The Team Work Needed to Save Italys Banks
I was sitting in economics today and something popped up that interested me Italy’s GDP was negative in 2015. After doing a little bit of research I discovered an article in the economist that I found extremely interesting titled “Saving Siena.” In September UniCredit, Italys biggest lender called a collateral for around $5.6 for bank loans which was referred to as “immaterial” but defiantly is something that in no way is good. The Italian banking isn’t doing well and hasn’t been doing well for around the last 13 years which is defiantly not a short period of time. This led me to the question, what is the issue with the banking system and why isn’t it doing well?
One of the main factors in this banking crisis is the lack of communication between banks, this is something that recently I have learned is one of the most important factors to being successful. Putting this in terms of OB we could say that the banks are a group, and as we learned in class and read about in our textbooks, teamwork not group work is key to being successful . A Team is more flexible and responsive than a group and can meet quickly and formulate plans and ideas to implement to be successful. If banking in Italy took a few steps towards being more of a collective organized unit it could find a lot more success and maybe be able to turn its situation around. Until this happens there isn’t really much to be done for the banks in Italy
Sources:
Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, Ch. 6
http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21715008-italian-banks-turn-page-monte-dei-paschi-di-siena-must-be-sorted
The Trump Affect
One topic that seems to never lead the headlines in the last year or so is Donald Trump. Whether it be about his crazy campaigning tactics such as making fun of disabled reporters, starting “Build that Wall” Chants, or stating things such as undocumented immigrants are “rapist.” Now you are seeing things such as Trump signing documents to ban citizens of certain countries from entering the United States. I recently asked a female friend how she could vote for a man that she knew to be sexist, and that had nothing on his platform to help womens fight for equality in America and the World. She responded that her vote didn’t change peoples minds about sexism and that it was completely out of her control whether sexism would change.
This appalled me, how could someone think that they don’t have a say or any word in something that effects them everyday. I didn’t even bother responding to this person due to the fact that I was so upset at the time. But after reading the first few chapters in OB and attending the first few classes I got a better grasp on why she might feel this way.
Chapter 2 discusses perception, what I found most relevant to this was self-efficacy and its affect on ones actions. Self-efficacy is the belief in ones self to complete a task or to succeed in a certain situation. Some of the contributing factors to this are, past experience and physiological cues. So the conclusion I arrived to was that, possibly due to her surrounding and environment in and out of the house (only grew up with men her whole life) she no longer has faith in herself to be able to make a change herself.
sources:
1. The Comprehensive Guide To Trump’s Most Outrageous Statements- http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/worst-trump-quotes_us_5756e8e6e4b07823f9514fb1
2. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, ch. 2
Don’t Lie to Your Children!
I was standing in line to get food in the dining hall as I do everyday, I happened to forget my headphones that day and was listening to a conversation between a mother and her daughter (if I had to guess she was around 6 tall enough to see over the counter). The mother was on her phone and the daughter noticed that there are french fries as an options, she pointed this out to her pre occupied mother. He mother then responded something along the lines of “those french fries are dirty and covered in germs and remember what I told you we don’t eat dirty things.” (the mother said this without looking up from her phone) WHAT? Did this really just happen, this mom just blatantly lied to her daughter because she was to lazy to give the real reason to why she couldn’t have french fries. The daughter who has complete trust in her mother didn’t have a single complaint or negative response to her mothers lie.
This led me to the question how does trust affect relationships especially in terms of one party breaking this trust? The textbook had limited information on this but after conducting some more research I discovered that somethings out about trust. When a child has trust in their parent and their parent lies to them about something they know the truth to they are hurting them deeply. The reason for this is because it cause the children not only know when they are being lied to but they actually will begin to act out the person who is supposed to take care of them because they loose trust and faith in their parent.
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/on-parenting/when-its-okay-to-lie-to-your-kids-and-when-to-tell-the-truth/2015/12/08/cd8722ec-9204-11e5-8aa0-5d0946560a97_story.html?utm_term=.a917f6b644dc
. Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, “Trust”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/savvy-parenting/201406/when-parents-lie
Trumps Struggle with New Found Power
While I was analyzing the power in The Devil Wears Prada for my OB Project I came to learn a lot about the power that a CEO holds. Fast forward to twenty minutes ago, I was watching A Closer Look with Seth Meyers and his segment was about how “Trump Abuses His Presidential Power.” I after learning about all the types of power it was obvious to me what exactly is happening with trump and his struggles or strange methods to running the white house. Similarly to the presidency being the CEO of Trump industries also had a very large amount of power but there is a huge difference in the type of power that it is and trump is struggling a lot with this aspect of the differences and adapting to them.
