What is the dominant religion in Colombia? What are the religious implications for doing business here? Give examples.

The dominant religion in Colombia is Christianity, more specific, catholic. The possible religion implication in doing business in Colombian with real catholic people would be the avoidance to illegal procedures that other people would have no problem doing so. For example to bribe public workers for favors to the company. But what happens is that there are a lot of people who say they are catholic but they do not really practice it. There is a low level of commitment to the religion so people might accept doing "bad" things in order to do business and get profits.

Organizational Diversity & Religious implications for international business

The topic today is basically the implications and management of cultural issues into business. Lets see what are the determinants of Culture:

Diversity is the different combinations of the determinants of culture within an organization. So why to choose diversity?

• In this globalized world, the global needs are diverse, and so its people. We have to learn and adapt to the different cultures in order to cooperate and have a good business relationship. Diversity develops more creativity and innovation, more organizational flexibility and better marketing strategies. But the differences can also create conflict when there is difficult communication, that is why Diversity Management is important, that is to create an environment that would make comfortable people to accomplish their tasks.

Religion: Shared beliefs and rituals concerned with the realm of the sacred.

The main religions around the world are: Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Atheism, and Buddhism.

Religion´s impact in business depends on the values and beliefs, that may permit actions that other religion would forbid. 

Accroding to Kuruppuarachchi (2009), what benefits and problems arise as a consequence of the creation of virtual team? Identify five each. Based on this, explain how to make the transition from a more traditional team structure to the more distributed team structure?

The transition from a traditional to a more distributed team requires technological abilities and a very well defined rules and responsibilities of the team members. There is the need for a leader that guide the rest of the team.


Benefits:

• No boundaries 
• No need to real time meetings
• Teams might allow people from different companies
• Adds flexibility and responsiveness
• It helps avoid social problems in interaction

Problems:

• Limited amount of people
• The different timezones could be negative for waiting answers from the other part
• Technology could fail, and so the communication
• Vulnerable to mistrust and conflict.
• Lack of direct managerial oversight of work undertaken in remote areas

Organizational Communication

Within the communication (the activity of conveying meaningful information), there are important concepts:

• Language: the words, their pronunciation, and the methods of combining them used and understood by a group of people
• Data: uninterpreted and unanalyzed facts
• Information: data that have been interpreted, analyzed,  and have meaning to some user.

Types of Communication:

• One way/Two-way: Whether if there are one or two parts interacting in the communication. 
• Verbal/non-verbal Communication: verbal is the speaking process of communication, but there are other ways of communication such as Visual, Oral or written.
• Computer-Mediated: using a computer as the main tool of communication.

Proxemics is the space between one and another person in communication and depending on it, it shows a different relation with the person and your purpose.

Barriers to communication:

• Physical separation
• Status differences
• Gender differences
• Cultural diversity
• Language

Virtual Teams: It is basically the use of technology to connect two or more people that are located in other place and in that way, having no boundaries when working in teams. It is very revolutionary because if differs from the traditional team and open a window to cooperation globally. But also has negatives things such as no face to face interaction that does not allow to get to know the people very well and it may be more complex to get together a big amount of people into a virtual team.

Explain how easy is it for Colombian companies to employ expatriates locally? Give examples.

In my opinion is very easy, because to an expatriate to work here in Colombia just need to ask for a working visa and to notify the DAS of the situation*. Other than that, there is no different treatment from local workers. And I think it is a good thing because in that way, companies can get new knowledge from expatriates and learn from them and see what they can apply locally. Nevertheless, also might have negative consequences for local workers because they would have more competition.

*http://consultas-laborales.blogspot.com/2009/09/contratacion-de-extranjeros.html

Migrant Workers & Expatriate Assigments

In the last decades, going abroad became popular since the "American Dream", a lifestyle that was sold in the movies and on the television and in some cases it was not much a dream but a nightmare. So many people started to go and search for a better life in other countries such as United States, the reason? primarily unemployment but in terms of satisfaction of needs, here it comes again the  Maslow´s need hierarchy model that we saw some classes ago.

The Expatriate Assignment: It is when a person is sent abroad to accomplish some specific tasks and get experience from the boundary-less career across organizations and jobs. It requires:

• Socialization
• Acculturation Process
• Re-skilling Process 

This situation brings to the employers different workers profiles that people from other countries can offer. 

According to the case studies (in class and in textbook), what are the practical steps to minimize the feelings of uncertainty normally expected by employees, and also to facilitate the learning process to occur between the two groups of people in their process of cultural and behavioral integration?

In order to reduce uncertainty in the behavioral, and cultural process of integration is to find the way to reach shared goals and find common values to rely on. Managers are also expected to find a strategy in where it is possible the cooperation by the need of interdependence of both parts heading towards a good cultural fit.