South Asia

This region is a sub region composed by the mainland South East Asia and the maritime south East Asia.
In the South East Asia are Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and in the Maritime Countries are Brunei, East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
Being noun as the region that has the majority of the noun Asian Tigers, composed by Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and Hong Kong (the last one does n't make part of South Asia).

Is said that this extraordinary success was reached because a large number of factors like the increase of the capital stock, increase of investment, great budget management from the State, redistribution of economic sources, technology progress, modernization of organizations, great management practices, education of the labor force, the hours for work where augmented. Plus, as Jean Baptise Say, told once " the goal of every good government is to stimulate the production, and of one bad government is to increase the consumption" so those countries that make part of the Asiatic Tigers, where educated to imitate good examples of improvement as the Asian countries, a model focused in the incrementation of its production.

Additionally, the Asiatic values and beliefs have shown them a different orientation, where the love for work, the respect for the authorities, the desire to emerge, inclination to investigation, vitality, discipline, future vision, eagerness to learn what happen outside,

More of the previous values are thought by the Confucianism, the main philosophy for countries like Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Korea and of course China.
From Confucianism they learned to have harmonious relationships first with their selves, their families in order the State can be governed. Always with benevolence, courage and reverence.

One of the extraordinary cases of the Asiatic Tigers that has reached that development, is Taiwan.

This was called Ilhia Formosa (that means Beautiful Island) or as Republic of China, is recognized today mainly as Taiwan and despite now days is identified because its economic prosperity, it hasn't always been like that. Its territory passed trough Holland, Chinese, Japanese and finally again Chinese's hands who has its sovereignty. The leader Chiang Kai Shek, arrives to Taiwan running out from the Communist movement and spread all of his nationalistic ideas that pushes Taiwan's economy, that followed by others similar governors allowed the "Taiwan's miracle"

Its geography is composed by a very mountain terrain from north to south, and in the west is plain. in this place is concentrated the main population. Its more important cities are Taipei (the capital), Kaohsiung, T'ai-chung and Keelung, all of them in the coast of Taiwan that looks to China, what explains why they are more developed, and Taipei and Keelung are in the nearest coast to Japan and Kaohsiung to Hong Kong, both important administrative locations. This is the heartland of Taiwan with the presence of this cities and the population density, while in the center and in the east is located the hinterland, that because its geography its difficult to establish industry and livings.








Taiwan has the problem of having few natural resources, which obligates them to search for some activities that replace this deficiency. This island focused in the exploitation of labor force and capital accumulation, but then their focus changed, and started to considerate the technology industry as a key factor por their development. The electronic and information industry, the substitution of imports pushed them to produce internally what they had been bringing from other countries. Other sectors that has shown great improvement is the service sector, as telecommunications, finances services, distribution, research and development, among others. SO they are hired by nationals and international countries.
In this way, this island has turned into a key investment place, despite its territory conditions and lack of sovereignty Taiwan hasn't stopped its Asiatic tiger huge steps.

This is a great example of how a country with difficulties, based in their values and philosophies, doesn't led anything to blur its horizons, aspect that Colombia should learn from this South Asiatic island.


Bibliography

• Arbeláez. A., Cadavid. D. (2009) Presentation "South East Asia". Organization and Cultures Subject, Universidad EAFIT.
• Arosemena, G. (2007) Asia es modelo de desarrollo para las economías latinas.
  G Arosemena - Guillermo Arosemena, 2007 - works.bepress.com. Retrieved on March, 2009
• Ministry of economic affairs in Taiwan [ http://w2kdmz1.moea.gov.tw/multimedia/08_es.htm] Retrieved on March, 2009
  

Images

• Taiwan. (2008) Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/dans180/2165629357/. Retrieved on March, 2009
• My name is Taiwan. (2005) Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/luc_h/55887600/
• Night Taiwan. (2006) Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/fish_at_taipei/274538902/
• Prayer-Taiwan. (2006) Flickr. http://www.flickr.com/photos/worldlover/2746299148/
• Google Earth application

East Asia - The case of Japan Management Model -

China, Japan, Mongolia, South and North Korea, Russia, Siberia and Taiwan are some countries that take place at East Asia. Explaining each other with its capital, economy, GDP, population and religion, among other aspects they arrived up to the very interesting case of Japan and its known Management Model that overlapped in some aspects with it with the Korean, as the following chart:

Both with their similar beginnings, (Korea's following attitude took Japan as a model), but with some differences too.

