THIRD CLASS

CORPORATE CULTURAL DIVERSITY

The coexistence of different ethnic, gender, racial, and socioeconomic groups within one social unit.

It is the diversity of cultures that interact and participate in the cultural identity of the company.

Interaction: From its start, any strong cultural manifestation leads an initial polarization. This will bring preferential or discriminatory treatment.

Cultural added value:

1. Exceeds the market value.

2. These products are not only consuming products.

Some countries are specialized in the manufacture of a specific product, this makes the product get a cultural added value because people believe that the product is of better quality if is produced there.

What is diversity?

• The differences which make us each unique

• Recognizing the differences until the differences don’t make a difference anymore

• All of our differences and similarities.

What does Diversity Include?

• Age

• Race

• Religion

• Gender

• National Origin

• Disability

• All of our differences and similarities



Diversity appreciation:

• It seeks to use the maximum potential, without having limitations of group identities.

• Diversity appreciation is respecting and enjoying the wide range of cultural and individual differences.

• Organizations are rapidly changing to accommodate expanding markets, increasing diverse workforce, and increasing public consciousness about how businesses should operate.

Diversity Appreciation in a Business Environment:

• Developing an atmosphere in which it is safe for all employees to ask for help

• Actively seeking information from people from a variety of backgrounds and cultures

• Including people who are different than you in informal gatherings such as lunch, coffee breaks, and spur of the moment meetings

• Creating a team spirit of which every member feels a part.

“Effective and efficient communication should be strengthened in the organization, and seek to understand people attitudes”

You should avoid:

• Ethnocentrism: presumption of the cultures as the only one.

• Visual obstinacy: believing the manners in a culture are the best way to do things.

Bibliography:

www.state.ia.us/government/crc/docs/Appreciating_Diversity.ppt

http://www.added-value.com/source/2010/06/added-value-france-reinforces-its-innovation-offer-by-investing-in-cultural-insight-expertise/

Presentations of Samuel Cepeda.

SECOND CLASS

ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE

It is like the personality, the assumptions, values, norms and the behavior of the members of an organization. It can be also looked at as system. For example, the organizational culture of a hospital is quite different that the one in a university and in the same way these ones are different to the culture in a big profit organization. “The concept of culture is particularly important when attempting to manage organization-wide change. Practitioners are coming to realize that, despite the best-laid plans, organizational change must include not only changing structures and processes, but also changing the corporate culture as well.”

Subjective vision of organizational culture:

1. Shared assumptions: to believe in the same things.

2. Shared values: Explicit or implicit fundamental beliefs, concepts, and principles that underlie the culture of an organization, and which guide decisions and behavior of its employees, management, and members.

3. Shared meanings: to have good communication.

4. Shared understandings: Shared Understanding is knowing the rules, objectives, and boundaries of the pursuit.

5. Shared corporate image: “Corporate image, or reputation, describes the manner in which a company, its activities, and its products or services are perceived by outsiders. In a competitive business climate, many businesses actively work to create and communicate a positive image to their customers, shareholders, the financial community, and the general public.”

Characteristics of organizational culture:

1. Member’s identity.

2. Emphasis on groups, not people.

3. Indirect focus on people.

4. Integration of units.

5. Control.

6. Risk tolerance.

7. Reward criteria.

8. Emphasis to end or to means.

9. Open system approach.

Video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXxeWqlq2Tw

Bibliography:

http://managementhelp.org/org_thry/culture/culture.htm

www.nhorizons.ca/images/orgcult.jpg

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/shared-values.html

http://www.referenceforbusiness.com/small/Co-Di/Corporate-Image.html

FIRST CLASS

  SUMMARY


this was our first class and it was very interesting, at first the teacher explained the way we have to do this blog every week, end then we saw a movie called "the corporation". This movie talked about the history of the corporation and its first meanings given by experts. It said that at the beginning a corporation was an insignificant institution, imbued with a "personality" of pure self-interest, but in the next 100 years we saw the corporation's rise to dominance, it carries on a business, it is now part of our society, it has become a dominant social, economic and political force around the world. This documentary also examines the moral behaviors that are involved in the decisions that are taken on a corporation.

THE ROLE OF CORPORATION IN THE ACTUAL CONTEXT

As the documental “the corporation” says, today most of the corporations are only guided by the search of making profit; although it brings many benefits to the society it can also affect it in many ways. However some of this corporations are concerned about the impact they have in the economy, for example at the 2008 World Economic Forum, Bill Gates talked about “creative capitalism” that mean that profit generation and social welfare can go hand-in-hand, it is a school of thought that thinks business should not only decrease its negative impact on society, but it can develop solutions to social and environmental problems or at least help to distribute the benefits of the private sector more widely.

What happen today is that companies look always to increase their profits as much as they can and to decrease their expenses, this takes them to have negatives impacts on the population. For example, what companies do to lower the expenses is to look for cheaper labor and for this they go to countries that have very low life quality, and this people for this countries prefer to work for anything instead of starve. That makes that many times these corporations are violating human rights in an indirect way. Then, it is truth for corporations that “if work can be carried out more cheaply elsewhere with less environmental control, it will be carried out elsewhere. If work is carried out in one particular locality in preference over another, it is either because it is cheaper to do so than elsewhere, or there is wealth to be extracted from that particular area. Once either reason is no longer valid, that cheaper labor is available elsewhere or all the wealth and natural resources are exhausted, Big Business will move its capital to someplace else, leaving behind a devastated community and ruined environment.”

A corporation can be a bad thing when they become excessively large and wealthy, they can absolutely influence lives around the world, influence public policy and governments (like financing elections) and influence international institutions. This way, corporations do not really work with democracy because it is an obstacle of their principal objective (making profit).

BIBLIOGRAPHY
http://www.cceia.org/education/002/lessons/be/be-01-02

http://home.clara.net/heureka/gaia/global05.htm

http://www.globalissues.org/article/234/the-rise-of-corporations

http://www.unimelb.edu.au/community/docs/towngownspeech2005.pdf