Category: Old

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.

I think the technology behind information systems is almost overwhelmingly advanced, especially in todays age.

This youtube video I found, part of the “Did you know” series, really encapsulates the evolution that has and needs to occur in the way we percieve and understand information. Everyday hundreds of thousands of people interact on a second by second basis, decisions and points of view occuring at every instance. The idea that such rich media not only needs to be stored, a monumental task, and analyzed, that too at a speed relevent to such an unbelievably faster generation, is mind-boggling to me.

I haven’t got much else to say, but I will say this: I think humankind have evolved from the face-to-face interaction. Now, our ability to percieve has transcended time and space, and we have really hit something I could call the “fifth dimension”. Now, if you dont mind, I’m going to watch live Beatles concerts and maybe play some virtual World War 2.

Outsourcing, specifically in terms of large companies like Adidas and Nike, usually involves the movement of the production process to another country with less stringent monitoring policies for its people to find cheaper ways of providing us, the western consumer, our favorite toys.

Although this act has sometimes been called criminal, due to the fact that many people associate it with poor sweatshop laborers living on a pittance to produce something that, in the best of circumstances, we could only call an unnecessary luxury, it is not all bad. Take for example the situation in Vietnam.

Johan Norberg, a prominent freelance writer who often features fair-trade arguments, visited Vietnam and came to the realization that without this admittedly corrupted system, most poor Vietnamese sweatshop workers would have no means at all to produce goods. In fact, he discusses the situation of Tsi-Chi, a Vietnamese woman who, though admittedly impoverished compared to our standards, earns five times more in a sweatshop than she could otherwise, and managed to use the extra money to add an extension to her house and send her children to school.

There is no doubt in my mind that outsourcing of this nature is wrong and abusive, but I cant help but ask, whats the alternative? The western world’s convenience is the direct result of this situation, and people can hardly be asked to change an entire lifestyle for the sake of people they will never meet. Such a task has been tried before, but it usually only ends in monetary donation coupled with temporary sympathy. Hardly a solution. As it stands, I think this kind of outsourcing beats no outsourcing at all, because at the very least, it is a relatively more expensive alternative. For those who do not have an option, any option is better than none.

Vietnamese Sweatshops at Nike