Is interesting and helpful to know something about Japanese model characterized by three pillars:

1. Prefer inexperienced graduates
2. Promotion from within
3. Commitment of excellence and quality

Is this Management model spreading around the world? Yes, even in Colombia some companies are picking some ideas to coordinate, create commitment, excellence and quality inside with their employees. The pioneers are Views, enterprise developer of market research, and Corona a company that from ceramics and other materials creates sets of dishes, complete materials for lavatories, and faucets.
This company is managing several types of management that they named as The Corona Kit - Improvement culture and high performance - the one that contains: Six sigma, Six sigma design, work out, lean production and TPM. All of them for a continuous improvement for better results, solving problems, management improvement and the processes performances.

Is impressive to see how the Asiatic culture, specially the Japanese has arrived to our country and in this way to the companies in order to accomplish some rules of the Kaizen, a system of suggestion that remarks the importance of the continuous improvement putting your target a little bit higher; making progress one's work, people's work and one's department. Everything emerged because the history of Japan vs. China, and its dynamic attitude that challenges the culture in order to follow something I had repeated a lot of times trough this subject: Improvement mixed with the insights of the Japanese culture.

Bibliography

• Rodas, J.M. & Saldarriaga, L.F. & Restrepo, M.C. 2009. Presentation "East Asia" Organization and Cultures Subject, Universidad EAFIT.
• Presentation " Cultura de mejoramiento y Alto desempeño" Kit Corona, Corona. (2007) envivo.eafit.edu.co/simprotextos/CORONA.ppt. Retrieved on March 29, 2009.
  
• Seis SIGMA. Rumbo a la perfección. (2007) En: Revista Dinero. http://www.dinero.com/wf_InfoArticulo.aspx?idArt=32886. Retrieved on March 29, 2009.
  

Paraíso Travel - The Movie

This film produced by Simon Brand shows the reality of those people who are searching for that "american dream", no matter what it takes to get there they would do it, lown money, leave their families in order to has their foot into that land that "promises" a better life... as television, and hollywood movies often show.
What many people don't know is the amount of persons actually die in this route.
How this operates in the real life? Well no very far from what we saw in this colombina movie. For many latins the words Reynosa and New Laredo in Mexico means happiness or misfortune, cause are the obligated places where the have to go trough in order to arrive to EEUU by Texas.
This way is named as wetbacks in Central America or "el hueco" as is named here in Colombia, by the way ther is a book written by German Castro named El hueco which tells the suffer and pain that many latins decide to affront, where are related some torture cases of the Federal Police from Mexico and the danger of the mother nature.
And ther are a lot of documentals, books, and movies that dedicated to tell the hell this people live as Simon Brand showed with his production, some examples are Crossing Arizona, American Visa, Mojados and El inmigrante.











But despite those thousand of cases, people still deciding that is the best chance to get a better life, because of love like in this case for the young man that followed Reina by her side because it was her dream, but not really his.
And as we know, not only individuals rights are been damaged here but the inmigrants policies what it costs to hace so many outsiders in one country.
right now with the actual economic crisis many inmigrants are even thinking to come back to their homelands because the chances are fewer than before, people are not spending their money as they were used to, and that means that less maids to clean are hired, less mechanics, less burritos sales in the street... and so one.

