About Uribe's successor

The situation in Colombia nowadays, for some of us, is pretty exciting. All this do to great expectations that all colombians has about who is going to be Uribe's successor. This topic really put us in an interesting position because we have to think who will be better for our country, and in this way we have to think in those topics that are the most important for the development of the country; the most important ones are:

• Security (FARC)


• Economics


• Education


• Corruption

About security, the most important topic for some of the candidates, an article of the economist says that the great work doned by uribe should not be forgotten in the past, that the next president of Colombia sholud be one that carries on the same labour i order to achive more and more results in the war against FARC.

Much has been done, but there's a lot more to be done.

Here I give you an image of the article a just told you.

Reference:

"Colombia's presidential campaign: safer but still not safe", Revista The Economist April 10th 2010, p. 38-39.

An excellent blog!

In this entry I want to highlight the effort made form Paulina PAtiño, she has made a reaaly interesting blog, with really accurate entries. Here I invite you all to enter and enjoy aof a well design and very interesting Blog.

Congratualtions Paulina.

Here's the link:

http://paulinape.blogspot.com

What can they do?

The facts happened in the past to the indigenous popilation of Australia cannot be forgotten in the past, and most importantly cannot be simply solved with an "I'm sorry".
That's why we should think in the answer of this question: what can different organizations & the privates sector do to avoid the abuse of minorities?

And the first thing we should think in order to answer this question isn commitment, commitment from all the private sector and all the companies, because if they are not committed to the cause, all the efforts are in vain. Another step to follow is to create an organization that defend the rights of all minorities, create an organization that would be responsible for fighting for the rights of those minorities who are being neglected by the society. We have to make the world to understand that minorities also belong to the society and in fact they are an essential part of it.

Finally, and most important, is to consider their own culture, this means that we have to let them express themselves freely and not try to adapt them to the culture that has constantly tried to reject them from the world.

A part of Brazil you probably don’t know!

In this entry I want to shoe you a really interesting blog that I just seen; it's a brazilian blog that show us the country in a different perspective, fromthe perspective of the indigenous population.

I really like it beacuse it alllows us to understand that in all countries there are several cultures, an ll of them always have imprtant things to shre. I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.

Here's the link:

http://www.ajindo.blogspot.com/

Trade Unions = Trouble makers?

It´s well known that all around the wolrd trade unions are seen as a problem, beacuase people usually relates the people that fights for the rights of the workers with trouble makers.

The reallity seen in Europe in some way is not so far away from the one seen in Colombia, beacuse trade unions in theory tries to defend the rights of the workers, but in the practice we do not see that , what we see is how this "companies" have acquiered some power and had used in a very wrong way.

In a debate of candidates to the government of colombia, this topic was one of the main important, beacause they were conscience of the need to create or improve that kind of organism. They also realize that in the reallity that we live nowadays in Colombia it is not possible to thik that someones would take responsability or order to defend the workers of the country beacuse, and might sound pretty hard, will probably get kill. You might think in too exaggerated but it's the truth and that's why nowadays we have over 2.700 trade unionist that have been murdered and those crime still unpunished.

What we really need it's, in some way, to take some of the european culture in matters of law accomplishment, because when we could be able to follow them, in that moment we will be able to maintain a society that permits workers needs as a right and not as a luxury.

How to negotiate in a diferent culture

To make business in a country with a culture totally different to ours it is necessary to know the new culture, to respect it and to assume it. It doesn't serve of anything to try to impose our form of making things or to trying to be successful with the mechanisms that helped us to triumph in the western world.

But then, what can we make when we work with a culture like China?

These are five key ideas:

1. To inform us and to get ready to understand what our new customers like and dislike. A small detail can ruin hours and hours of hard working. To take care of a first contact is important. It is very difficult to change a first impression.

2. To be related with an open and constructive attitude

3. To adapt to the local particularities, not to impose our ideas.

4. To look for the positive intention behind the behavior and to avoid the prejudices.

5. To take care of our non verbal communication. Mainly in countries where we find an idiomatic problem the expressions and the postures ¡they are very important!

