Decision making, Ethical behavior in international business.

Here we see two types of decisions; a program type is simply a decision that is already established for the manager to make, while a nonprogrammed kind is an entirely new decision which requires creativity, there are some models of decision making, the rational model which defines how persons should behave to optimize the outcome, the bounded rationality models that states some limits about how rational someone making the decisions can actually be, and there is also a garbage can model that suggests that the decisions within an organization are random.

Risk aversion: individuals who chose options with low risk, there are also risk takers who accept greater potential for loss. Escalation of commitment is “the tendency to commit resources to a failing course of action, this occurs due to optimism, personal pride and others.

Participative decision making is basically making choices in which persons that are affected by decision, influence the making of those choices, when it comes to making decisions is not fair to say that is better to do it individually than in a group, or vice versa, because for the most part this depends on what kind of task or problem you are up against.

Techniques for group decision making: ‘’Brainstorming’’: generate as many ideas as possible on a subject, ‘’Nominal Group Technique’’: generating alternatives and choosing one. ‘’Delphi technique ‘’ experts knowledge in decision making, ‘’devil’s advocacy’’ preventing group think. ‘’dialectical inquiry debate of opposing sets.

Ethics are norms and rules people belief to be the right things to do on the other hand morals could be seen as principals to determine what is right or wrong, ethical behavior is defined as ‘’acting in ways consistent with one’s personal values and the commonly held values of the organization and society, there are some ethical theories. One is the consequential theory that emphasizes the outcomes of behavior; another one is the ruled based theory which is more about the act and not the effects, and there is also the character theory about personal virtues of the person.

How can organizations effectively manage both risk taking and escalation of commitment in the decision-making behavior of employees?

Risk decision making and escalations commitment can be managed by training employees to identify the negative effects that can occur when they make a decision, also encourage them to notify the decisions they want to make so the managers can make a considerations of the risk, some risky moves can pay off in the future but this has to be well monitored to avoid a potential harm to the organization. Another way to manage this is by forming work groups to evaluate the decision making beforehand.

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The corporation

A Corporation can be defined as a group of people with different abilities working together for the same goal, but this is just an innocent concept because when the first corporations appeared, also appeared the desire for growth, and this is what starts “corrupting” corporations, in the way they began thinking in productivity as a principal matter “more per man hour” so corporations get immersed into a very competitive environment in which they only were concerned about making profits, expanding and improving production processes in order to be more efficient, productive and in consequence competitive, so this creates a continuous cycle where principles, values and concern for others were leaved behind and finally forgotten.

The dominant institutions known as corporations are described as “bad apples” due to the damage they cause to the entire society.

“Corporations are artificial creations”, are like monsters trying to obtain as much profit as it is possible.

Under the law a corporation is a legal person who is a member of the society and have the same rights than every person, like buy or sell or borrow money, but with the huge difference that they have no body, no soul, no concern for the people around them or the damage they are causing, their only interest is to make so much money as they can, in order to fulfill the expectations of the stakeholders, to gain more investment, to attract more stakeholders and keep growing, so here come the cycle again; it doesn’t stops until this aggressive competitive world end by eating them.

Even they have the same rights than a person, they cannot go to jail, or be punishes like the rest of us, but the guilt must lie on someone, and this someone should be the individuals responsible for the actions taken by the corporation, because the corporation doesn’t act by itself, persons control them and that persons that could be directors, managers, employees or stakeholders should be judged for the actions the corporations make, that in one way or another attempt against society.

As a legal organizational model, how does the rise of corporations influence the aspects of culture in pursuing profit?

Organizations are always looking to make more profit, and for a lot of those corporations ‘’there is no such thing as enough’’ in this constant search to make profit they tend to overlook the public good, and make other people pay for the things they do, this is due to their impact on society, which can be good at times but can also abuse cultures, a corporation is design to accomplish certain objectives in a very efficient way even if they have to inflict harm on others, the documentary of the corporation levels theses enterprises as an ‘’externalizing machine’’.

Working conditions in some factories are horrible and workers get basically exploited, spending too much time at the factories and getting paid very little for their work. These corporations come into poor cultures, societies or countries as labor costs significantly lees, but they tend to underpay workers, this is all tight up with the constant peruse of making more and more profits.

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information retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pin8fbdGV9Y and the corporation video in general.

Motivation

Motivation can be defined as internal and external factors that encourage people to constantly be interested in attaining a goal, in other words, it means to give reason or incentives that result in certain behavior. There are three theories of motivation which are: ‘’internal’’, here considerations are given to variables within the person, ‘’process‘’ this is interaction between the person and the environment, ‘’external’’ where theories focuses on elements in the environment.

A need is a situation in which something is wanted, a condition within a person that drives him towards an outcome. There are internal needs called intrinsic motivation and external incentives that refer to extrinsic motivation. Two main theories of needs are the X (lower order needs) and Y (higher order needs) theories. The X one indicates physiological and safety and the Y social esteem and self actualization.