Bibliography

• Paraíso Travel, Film.
• Penagos, A. M. & Sierra, D. & Peñaranda, S. & Piedrahíta, M.A. 2009. Presentation "Migration and expatriates, An insight outlook" Organization and Cultures Subject, Universidad EAFIT.
• Peligros de ir a Estados Unidos sin visa. http://www.comolograrlavisadeusa.com/peligros_de_irse_ilegal_a_Estados_Unidos/index.php. Retrieved on April, 2009
  

Migration

A very spoken topic that affects several countries and because its magnitude has obligated to create a lot of policies around its development and growth. According to the team that proposed this subject, migration is the movement of people from one place in the world to another for the purpose of taking up permanent or semi permanent residence, usually across a political boundary.

Those movements are classified in 10 types of migration, and they are:

1. Internal: this means to move from one city to other in the same country
2. External:to move from one city to other or even between countries or continents
   
3. Emigration: Occurs when people leave one country to live in other one
4. Immigration: The one that arrives to the new country
   
5. Population transfer: When the government forces a grou go out of a region, known as involuntary or forced migration
   
6. Impelled migration: When is imposed because of unfavorable situations. An example are the group of displaced rural persons that of cause of the guerrilla have to run away leaving their land, animals and proprieties.
   
7. Step Migration: Shorter distance migration, for example when people move to their farms, other cities, villages, among others.
   
8. Chain: Very related to families, that starts when one member goes out the country and start sending money so the others can come with him.
9. Return or circular migration, when immigrants come back to their home place
   
10. Seasonal movement: Only for a period of time for work, or climate conditions

Into those types of migrations exists the people who characterizes those movements, and they are classified as emigrant, immigrant, internally displaced person, migration stream and finally refugee. Is important to clear the difference between expatriate vs. immigrant, and that is that the immigrant doesn't know what will have, nothing certain while expatriates have more certainty related to some work guaranty, outside their home country in a non permanent basis.
Though they have more certainty, is common that this persons do not reach an acculturation or acceptance of the culture they are at, they become unable to perform in that other country being recalled or sent back home; or another case noun as culture shock, happens when exists a different social environment, anxiety toward an unknown culture.
Between some theories about migration that Ernest Revenstein and Oded Stark proposed, the lecturer team made emphasis on which are the main factors that generates the migration, and they are the pull and the push factors. In what do they consist?
First of all we have the Push factors, the ones that push you to get out or your home land, economic, political, cultural, and environmentally based, not secure, less freedom, less posibilities to go further, among a lot of others. An example of this, was that great amount of people that decided to leave Colombia in the more difficult moments when the violence, insecurity and no enough economic possibilities where available. The follow are the data of the amount of Colombians that decided to live in US assigned by city:



For 2000, the foreign born from Colombia accounted for 0.2 percent of the total population, this appeard in the MIP Data Hub that distinguish migration information by country.
A critical time for Colombia because was loosing all the young people in search of the American dream, causing a brain drain.

Well, the other factor is the pull one, is equal based as the above one, economic, political, cultural, and environmentally based. Supported by job opportunities, better life condition, security, education, etc. those privileges are offered by the host country as the way it function, and as been seen as the dreamed place.

The remittances is the money received from the emigrants usually for their family or relatives, this cash turn into a very important capital for the country that receive it, because is money that will be spent in different sectors of the national's industry, moving the consumption and increasing the performance of the companies, equilibrating the balance of payments. El Salvador is a country that its main resource comes from the remittances.

Finally I want to incorporate that migration is a very complicated subject to be treated, that demands very structured policies and a lot of comprehension but a lot of rational too. That's the reason US had had a lot of problems with immigrants and their guaranties, but at the same time a think, how would we feel if start to arrive a lot of people from different countries and start to change the dynamic of our country, it will be discrimination?, ethnocentrism? Cause that's what happen in US, and the have a lot of conception of the Latin culture as a whole thing, most of the time recognized as Mexican! not Colombians, or Peruvians, or Argentinians, etc. (What has to be with ignorance too). And how they discriminate Afro American's immigrants and even theirs...
Well, that's why I wanted to share the next cartoon comic I found of the Invisible life of poet.

(Click it to zoom)

Bibliography

• Penagos, A. M. & Sierra, D. & Peñaranda, S. & Piedrahíta, M.A. 2009. Presentation "Migration and expatriates, An insight outlook" Organization and Cultures Subject, Universidad EAFIT.
  

