if they hadn't had so much presure upon their shoulders.

It also has to be said that hen a company is trying to go forward it has more presure and it forces the managers to develop better strategies to achieve the goals, like the idea of developing new products for a new market.

1. Considering the conference "Dealing with Cultural Differences" by Nick B. Meyer, choose 1 cultural dimension and use hypothetical but realistic situations - or real ones - to illustrate the business implications of cultural differences. You may not use situations or examples already discussed in class or in the conference.

As we already know there are many factors that can influence a negotiation and one one of the most important ones is culture; this is why negotiators have to learn how to deal with all cultural barries in order to be successful; taking into account that cultures are very different one of the other in all dimensions.

One cultural dimension that perfectly explains this affirmation is the masculinity vs. the femininity; it consists in the different kind of roles that belong to each gender. Masculin roles are defferent in every culture, but they have many common aspects, they are competitive and ambicious, they live in order to work and tend to feel more sympathy for the successfu achiever. By the other hand femininity is almost the same in any culture and it is characterized by modesty and care, they work in order to live and they feel sympathy for the unfortunate.

According to these characteristics a country or a society can be clasified as masculin or feminine, and this is what has to be studied or taken into account when doing bussiness with a person or a company from a different country, because their priorities and the negotiation style can be very different according to the gender.

Japan, Venezuela and Mexico are masculin cultures and Sweden, Norway and Netherlands are feminim countries.

For example if we are going to do business with a Japanesse negotiador we have to take into account that his values are more masculin and his priorities are working and becoming more sucessful, so maybe he won´t be very interested in loosing a lot of time, and also there are more posibilities that he feels more respect for a person that he perceives as successful.

The contrary example would be if we are doing bussines with a person or company from Norway who would problably be more interested in the necesities of the other partie when negotiating or with the employees dued to its carring values, and maybe they would be less strict with the time if the other person has a family or a problem.

These examples are the prove of the importance of knowing a culture before dealing with it, specially nowadays because the world is globalizing.

The blogs I liked the most were:
www.ricomango.com because it shows fashion in many different ways, they don´t only publish designers advertisements, they also show different cultural expresions like body panting and photography; so they show fashion is an art.

www.elblogdelmarketing.com it is very interesting to read because the topics are very usefull for our carreer and you can learn a lot, you can also see marketing from different points of view because there are many oppinions about it.

http://trecool.es/ it is a website with a great variety of toppics like design, art, architecture, photography and fashion; it is very fun and interesting to visit, you can know different styles and points of view.