THE BOB'S

My favourite blog was The Ushahidi Blog.

"Ushahidi, which means ”testimony” in Swahili, is a website that was developed to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008. They are working to build a new platform that can be used anywhere in the world, and this blog tells some of that story" (http://blog.ushahidi.com/)

This blog has become a great tool and source of imformation for understanding many of the different dynamics that happen in that country. It also appears as very good expample or alternative to be followed by other countries like Colombia where voilence is used as an excuse to justify ideological struggle and demagogic speeches. This blog allows people to tell and to know the truth of what really happens and permit a transparent view of the problem, making smokescreens everytime more difficult to be made for those interested in the conflict to be kept.

Quala, the best Colombian company and No 10 in Latin america.

Quala born in Bogota, Colombia in a small office of 200 square meters with seven people only. This little company started came to compete in the market for milk powders with its first brand Instacream that now a days is the leader brand in that category.

These are the behaviors that, according to them,  characterize their people and that will ensure they achieve compliance with the objectives of the organization:

1. Transparency and integrity: It works continuously in accordance with their beliefs and values that are consistent with those of the Organization, even in difficult situations, build confidence and credibility both internally and externally.

2. Identification and commitment to the company: Demonstrates a high level of identification with the organizational culture, as well as the goals of the group and putting the organization above their individual interests by generating a positive work environment and enthusiastic.

3.Clarity of purpose: Means the totality of a situation clearly and accurately set goals, visualize the impact of events and how they affect the results. Go clear and targeted way to do what is required and acts in accordance with these definitions.
4. Problem analysis: Proactively identifies all the events, issues and opportunities for improvement, with a critical permanent, establishing the key factors, considering and linking various variables.

5. Innovative and creative solution of problems: Address the problems posed by alternative actions applicable, comprehensive and original that add value to work and create new opportunities.

6. Listen, adaptability and flexibility: Listen, values and seeks proactive and genuine questions and points of view, interpreting the purpose of generating the best alternative. Adapts its own approach and way of operate as the situation demands.

7. Organization and monitoring:Make your work a serial made in the activities and routine monitoring with random checking to ensure the collection of results efficiently.

8. Results-orientation: It works by continuously following meet and exceed the expected results, identifying and implementing the necessary actions and overcoming adversity.

9. Continuous improvement: Actively learns from own mistakes and successes of others and the environment on a continual basis, capitalizing on the experience for new shareholders being enriched root finding solutions and leading new proposals that would lead to continuous improvement personnel, area and of the Organization.

10. Optimal management of resources: Has the approach that lets you optimize the cost benefit, making effective management, rational and responsible use of resources, achieving permanent full advantage of them.

11. Teamwork: Work with common goals, has clearly and assumes its responsibility in achieving the objectives, coordinating its activities with other members and putting the interests of the personal computer.

12. Influence others: Linked and achieves the maximum commitment and contribution of others on which there is not necessarily formal authority to obtain a common goal.

13. Leading and developing others: Inspires others to achieve high performance levels, defines and achieves the commitment to outcomes, evaluate objectively, provides feedback and recognition, nurturing a competent workforce productive, motivated and in constant development.

14. Expertise: It has the technical mastery of the issues under its responsibility and provides advice to its partners / customers and partners require

They sostain that their succes is based on:

• A deep knowledge of popular local consumers and the opportunities in the channels in which supply and the various cases, transactions, ideas, concepts and executions of local and international market.
• The identification, attraction, retention and development of human talent SUPERIOR, honest and committed.
• A culture focused on innovation with clarity of purpose, which is achieved with the best ideas, excellence in execution and with the minds and hearts of all our people in the game.
• The continuous search for high returns.

This ensures continued growth and sustainability of the Company for the benefit of all who participate in it and the countries where they operate.

BLOGS ACTIVITY

The blogs I decided to comment were really nice. They were all quite interesting. I visited:

• http://ximebustamante.wordpress.com/
• http://organizacionesyculturabylaura.blogspot.com/
• http://paulinape.blogspot.com/
• http://culturediegosilva.blogspot.com/2010/02/differences-between-organizational.html
• http://mateovasquez.blogspot.com/

My favourite was the Ximena's comment about women's dowry. As I commented, it is really shocking that these barbarian acts be commited against women. What other terrible things can we expect from these people?