• MPI Data Hub, Migrations facts, stats and maps. The foreign born from Colombia in California. http://www.migrationinformation.org/datahub/whosresults.cfm. Accessed on March 13th, 2009.
• The invisible life of poet, African American Dream Simulator. http://www.lifeofpoet.com/archives/78. Accessed on March 13, 2009.
  

FILM: The Corportation

This documentary criticizes the fact of how corporations has turned in today's dominant institution, that influences and control our lives when years ago it was insignificant and not that ruling.
Considered as a paradox because causes great wealth overlapping with enormous heated arms. Considered as an agenda to take over the world! But others prefer to name it as business cause simply sounds more fare.

In this documentary corporation is defined by different recognized leaders such as Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore (identify for its capability to discuss what he doesn't agree).
Individuals working together, CEO's receive the gross margin, the profit, the most important thing for them, while workers consider corporations as the one that gave them a gift for been working.
According to lawyers, corporation is a prison and you should learn that, organizations as legal persons, taken into account as a whole person for the government and no as a bunch of people.
As Michael Moore says, the corporations are good viewing them as for one side they offer as services, and products that many times help us, and satisfy our need, but the problem with corporation is the profit motivation. They do not concern of others feelings, have no enduring relations, feel no guilt, do not conform social norms with respect to lawful behaviors,

CEO defend themselves just saying that they do not take decision without any consideration, and that is not easy, but that what happens is just because of capitalism, which I think is the easier way to get rid of any guiltiness.
Social groups, are formed in order to debate what is going on with the respect of their values, rights, and for planet respect too.

How are we so rolled with this way of manage our lives and many times we don't even realize that is really happening? we are so into this situation and converted in such a normal behavior that we don't even take our time to think about it. Many times we discuss why companies own almost all our lives, call on weekend to our cellphones, or even our home phone if something happened, treat temporal workers with discriminatory actions compared with hired ones, do not respect people's free time and family time, while give the vacations day exactly they said and do not discount the days or ours that person dedicated on weekend or late ours in the week. Is just a philosphy of accomplishing budgets, plans and numbers so they won't get fired, working with fear. That's the reason people prefer to carry with all of those unjust norms and managing laws and more in a country as ours that employment has always been considered as something as a favor, a gift and thanks god you have a lot of things to do at work because is better than being at home doing nothing, thinking that work in that way with no respect of privacy, free time and not treatened as a human being is such a normal thing.

And I think that the best way to change this is that we as future International Managers, the day we get those important charges, of CEO of our company, we could have a human philosophy of how to treat others, with respect, as well they should treat others. Influence that organizational culture to change it in a more positive way, that helps people to work more pleased, not like in a prision but yes thanking god for what they got and convert our companies as Google now days do, turned into the best company to work at because of the freedom workers have, the spaces, and culture of developing idea in more creative spaces and less into a squared office with white walls, with no photo or relative's memories just because affects the organization image.
Work less on what people will think, and more in the employees that are the one that makes a corporation work properly and help to accomplish their goals, and then this will be seen by other companies and taken as a sampling.


Bibliography

• The Corporation Film. Organization and culture blog archive. http://cultureseafit.blogspot.com/2009/01/film-corporation.html. Accessed on March, 2009.
  

Managing Diversity

How to handling differences of background, culture, religion, nationality, sexual tendencies, etc. in an organization?

And was very illustrated the activity that my classmates did about a gay man that was going to a cocktail in the company he worked at, so the case went around if he should bring his partner and reveal his likes, or go alone to prevent problems with his conservative boss. After talking and giving our opinion, the point of consensus was that he should go with his couple. Is that opinion related to what we, young people are perceiving life in a more opened way?