Bibliography

Salomón, María Teresa (2008) “¿Cómo hacer negocios en China?”, Revista CapitalHumano, No. 223, p. 80 - 83.

The objective of this entry is to show the a table that my partner and I made to show the difference between Japanese, Korean and Colombian management models. Here it is:

Reference
Lee, J., Roehl, T.W., and Choe, S. (2000). What makes management style similar and distinct across borders? Growth, experience and culture in Korean and Japanese firms. Journal of International Business Studies, 31, 4: 631-652

Expatriates and migrants

Expatriates and migrants are usually confused as the same. Basically and with no intentions of getting in to long definitions, the simplest definition of each one is:

Expatriates: is a person with at least one nationality but that lives in another country by his own will, because they want to work abroad or only to visit, but in the final they have the intention of going back to its country.

Migrants: basically its the same situation of expatriates, but with the big difference that they go to other country in order to get a better job, abetter way of life, so the big difference is that in some way they have to go to another country.

In this way, and already knowing both definition, we can say that the main difference between them is the need of each one, because when the expatriates go to another country because they want, migrants go because they have to.

To end this entry i would like to show you the next table that shows the work circumstances and attributes of expatriates and migrants:

Reference
BERRY, D. (2009). EXPATRIATES, MIGRANTS, GENDER, RACE, AND CLASS. Academy of Management Proceedings, 1-6. Retrieved from Business Source Complete database.

Cultural Identity

The cultural identity is that part of us that make us to create a sense of belonging for the company we work for. So in this way it is very important for the companies to highlight that part of the employees so they can feel the company as their family, and work not only for the reward of the money but also for the joy of doing it; that should be the principal result of the cultural identity of a company.
It alos important to know that among a cultural identity there's always going to be a lots of culture that interact with themsekves, and adopt the cultural identity as a part of them because it is what keeps them together as a one.

You can see this video, that shows a little bit a bout a just said. Hpe you like it!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qGN1MPk5elk&feature=related

Ethnography as a tool of I.B

It is necesary to highlight the importancy of the ethnography in the international busines, because it is the tool that allows us, as investigators, realize how cultures, organitations, or countries behave in certain situations allowing us to identify the needs of each one and to be able to satisfy them.
It also allows us to know how is the behavior of a culture when negotiating an agreement, which helps us to develop ourselves in a better way, always specting the best results.

Because of al this is that we can't put away this important tool, because in the long term it always is going to make our job, as negotiators, a lot easier.

Culture = Organizational Culture??

Culture is what define us as person, as a part of the society and also what make us unique. Culture is what help us to define our own identity, and that's why people usually thinks that it's impossible that someone could have a double culture, but the reality is that they are wrong. We create our own culture with the influence of the society, but we also are influenced by another culture and that one is the organizational culture. The organizational culture describes all the attitudes and behaviors of a group of people inside an organization, taking in to account their interest and also the interest of the people outside the organization.

In this sense, we can say that a person can have an identity or a double culture because is naturally attached to its native culture, but simultaneously it can adopt another culture of an organization in order to become part of it. Finally we can assure that in the long term the two identities will merge and in the end become just one.

Is there a better culture?

At the begining of last class the teacher ask us in wich culture we would like to be born in. I think this is a very interesting question because a think in order to wish to be a part of any culture you have to know it first, and in my case I haven't know many cultures so I can't decide weather i like one or another. What I can tell, from my experience, is that when you live in another country you begin to love more your own nation because you start to miss every little thing from your country an in that way, my experience of living abroad for 3 years make me realize that a love my country, that i love al the little things that makes us uniques, there for a love my culture and I wouldn't change for anything.

Firts commentary

This first commentary is to introduce myself, my name is Carlos Andrés Lozano Carbonell and I create this blog as an asigment of the subject Organisations and Culture of the program International Business of EAFIT university.

The purpose of this blog is to comment all clases and make some commentaries about any topic we found interesting, so if someone is going to comment about any entry of the blog, please make sure its about something related to topics discussed in the blog.

THis is it for today, but I will be making some more commentaries during the week.

Bye

Carlos L.