The working time problem..

According to an important report from the Federation of European Employees, almost all collective agreements set basic weekly working hours for full-time staff at between 35 hours and 40 hours a week, whilst in many countries such as Spain and Sweden there are statutory limits of 40 hours for normal weekly working time. White collar workers across Europe continue to work less hours than blue collar workers, although this gap is narrowing over time. Every EU country permits certain levels of overtime to be worked in addition to regular hours, but not all recognise the 48 hours per week maximum limit established by the EC Working Time Directive.


Data from the EU Labour Force Survey for Q4 2007 appears at first glance to confirm this general pattern, but closer investigation suggests that the reality may be quite different for many employees.

The report sostains that the governments of many EU member states have further enhanced these entitlements and created additional rights such as paternity leave, sabbaticals, sick leave arrangements and leave to care for dependants. Legally enforceable collective agreements have also gone beyond basic statutory rights to introduce even more opportunities to take time off work, and double holiday pay received by workers in some countries makes it more financially rewarding to be on annual leave than at work.

These changes, introduced for the benefit of employees, have had an effect quite contrary to that intended. Although additional time-off rights might be seen as an opportunity to generate extra jobs, the fragmented nature of absence due to such factors as sickness, emergency childcare or attendance at ante-natal clinics has meant that the cover required varies from day to day.

It also argues that, the split in social philosophies at the heart of Europe between libertarian 'American-style' values pursued by the UK, Ireland and many new EU states and the more welfare-orientated 'social model' maintained by many continental western European states such as France, Sweden and the Netherlands has recently come to a head over the issue of the UK's continued opt-out from the maximum working week.

The report finally conludes that the real problem about working time, however, is not the imposition of statutory upper limits, but a social framework that makes it impossible for companies to operate efficiently within these limits. Rather than preventing those who wish to work longer hours from improving their income levels, the focus for EU policymakers should be on increasing the proportion of the employed workforce that are available to carry out their jobs. This means taking a long hard look at how much employee benefits are creating a 'time off' culture and providing financial incentives to spend too much time absent from work.

It is not enough to say "sorry"

I found a quite interesting paper from a multicultural journal, where the Australian case is highlighted and showed as an example of “reconciliation” without and an inclusive political community.


Here is a small fragment of this interesting article:

The ‘national reconciliation’ project is a political technique designed to bring about an end to violence thereby promoting peace within fractured national societies. It seeks to overcome a violent past by not repeating it.

More recently, reconciliation and human rights discourse has been applied to international humanitarian intervention in states in crisis and in the ‘new wars’. In both cases the focus on the victims of violence is a therapeutic strategy by the state designed to help recover sovereignty and legitimacy through recognition and care. The therapeutic focus on individual well-being and healing through victim-centred truth politics or conflict prevention through behavioural and attitudinal change however, is no substitute for the reconstruction of an inclusive political community.

This paper also explores the limits of conventional legal understandings of responsibility as a means of dealing with the legacies of colonisation of Australia. It suggests that the overriding focus upon ‘moral agency’ in contemporary legal and historical debates may actually restrict or derail the institution of reconciliation as a tool of justice. The author suggests that the tragic tradition can enrich or extend our understanding of the reconciliation process, firstly by sponsoring a concept of responsibility that does not take its bearings from the purposes or intentions of the agent and, secondly, by establishing a connection between our spectatorship on the events of the past and the education of compassion.


He also sostains that although there are many competing conceptions of reconciliation, its deployment in former colonial societies might best be understood in terms of the process of ‘coming to terms’ or ‘dealing’ with the past. In this context, the concept of ‘dealing’ carries two related, but analytically distinguishable, meanings: that of exposing or recalling the (always painful) truth about the past and that of resolving or repairing the ruptures of the past. While these moments of memory and healing are readily transposed into a psychoanalytic register as aspects of the ‘work of mourning’ (a concept which I will return to later), they are more commonly framed within politico juridical discourse as matters of historical injustice. From this perspective, what is primarily at stake in our ‘dealings’ with the past is the remembrance of forgotten or undisclosed crimes and their expiation by the perpetrating community or their descendants.


