Digital Ink

Why do we feel the need to bank? When we were discussing banks and the role they play in our society today, I was compelled to look into the history of banks, and have come to discover just how ancient of an institution they are. Banks were founded primarily during the Crusader eras, and were more “central places to record debts and owings”. They have since evolved into practically the structure upon which we have built the rest of capitalism; where money from a large number of unaware individuals can be pooled and used for the purposes by a smaller group, hopefully for the benefit of the majority.  This arrangement has led to many problems in the past, and hence beg the question, why risk it?

If we all had piggy banks instead of bank accounts, the world as we know it today would probably collapse. Without the huge amounts of funding, filing systems, and the idea of credit that comes from the world of public banking, our entire society would fall apart, and thats a scary thought. Hence, I find this comic strangely terrifying; if for an instant everyone decided they didnt want to bother with banking, and decided to keep their own money, could we ever recover?

In my understanding, the word “generic” means applicable to nearly any situation, as well as lacking specificity. When you really think about it, its an astonishingly powerful word. The ability to have a basic template to which you can apply to nearly any situation you want is incredibly useful, and also a little dangerous. Because it is generic, it can never take into account the intangibles of the actual situation, and must be molded around what has been provided. I ask you then; if human beings are so complicated, do such “generic” templates really have any value?

I understand the silliness of the question: Of course they have value, otherwise why would they exist? Surely if they were of no use to anyone they wouldnt be taught to hundreds of students on a yearly basis in multiple disciplines. But then, does teaching something make it useful, or its application? I’m sure templates like these are used throughout the industry, but the fact remains that because it lacks specifity, which is fundamental to the very nature of what makes each of us human, does the template fit the situation, or do we force every unique situation to try and fit a template?

In our desperate bid to understand how we each interact and interact with our surroundings, have we created this, the template, to give us the hope that our world can be understood? I dont know the answer, I’m just asking the question; If business was this simple, why not just teach us this template and be done with it? The answer is because business is not simple…but then, why a generic template? Why, to make you feel better about what you understand, of course!

Tricky, eh?

We will no doubt in our time at Sauder be taught how to market effectively. The ability to market oneself, and ones services is indeed one of the most important aspects, at least from my understanding, of achieving success in the business world. However, as I was quick to learn in 299, in an overzealous attempt to market oneself, some people often blur the line between actual accomplishment and implied accomplishment, and this not necessarily wrong, if not right.

I would not hope to take the high ground on honesty; as someone who has seen some of the tougher and softer regions of the world, I have realized that absolute honesty is found neither in the slums nor the castles, but in rare, isolated locations. The ability for each human to be completely honest with another one is taken for granted in our society, and thusly, in business. We may not call it lying, but we can not call it the truth either.

If we take this to a yet higher scale, what stops a business from behaving unethically, at least in terms of marketing? Is saying that  a product may do something and solve your paticular problems is not necessarily  wrong, but potentially true, and making millions on such an assumption, dishonest? I perosnally am not sure where I stand on the issue, but I feel that if humans can not market themselves honestly, whats to stop corporations of humans from doing so. How many little white lies inhabit the world we live in?

Trust, as I am very quickly learning, is a huge factor in business.

I suppose it comes with the territory of people dependency, but the fact remains that, wherever I’ve been exposed, the small, implike child inside of me always brings up the question: “Well, couldn’t you just not tell anyone and switch a few zeros?” Of course I beat it down with the metaphorical stick needed to stay the wholesome postiive individual I am, but the question remains: What keeps businessmen honest?

Accountants, in particular, seem to enjoy a particularly interesting area. Not only do they speak a highly specialized language filled with jargon that has to be commited to reflex to be made useful, but they are required to work with largue amonts of independent numbers, almost exclusively; ironcally, for the sake of objectivity. As a result, if an accountant is to make an estimate of a hitherto unknown cost or benefit, what is to stop him from erring on the larger side, and making it equalize on the balance sheets, with his pocket feeling the decimal points? The natural answer is of course virtue, but when one deals with the torrents of money that flow into companies like Microsoft, how could one possibly resist it every single day of their entire career?

There are counter-measures, like cross-checking, independent sourcing, and what not, but the fact remains that, in essence, they are all based on a mutual trust, or perhaps distrust, to guarantee their legality. I haven’t the slightest idea how to fix this, as this is the natural cost of human interaction, but the idea intrigues me: How many accountants feel the urge to rub the numbers, and how many of them get away with it?

When I first encountered Financial Accounting, it started off with the simple explanation that it would use words we already fairly understood and would distort them for its own means and requirements. The word “asset” for example would be turned from its kind of adjectival status in common language, as the describer of a valuable or useful quality, to a valuable quality. This is hardly a revolutionizing idea, but as we delve deeper and deeper into Accounting, we come to the scary realization that “asset” is not the first word to be hijacked. Credit, debit, stock, share; each word evolves a new and sometimes paradoxical meaning that is useful in the realm of accounting, if now where else, and I begin to wonder, is Accounting its own language?

The answer is an obvious yes. Every skill or field has its own language. Mathematicians, and they’re associated relatives in the field, use a symbolic language to express what the common word cannot. What I find confusing is whether or not Accounting needs such  deeply segregated language? Surely some buzzwords and jargon are necessary to each field, but you dont see fields like Psychology reform the language to shape their needs; they usually just create new, fancier words. Perhaps the point is in and of itself moot, but I am not yet convinced that Accounting’s hijacking of rather innocent terms is altogether justified. At least not this early into it.

No one likes being dependent on someone else.

The essence of teamwork is that a group of people can come together and produce something greater than if they had each worked independently, the “whole is greater than the sum of its part” idea, but is a supply chain actually “teamwork”?

Perhaps this is pessamistic, but on first glance, a supply chain seems like a necessarily risky environment to work on. The idea that your performance, indeed, your job, is hinged on the ability of someone else to perform adequately is a thought I’d probably find dangerous to wake up to every morning. Don’t get me wrong, its not like other areas of business lack dependencies or aren’t qualifiedf by them, but the very notion of “supply management” is linked with the interaction and dependency, unlike, say, marketing or accounting. A marketing team, from my limited understanding, would probably be required to work closely with each other to achieve a common goal, and they are all dependent on one another, but they are bound by the fact that they will all be regarded and assessed equally on their result.

A supply chain manager is judged on his end whether or not someone else did their job correctly. A rather scary idea.