The term "managing diversity" introducted by Kandola and Fullerton in the USA in 1987, has several aspects that shouldn't be forgotten in an organization.
Those are:

• Cost of implementing new strategies to integrate its personnel.
• Resource-Acquisition, when people identify that company because its non discrimination policies, and best reputation of managing diversity.
• Marketing argument, to it will be easier to sell themselves to other countries and regions because of their people sensivity.
• Creativity cause will be more perspectives, less attached to old norms and listen others experiences and ideas.
• Problem-Solving, people with different background may think dissimilar what would help in more solutions for something.
• System flexibility, less standardised and more comprehensive.

In summary, a well managed diversity will contribute a lot to an organization, existing more comprehension, acceptances, acculturation, in order to develop cross cultural capabilities, improve results and efficiency, avoiding conflict, more innovation and extra perceptions that will build a more precise view of what costumer need.

In Colombia, and I like to talk always about our country cause I think is necessary to analyze how this is been managed here, cultural organization is more focus for the market and costumer's benefit than for the same employees. Or in other cases as Compañía Nacional de Chocolates, to differentiate from other companies for their inside treatment, there salutation is a very important culture practice and helps for a more comfortable work environment aswell. But I think many times our regionalism do not let us to be more opened to others. For example, in the company where I did my internship, there was a guy from Czech Republic in the international area, and he wasn't understood all the time. He was quiet, calm and didn't talked to much, birthdays weren't a special date for him so he didn't celebrated it with others as we do so his mates talked that he was very apart and serious, and that he didn't like to go out for lunch with all of them, he just liked to be by himself. So that's when is important to read more about the other's culture to know if is not his culture but his personality. At the same time we can't stereotype Czechs just because we knew one.

Value Chain Activity

According to the activity of Managing diversity, here are our two activities proposed for Socio economic status and nationalism

Bibliography

• Organizations and cultures. III Managing diversity presentation. Maria Alejandra González Pérez.
• Hacia la construcción de un modelo de cultura organizacional orientada al mercado. Dagoberto Páramo Morales. Junio 2001. editorial.unab.edu.co/revistas/rcmarketing/pdfs/r22_art5_c.pdf. Accessed on February, 2009.
  

EXPLORING DIVERSITY ON CAMPUS

In order to understand better the concept of diversity, an activity was assigned so we could take some pictures around the university and analyze what do we think about diversity on campus.


This interesting activity and our experience through all these 5 years and a half, let us answer the following questions proposed by our teacher:

1. Describe your university’s faculty and administration in terms of its aspects of diversity and/or demographics.

Our university situated in Medellin, Colombia is suffering a kind of increasing 'movement' of foreign people, this is because of the improvement of security reasons, which have made the University to take this subject in consideration the last few years, which is related to culture, environment and social differences. When you're going to analyze how many abroad teachers does our University has, there are just a few. In the International business department, the chief of this area is, Sascha Fürst, comes from Germany giving some new international to this faculty, at the same, a new Austrian teacher has taken charge of one class in the emphasis of International Relations. This shows a certain kind of interest from the university to hire abroad teachers, in order to expand the student´s knowledge beyond national thoughts and believes that we hope will continue growing. But if you compare this with international universities we will realize that what is happening here is a very low percentage of abroad teachers. In other words, unless we don't have a specific investigation in this subject, the percentage of teachers in our university from local cities of the country is bigger than the percentage of international teachers. Teachers from the Caribbean coast, Cali, Bogotá among others are some examples of this. These mean differences of customs, attitudes toward life, values, social and even physical variations. But at the end, those teachers have their own way to teach their classes and share knowledge independently, without taken in consideration the country, their values and customs.