Concluding, according to him, this framing of the discourse of reconciliation gives rise to two nests of questions:



In the first place, there are the complex series of issues that are intrinsic to the notion of historical obligation itself: how are these obligations incurred, how far back in time do they stretch, how might they be redeemed?



Secondly, there is the philosophically intricate matter of how reparations for past wrongs, whether in the form of restitution or compensation, might be articulated with other retributive and distributive claims in a more general theory of justice.

Reference:

 

Muldoon, P. (2005). Thinking Responsibility Differently: Reconciliation and the Tragedy of Colonisation. Journal of Intercultural Studies, 26(3), 237-254. doi:10.1080/07256860500153518

 

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In the Islam, values are immersed in commerce, even if it is electronic.

Something to highlight from islamic culture is the fact that they live their religion in all the aspects of their lives. They do not separate their believes from their daily activities, as many chrsitian and catholic, western do, which preach peace, justice, honesty and mainly LOVE but contradictorily, their behavior is based on another set of values such as competitiveness, law of the fittest, rethoric (persuasion and disuasion instead of tolerance and respect) and mainly SELFISHNESS. At this point god would be on another level, he/she/it is not immerse in peoples lives and his/her/its role is more of a punisher than a guide.

For me, the islamic way of living has an completely sense and that’s why I think if we westerns lived our lives according to our religions, our companies and way of living and doing business would be really different and there would not be so many unlucky people.

Muslims do not separate their religion and its values from their commercial relations, not even if it they are electronic, and that is why they ask for so many exlpicit especifications and warnings in these ways of doing business, commercializing and negotiating, not even if they are bargaining. On the contrary, we, westerns are all the time thinking about that the other should thing like us and have the same expectations and wishes when doing a business and some things like false adevertisements and misrepresenations are not seen as terrible as muslims see them.

INDIA THE NEW GURU

I would like to publish a summary I made about a wonderful article I found in a EBSCOhost Database taken from the Harvard business review. I think is really interesting because it shows many Indian advantages in terms of economical issues. It also appears as a more prosper country than China since it has better labor policies and it has been really worried about improving them.

Yet India is racing ahead to become a global center for advanced R&D in several industries. In trying to understand how India is achieving this feat, we know that the Indian private sector was found a way to overcome deficiencies in its education system through innovative programs of workforce training and development. These have transformed workers with a weak educational foundation into R&D specialists.



Indian native firms reveal that despite its low rates of postgraduate science and engineering graduation comparing to China, India is rapidly becoming a global hub for R&D, with a momentum and scale similar to those it accomplished in IT services.


But If engineering education is so critical to global competitiveness, how is India succeeding?


To answer this, we have to take into account the R&D leaders, managers, and employees, and see the R&D and training facilities the leading companies in India. These are in rapidly growing emerging sectors, including TT services, business-process outsourcing, semiconductors, Pharmaceuticals, financial services, retail, hospitality; and education—all of which have managed to grow and innovate despite skills gaps and talent shortages.


The Indian key of development: Discipline


During the 70s and 1980s, the Japanese achieved major advances in manufacturing management, which led them rise as an economic power by studying, adopting, and eventually perfecting the best practices of western companies. India is achieving similar feats in workforce development: India has learned and perfected the best practices of leading companies that have been outsourcing their computer systems and call centers.


They invest in their employees


In a fact which India’s largest competitor, China, has been quite criticized is investing in its employees. Indian industry has had to adapt and has built innovative and comprehensive approaches to workforce training and management. The initial focus was on training new recruits and filling entirely-level skill gaps. Now, these companies are investing in constantly improving the skills and management abilities of their workers and in providing incentives for them to stay and grow with the company.