A CEO has a very large amount of power, you can see this demonstrated not only By Miranda in he Devil Wears Prada, but also With Trump in his Business. The type of power that they rely on is their legitimate power and their expert power. They both have so much power that they play the game by different rules. As Macyn Points out in “Trump’s Terrible Twitter” Trump can tweet about what ever he so pleases and actually gets support from doing it, he has gained even more power through being a rude person on social media. He also can lie through his teeth about things and because he has so much power nobody can really do anything about it.
Being the president you similarly have a lot of power, but a different kind of power and a different way to enforce it . As Meyers brings up in his segment Trump is doing thing like tweeting in an extremely non presidential way. When Trump wasn’t president it was fine to tweet about all of these things but now that Trump has stepped into these new shoes he has to play by different rules. Trump now represents the country, and cannot do things like tweet about how Nordstrom took his daughters clothing line out of their store.
Trump has done something that presidents for years and years have not done while in the office. That is he has changed the Organizational Culture within the white house and within the Executive branch as a whole. Not only has he broke the beliefs that are thought of as presidential such as being respectful, and not abusing his power. But he has also broke values such as the way, and who you elect for your presidential council. Trump has had the lowest approval ratings in presidential history, if he continues to miss use his power and change the Organizational Culture of the presidency it will be interesting to see what happens.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/01/24/the-coming-struggle-for-control-of-donald-trumps-mind/?utm_term=.4c887fed556d
Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, ch. 2
To Shoot or Surrender the Moral Dilemma of Child Soldiers
Within in every business or organization there is always some hierarchy of command. One of the organizations with one of the most concrete and rigid command structures is the military. In the military if a superior tells you to do something you have to do it, unless someone that out ranks that superior tells you other wise. This power structure is absolutely necessary to properly run a military, while in combat or in a high stress situations you can’t have anyone questioning your decision due to the fact that it could cause the loss of someones life. One major issue in this power structure is when you are ordered to do something that is morally justified. Do you follow what you are ordered to do or do you do what is morally correct?
One of the largest cases of this has to do with child soldiers, and what to do when confronted with a child pointing a gun at you. Currently there are child soldiers fighting in 17 conflicts including Iraq and the Philippines. There are multiple cases of child soldiers taking adult soldiers hostage due to the fact that the adult soldiers wont shoot or fight the children. There are also multiple cases of adult soldiers shooting child soldiers and having major physiological issues which in many cases led to suicide. This leads me to the question how does one react to a situation in their job if one option could get you fired but the other goes against your basic values? This leads to an assessment of there ethical values along with the way that they show their dissatisfaction in the work place. There are 4 main ways that one can react and that is either through Exiting, Voicing, Neglecting, or remain Loyal. These options all have certain benefits and draw backs which either effect your business or organization, yourself, or both and are all completely up to the person that is having the conflict with the organization.
In the case of child soldiers Canada actually recently passed regulations on what to do when faced with child soldiers on the other side of their gun, and is the first country to do so. They said, “A child soldier with a rifle or grenade launcher can present as much of a threat as an adult soldier carrying the same armament,” and because of this adult soldiers have the right to protect themselves even if it is a child.
In life at some point you will be required to react to a situation that has some negative moral implication, hopefully it wont involve killing a child soldier. Being able to properly react is what is most important and through the use of either Exit, Neglect, Voice, and Exit you should be able to get a desired out come out of your situation.
sources:
http://www.economist.com/news/americas/21719821-canada-writes-rules-troops-who-face-armed-nine-year-olds-when-it-ok-shoot-child
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canadian-military-to-become-first-to-issue-guidelines-on-child-soldiers/article33910719/
Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition,
Changing the Core Values leads to Failure for Trump
When a business is run for the same way for years it eventually adopts a lot of different core values. As Alex Turnbull points out in his blog “‘Core values are the very best qualities of your team, distilled into a rubric that you can use to make better decisions, hire better people, and pass on the culture of your business to future employees.’” The Executive has had a set of values for years and years and this has helped to better the U.S. in areas such as foreign trade as well as healthcare reform.
Donald Trump on the other hand has taken his new position that has had a lot pre determined core values and thrown them right out the window. This has caused a lot of problems with his presidency as everyone can and has seen. As my class mate Connor Bajus mentions, “The way Donald Trump approached his campaigning was something similar to that of a business rebranding itself.” This has included trump doing things such as for the first time in history electing people to his cabinet that have no previous history in politics. This has also led to Trump firing a lot of these people that he hired because they aren’t good at the job he elected them for.
Due to the fact that trump has broken a lot of these core values, members of his own party, the republican party are turning on him. One person who is on the verge of this turn is Michael Flynn, who was Trumps appointed security advisor. There have been a lot of allegations thrown around about Flynn lying to Trumps Vice President Pence and many others. But because Trump has broken the core values of how he elects his members its been difficult for him to decide what to do with the matter.
How We Developed Our Business’s Core Values (And Why You Should Too)
http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/could-michael-flynn-turn-on-trump
Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition,
https://blogs.ubc.ca/cbajus/