2. Describe your university’s student body in terms of its aspects of diversity and/or demographics.

Something a little bit different is happening with the student body due to the agreements that EAFIT has with many universities around the world. The agreements give the opportunity to foreign people to come here to Medellin and study one semester or one year of their careers and knowing the Colombian culture and people, as an exchange opportunity. The university is committed to being "OPEN TO THE WORLD", so there are huge efforts been made not only to send Colombian students to other countries but also bringing students of diverse countries around the world. Today, EAFIT University has students from different nationalities among them French, Sweden, United States, Denmark, Japan, England, Australia, Korea, Germany and The Netherlands. This occurs especially in the International Business Department, in which the students have more subjects in common with programs of all the world, also the language helps a lot for them because they choose seeing subjects in English and is a career in which students and teachers have a big facility and knowledge about the other cultures because of the field of studies. In terms of regional diversity, the student body its very diverse, EAFIT have a high percentage of people of all the regions of Colombia, Caribbean coast, Bogotá, Coffee Region, Santander, among others, that gives the University a very important and rich cultural environment where students learn to understand other people and be more open minded. This high diversity of nationalities allows students to think out of the box, to go belong the traditional, to go far away from what they are used to and these reflects on people more prepared to the world and more creative to solutions.

3. What are the similarities and differences between the two groups?

When you apply as an EAFIT student to an abroad university you're competting with a lot people who also wants to study there, but for a foreign student applying to our university may be easier cause there's not a bunch of people trying hard to come here (as we said before this indicator is increasing but slowly)
An other difference is the language barrier for a foreign employee or student, not all the people hired in EAFIT speaks 2 languages, making it more difficult to have a multicultural work team. For students it’s also difficult to study in Colombia because there are several classes that are in Spanish and many teachers don’t speak other language as well. The legal procedures for foreign to study in Colombia makes it impossible for some to come to EAFIT, issue that makes EAFIT not so open to the world, due to the Colombian policies.

A main similarity between both groups is how in the professional or student atmosphere it’s an intention to be nice and helpful to foreign, attitude that makes it easy for them to stay for longer periods, even for life time in Medellin and EAFIT. Some times EAFIT tends to hire foreign people because they think all foreign people are good professionals, and the truth is that as students sometimes we find it’s the opposite. Foreign students tend to have a nice time in EAFIT, the experience are making other want to come and maybe in some years we can say we are really open to the world and the world is open toward us.

4. How does the degree of diversity in the faculty affect your learning experience?

Well, that affect our learning experiences in many ways, and of us as being International managers enriches our point of view of the different kinds of culture and nationalities that will be very useful in a future negotiation, journey, or just for general culture that make us world citizens.
In the other hand, talking about social diversity if university could receive more students of lower economic status, will enrich our lives in so many ways beginning from the issue that we all are different, not the same money, not the same house, transportation, or even family. I personally think this will be so helpful for EAFIT students, we, the one that are judge from other local unviersities that think we all are rich and only go to show us to others. A very popular perception of EAFIT students that should be cutted. So, this fact of sharing with other people will affect in a positive way to be more persons than profesionals.

5. How does the degree of diversity in the student body affect the classroom experience, and extracurricular activities? What are the advantages and disadvantages?

We believe that diversity in EAFIT affects us in a positive way, since people from different cultures could give us a broader vision of the world by showing us characteristics of their cultures, customs, and behaviors. This could be taken as an advantage, because we as International Managers should be open to know and learn about people who come from different sides of our country of from abroad. At the same time having foreigners will enrich teacher's view so they can realize if what they are saying stills the same or if is changing.

We actually don't think that we could find disadvantages on this issue. The only fact we could think of, is that sometimes diversity could cause isolation from certain groups because of the impact of entering a new culture, but this eventually could change in the course of the semester.

6. What could be done in terms of diversity to enrich your college experience?

To enrich our college experience it would be interesting:

• To have more diverse people in the campus, because we can learn in such environment about others behaviors, beliefs and values which help us to be better prepared to become active participants in our society once we leave the college.
• Also we think that EAFIT should have more classes that give the students (not only International Business students) the opportunity to learn more about other cultures, because it’s important to be “Open minded” and accept all the differences between the people and cultures.
• Sending the teachers to countries that have a very different culture, that they study, live and have a common life there, it would be very interesting to learn about a country when the teacher really knows it and not only because he read about it.
• Giving more scholarships to the people that want to study in EAFIT, even when we talk about medellín, we don't have to go that far, to other countries to think in scolarships to increase the diversity. Widening the range of people that could have that access based in some restrictions but that could let in more students.