There are seven key areas in which Indian companies have developed innovative practices:


1) employee recruitment


2) new employee training


3) continuing employee development


4) managerial training and development


5) performance management and appraisal


6) workforce retention, and


7) education upgrades.


Indian companies have become also innovative not only in how they recruit but also in whom they recruit and where they look for talent. Most of them have developed a recruitment philosophy to hire for overall skill and aptitude rather than specialized domain and technical skills.


Women and older workers in particular are being targeted by technology companies and call centers, which are also reaching out to rural and disadvantaged communities.

All the above let us conclude that Colombian companies have long played the gum, developing and disseminating many widely adopted management and workforce practices. The time has come for stop learning from the USA “guru” and start learning from one of its disciples: India.

Is the Tiananmen episode over?

Since the end of Mao Zedong age and the begginings of Den Xiaoping transformations, the Chinese socialist party saw the necesity of a continuos adaptation to the world they were living. They made a deep research of why and how the communist political systems around the world failed. They analized all the economical, political, social, cultural and international issues that were involved in these systems and the mistakes made by their predecesors on regard to its application arriving, among other things, to the conclusion that their system should be flexible, open to knoweledge and technology and with an armonious society ruled by law. A kind of “Chinese democratic system”.

Despite of all these changes an “discoveries” they never looked inside and tought about the importance of different ways of thinking inside of its society. They still believe that all the people should be ruled by the same values and minds. Chinese government do not allow any kind of opposition to the unique party and the judicial power is not independent because is under the legislative power mandate.

In terms of democracy that has no sense, is completely contradictory and that was what the young people of Tiananmen thought and were fighting for “Without democracy there is no modernization”. However, the “New democratic” government smashed their rights and their request showing everyone its enourmus militar capacity against just young citizens and warning the rest of the people of the danger of being in an opposite way to the goverments aligments.

This giant emergent country still goes for that path. It offers lots of opportunities to its citizens in terms of study, ¿work? (not always dignified), etc but all that is under the conditions of keeping aligned to the parties rules. Let us see what is about to come to China under this mental, poitical oppresive system but at same time economically succesfull State.

The immigrants' Canada

Canada has become in one of the must atractive places to go to live. It has been considered during several years for the ONU as the best country to live in. Its inhabitants enjoy of high living standards and excelent job and study opportunities.

However, for some immigrants, this living paradise is not such a thing. Many of them struggled economically in Canada and the government is striving to improve migrant outcomes.

“In 2008, there were key differences in many indicators of quality of employment between immigrants and non-immigrants. On average, immigrant wages were lower, while rates of involuntary part-time work, temporary employment and over-qualification were higher. For immigrants who landed in Canada more than 10 years ago, however, the indicators of quality of employment more closely resembled those of the Canadian born” http://www.livingin-canada.com/news/

Recommended video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WPkacPqcoEM (Job Search Challenges faced by Immigrants in Canada)

What is the difference between an migrant and an expatriate?

The main difference is that an expatriate is a person who leaves his/her native country and goes to live to another for any kind of reason. The term migrant, or better, immigrant has been lately used to determine those persons that decide to leave their countries, basically for economic reasons. This term is used mainly for people from poor countries who travels to a develop country searching for better living standards and job opportunities that was not able to found in his/her home market.

An expatriate can also leaves his/her country for economic reasons, however the most of the times these reasons are internal job transfers, personal business, studies and why not turism.

Cartoon taken from:

Comparison Korean, Japanese and Colombian managerial styles.

What's the difference between culture and organizational culture?

According to Mr Edgar Schein in his book "Orgnizational culture and Leadership"culture is necesary to understand conflict at the organizational level". Taking this into account we should then consider that organizational culture comes in a big part from culture as it self.

In this way we should not consider one different from the other, since one makes part of the other. However, we could assume organizational culture as a matter of politics of behaviour at the inside of the company in order this to achive certain goals and objectives.

At this measure, organizational culture is a need for the companies which need to coordinate its human capital according to its vision, of course, knowing that these people belongs or have certain cultural aspects that somehow are going to "produce" them to colide in a certain moment of their coexistence.