In this topic or chapter we find some theories such as the ‘’ERG’’ theory that states that workers go after many needs at the same time, the McClelland’s needs theory which includes achievement as excellence and persistent, power as to influences others and affiliation to maintain close relations with others. The Stacy Adam’s theory of inequity says that people get motivated when they find themselves at risk or in some unfair position. Another theory is the expectancy of Porter and Lawler, it emphasizes in a connection between employees motivations and being sure of their expectancies, the results or outcomes of performance are ways to satisfy a need.

In multicultural organizational contexts what could be a good strategy to keep people motivated towards a common task?

First of all, I think that regardless of the culture the employees come from, or the language they speak, treating people like people and providing them with the proper tools and means that they need to get their job done correctly, is the starting point to keep them motivated towards a common task, there are also some main objectives here, and within the strategy should also be awareness, and knowledge of the people working for you, understanding their culture is somehow important  to find ways to keep them motivated, creating confidence by using team work combining the different skills and cultures could also be productive if done right, here is important to keep in mind that not all people is motivated by the same things especially those from different cultural backgrounds. 

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Personality, perception and attribution, attitudes and values.

Two basic topics, ‘’Individual differences’’ which  is just how some factors such as skills, abilities or personalities differ from one person to another, and personality which is a set of characteristics  that have influences on how a person behaves, personality has five traits which are:

‘’Extraversion’’ this is assertive and social persons, ‘’agreeableness’’ where the person is cooperative and warm, ‘’Conscientiousness’’ here they are hard working and organized, ‘’emotional stability’’ calm and self confident, ‘’openness to experience’’ which states the person as creative and curious. Personality also has an integrative approach that places personality as being made up of an individual’s psychological approach.

 Social perception: it is defined as ‘’the process of interpreting information about another person’’ there are three categories which can influence your perception of someone else which are: characteristics of ourselves, characteristics of the target and characteristics of the situation, some of the barriers to social perception include, stereotyping, first impression error and self fulfilling prophesies.

When it comes to ‘’attribution’’ theory the important thing here is that explains how individuals identify the causes of their behavior as well as the behavior of someone else. This theory has and external attribution which is something out of one’s control, and internal attributions that is the opposite thing.

Attitudes: in class this was defined as a psychological tendency expressed by evaluating an entity with some degree of favor or disfavor, attitude has a mode called the ABC which includes: Affect that is basically verbal statements, expressing feelings, Behavioral intentions which are statements about intentions and Cognition about beliefs.

Values are the beliefs that some ways of behavior or state of existences are better or more acceptable than those of an opposite way of these same things.

To what do you attribute the success of JICA?

First of all the success of JICA is based on the things they do, ‘’JICA aims to contribute to the promotion of international cooperation as well as the sound development of Japanese and global economy by supporting the socioeconomic development, recovery or economic stability of developing regions.’’(Extracted from Jica.go.gp) this is clearly a helping hand to those regions or countries that really need assistance to work on their issues, JICA established projects and activities in those countries to help poor families and educate people, promoting youth responsibility in the communities and improved self confidence in hard pressed societies, JICA has been successful doing all this because they create seminars, activities for young people, trying to help parents to identify their responsibilities with their children. Sometimes JICA provides assistance and activities that can result on learning new working skills and generate some family income.

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Organizational behavior, national and organizational culture.

The concept of organization can be defined as an organized social system composed by groups or individuals that work together to reach some objectives, organization has a system that contains four components which are (task, structure, people and technology).

Organizational behavior “is the study of individual behavior or group dynamics in organizations” which can contribute with some instruments that will let people know how to analyze and understand behavior within organizations, and also allows managers to improved work behavior in order for the organization to reach its goals, this concept has some levels of analysis such as group process, individual process and organizational process. To understand organizational behavior one must consider external and internal perspectives, inside and outside the person.

Management, medicine, engineering, sociology, psychology and anthropology are interdisciplinary influences on organizational behavior, when it comes to kinds of organizations, there is the formal one or legitimate based on goals, polices, financial resources, and the informal organization or unofficial based on beliefs, feelings and perceptions

The six sigma is a system that performs business strategies focusing on quantitative decision making and priorities to save money.

Culture: Hofstede defines it as ‘’the collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the members of one human group from another’’. Culture is very important and can even have significant effects on people’s productivity and moral commitment to what they do, impacting their performance, some cultural analysis will allow managers to predict the workers behavior which helps to determine what to expect from them.

Organizational culture is basically the personality of the organization or simply beliefs unique to an organization, it has some positive aspects such as providing identity for members and guides decision making of those within the organization, if the culture is strong it can even help the organization to adapt better to the environment, there are also different types of culture, clan culture which can be seen as a family where people share with one another, hierarchy culture where procedures dictate what people do, adhocracy culture which involves people that take risks and market culture that states its major concern as getting the job done.

Why is managing organizational behavior in changing times challenging?

Because as it was stated above, organizational behavior is the study of individual behavior or group dynamics in organizations, having said that,  the context we live in is constantly changing leading to a transformation of the organization and brings challenges such as fearsome competition which you must be prepared for, as times change and challenges appear, the human behavior tents to also change along with those things, making it harder for managers to understand work behavior within the organization, especially for those managers that follow an already existing protocol to make decisions. Stress has also become a very important topic in organizational behavior and this is due to the changes and advances in technology, increased globalization and appearance of more competition, all these factors make managing organizational behavior challenging at times. 

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