THE CORPORATION

THE CORPORATION

The directors Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott showed in this film how the behavior of many large corpotation of the world can affect the society. They did it by giving the corporation characterist of a person and they evaluated them from a psicologic point of view. This fim was created in 2003 and is a Canadian documentary.

QUESTIONS

1. What role should the corporation play in our lives and society, if any?
The corporation must be see as a part of the economy of the world and not as a part of our life, because there is where it becomes into a "psycho monster" that affects those who don't have economic resources to defeat themselves from the attack of it. I think there is where the governments of every country must take a part, because they must make corporation respect the cultures of the country they’re trying to enter and make citizens understand that every corporation even thought it is from the country or foreigner are just a part of a economy and don’t give the corporation values of a person.
They must have more social responsibility and not focus on the economic issues; the role they should play is to take the cultural diversity of some countries to others to show how different cultures are.

2. Should corporations be entitled to the same legal rights as individuals? Where the line should be drawn?
No, as I said before the corporation must be seeing as a part of an economy and not as an individual, that’s why they should be entitled to legal rights designed especially for these institutions because if not there is were they do illegal things that not have the fair punishments. Every person must understand a corporation is just something of an economy that in several cases makes our life easy, but they must

3. How can we ensure corporations are held accountable for their actions? Should individuals (directors, employees, shareholders) bear any responsibility for the actions of a corporation? If so, to what degree?
The corporation will be held for their actions if the directors take total responsibility of they acts, because they are the ones that take important decisions in the corporation, the shareholders have also huge responsibility because they also manage, in certain way, the corporation actions, and the employees also have responsibility but not in a high level because they make part of it and are the ones that hold it, I mean, the directors have the biggest responsibility, the shareholders medium, and the employees low.

4. What are the benefits of the corporate form? Could an alternative model offer these as well?
This form has some benefits, but it depends of the way corporation manage all the things. Because depending of the way things are this form could be positive or negative for the corporation it self and the society that surround it. A corporation must now what benefit it self will also benefit everyone in the society.

5. Do you think corporations are the root cause of the problem, or is it consumerism, capitalism, or all three?
The problem is the consumerism and capitalism, also big part of the fault is from the governments because they aloud corporations to do “illegal” things to employees, environment and society, and not make them pay for the mistakes, countries must make respect themselves from the corporations, there’s were the problem from my point of view born.

6. If corporations weres more reflective of the world’s population (poor, women, ethnically diverse, etc) would that help?
Maybe, but not in a huge level because as I said in the fifth question the problem will be solve if governments take part in this and make rules and rights to defeat the negative influence that a corporation could have on the citizens, even though the corporation must also have social responsibility toward issues like poorness, women, ethnically diverse, children among other important issues of the society.

7. Do you agree with the film’s diagnosis that the corporation is a psychopath?

I totally agree, because the film gave a lot of arguments to think so. And even in our environment we can see that type of behavior where the corporation just care for the positive proffits without looking the problems that they can cause on society.

Bibliography

• 
  
  www.thecorporation.com/


• 
  
  www.imdb.com/title/tt0379225/


• 
  
  propiedadprivada.blogspot.com/2005/05/la-mentalidad-anti-capitalista-del.html

MODULE 1

MODULE 1

I. Introductory module: Culture and International Business & Ethnography

http://www.yale.edu/sociology/assets/images/indexcollage3.jpg

SUMMARY

In the introductory module we learned about the importance of the culture in international bussines,

we did it by having into account terms as ideology, nationality, social class and gender.

Also we learned the importance of knowing the meaning of international organitational behaviour, that consist in the study of the cultural differences and the cultural diversity that can affect work-related behaviour. We saw some mistakes we can have by not having a correct cross cultural comunication as stereotyping, selective perception, projecting similarities.

Is to important to know how cultural diversity works, that’s why we learned about some positions or views about this issues, those are, parochial view, ethnocentric view and synergistic view.

Finally we saw how to do the ethnograpic research and all the methods, principles, fieldwork guidelines and the ethics you must follow to do it in the rigth way.


QUESTION

How national culture impacts behaviour at work in developed countries like the ones in the United Kindom?

To understand better this issue is important to have into account some of the Hofstede’s knowledge as the cultural dimension he proposed according to the United Kingdom.

First by analysing the Power Distance that is the first dimension, we can see that people in high power distance cultures are much more comfortable with a larger status differential than low power distance cultures. Here climate is measured by geographical latitude, because cultures in high-latitude climate (moderate or cold climates) tend to have low Power Distance Index (PDI) scores and cultures that have tropical climate tend to have high PDI scores. In order to this United Kingdom have low degree of Power Distance and there is multiple research that shows the United Kingdom as a owner of a tigther hierarchy. There is also likely to be more mechanisms to allow feedback from the lower order to the top of the management order.

The second dimension in the Uncertainty Avoidance and this refers to the extent to which a culture feels threatened by uncertain situations and then tries to avoid them by establishing more structure. In the United Kingdom we can see that cultures with low Uncertainty Avoidance Index tend to have reached the level of modernization and have more stable or predictable in their rate of change.

The third dimesion is the Individualism-Collectivism that describes the degree to which a culture depends on and has allegiance to the self or the group. One of the main predictors here is economic development. Is surprising to know that cultures in colder climate are more individualistic and the warmer climate more collectivistic. In order to this the United Kingdom is an individualistic culture and it tends to do not perceive a large psychological distance between in-group and out- group members. They value self-expression, see speaking out as a means of resolving problems, and are likely to use confrontational strategies when dealing with interpersonal problems.


The last dimension is Masculinity-Feminity and It basically refers to expected gender roles in a culture. Is important to have into account here that climate is a predictive factor, because masculine cultures tend to live in warmer climate near the equator and feminine cultures are likely to locate in colder climates away from the equator, that’s why we see that members of high Masculine cultures believe that men should be assertive and women should be nurturing. In United kingdom this do not happen very offen, but there is still some low degree of this.

In conclusion we can see how Hofstede’s theories help us understand some of cultural behaviour in United Kingdom, but also is important to have into account that often the development of a country depends on these and other factors such as level of education of its population which may be just as indicative of why differences between work cultures exist.


Biliography

• Hofstede, (1991), Cultures and organizations: Software of the mind, McGraw-Hill, London




• Hofstede, (2004), Cultural Dimensions Explained: http://www.geert-hofstede.com/hofstede_india.shtml