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.

The role of organizational culture in merging process

M&A: "A term referring to any process by which two companies become one. In a merger, two companies integrate their operations, management, stock, and everything else, while, in an acquisition, one company buys another. Mergers and acquisitions may also refer to all legal, financial, and other issues involved before a merger or acquisition can take place." Retrieved from http://financial-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/M%26A

We can see in this topic where some definitions from past classes can connect each other, Organizational learning and culture diversity has to do a lot with the M&A process when companies as they are doing nowadays to go abroad and look for other companies to do business. What makes every organization different is their organizational culture, which is the pattern of perception of what´s good or bad.


There are different types of M&A processes:

• Horizontal: Two companies that are in direct competition and share the same product lines and markets. 
• Vertical: A customer and company or a supplier and company. Think of a cone supplier merging with an ice cream maker
• Conglomerate: Two companies that have no common business area * Retrieved from http://www.investopedia.com/university/mergers/mergers1.asp

When Talking about Acquisition, some key aspects are relevant to have in mind:

• The integration process: Is the real source of value creation in acquisitions 
• Creation/Destruction of value: Whether if an acquisitions is negative or positive for a corporation
• Acculturative process: Resolving cultural differences within an acquisition and may generate Cultural Modifications in order to adapt to the environment

What would be the relationship between cross cultural environments and organizational learning strategies?

I think the relation is very clear. For an organization is vital to learn from the local culture of the country they are going to do business with, if not it might be a failure because each culture is different from each other, so, strategies cannot be the same, they need to adapt and change as they need. It would be useful to make research and get some experience into cross cultural environments to try to avoid failure, because in this globalized world, there is no chance to fail.

Organizational Learning & Managing Change and Conflict

Organizational Learning & Change


This is a key issue within an organization, in this actual world situation, where the environment in business is changing very fast thanks to globalization and other factors, Organizations need to transform this change into knowledge, and this into power for taking advantage of those who do not are aware of what is happening. In this era, information is everything, is power. Technology is also a big part of the concerns of nowadays activities. 


They way of learning has to be fast and effective, organizations as humans can no longer wait for negative or positive consequences just hit us, but to try to look forward in order to prevent and be one step ahead from everyone. Nevertheless, change can not always be planned, when random issues just happen, the attitude to have is to be proactive and these characteristics are vital: Adaptiveness, Flexibility, and Responsiveness.


Change creates Conflict by: breaking the "status quo", bringing new issues, problems, etc. And Change such as Conflict comes out with positive and negative things:

• New ideas, creativity, improvement.
• Waste of resources, bad environment of work, might generate violence.

UBUNTU: Understanding and respecting local cultures. It helps avoid conflict and goes toward collectivism.

Do you (or would you want to) work in an autocratic, democratic, or consultative work environment? What might be the advantages and disadvantages of each?

I really think that all three options have good and bad thinks, but the one I like the most is the democratic one for different reasons:

• In a democratic environment your opinion is taked into account, and it makes you worth as a person. 
• In a really democratic environment, the most important thing is the mayority, so it is supposed to be good for most of the people and not just for a few that hold the power.
• The democratic environment is based on debates, and those debates promotes better results because it brings more issues and it moves toward the better.

However, there are some disadvantages:

• Desision making is more complex because its more difficult to reach a consensus.
• The mayority is not always right

Leadership & Management Styles: Convergence and Differentiation

I would like to quote a very nice phrase from the slides:

“Management is responsible for maintaining order; leadership is responsible for producing change or movement.” (Kotter, 1990)

In my personal way of seeing the difference of both is their focus, in one hand, management tends to drive the way through an spesific goal within a team and on the other hand leadership comes to guide masses into a different course, to get people influenced by their thoughts and beliefs. This can be seen in their processes, where in the management process, creates more stability and improvements within an organization. Where in the leadership process is quite the opposite, creates uncertainity, and promoves change.


Behavioral Theories

• Authoritarian: Power and desision making relies on one person: people are expected to obey and receive orders.
• Consultative: More participation of other people involved in the specific task
• Democratic: Divided power, shared desision making.
• Laissez-Faire: The theory applyed to economics where it is regulated by itselfs. Little or no intervention from managers

Leadership Grid: Explains very well whether what the leader cares more about. We can see 5 different approuches. 

                                             Retreived from: http://maaw.info/ManagerialGrid.htm


There are different types of leaders: 

• Transformational
• Charismatic
• Authentic