ETHICAL DECISION MAKING IN ORGANIZATIONS:

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All managers and not only they, everybody have to take decisions everyday for every reason, that’s why talk about Decision Making is very important in all senses.

Sometimes, the decision maker have a lot of time to tale a decision, so he or she has a determined time to take the decision, it is a Programmed Decision, but there are other circumstances in which the decision have to be made in few minutes, so he cannot think about all consequences each alternative has, so this is called an Unprogrammed Decision.

When you have a Programmed Decision to make, you should follow a process, to take the best decision. First able is necessary to recognize the problem and accept there are a need of take a decision and identify the objective of the decision. Then manager has to make an evaluation and diagnose the situation, to list alternatives and select the best one. Finally they have to implement the decision and follow it up. The decision must be acceptable by all individuals to be a effective decision making.

There are also models of decision making, according to the personality of decision makers, there are a Rational Model (the ones who wants to optimize outcomes), Bounded Rationality (choose first alternative that is good enough), or the theory of Garbage Can (free decision making).

Most of the times Decision Makings are a participative task, I mean when there are a lot of people affected, and all of these people choose an alternative together, and sometimes there are also Individual Decisions, mostly of the times when there are just only an affected individual or when is a leader taking a decision for all the group (despite there was a leader is recommendable to have a decision according to more than one individual point of view).

In decision making are a lot of risks that managers or persons have to take, but some people prefer to adverse risk because they prefer to not loose even though they have the possibility to win much more.

When is a group trying to solve or reach for the best decision, they should choose one of the variety of techniques that exist. Those techniques are: Brain Storming (lot of ideas), NGT (generate good alternatives), Delphi (search for expert’s opinion), Devil’s Advocacy (avoid bad results caused by group pressures also called GROUPTHINK), Dialectical Inquiry (debate between two opposing sets).

In decision making managers have to care about their ethical behavior instead of avoid probable dangerous consequences. So it is relevant to understand two principal concepts that people used to relate but they are very different, Moral and Ethics. Moral is values and principles inside a person, moral vary depends on the beliefs of each individual, unlike Ethics that is a general concept about behavioral norms inside a certain society, and there are also a concept that is related to both previous concepts, it is Social Responsibility that is an obligation of behavior inside an organization, this concept is related to the behavior inside a company and families.

But what we most care about is Ethical Behavior that is behavior individuals take in certain organization or certain society. So there are some qualities required for individuals inside an organization, first able they have to identify ethical issues, and evaluate each concept, be self-confidence, and have willingness to make decisions.

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QUESTION:

What are the impacts of culture in terms of mixed-motive decision making?

It’s difficult to believe, but Cultural factor should impact in all human’s life, much even more on Decisions making.

 When there was a multicultural group in a certain organization its more probable the existence of decisions making problems rather than in a group monocultural. It’s occurs because different culture means different beliefs, and that means different points of view, as a conclusion, its hardest to getting in line. I don’t mean that is impossible to reach an agreement when there is a multicultural group, because as we can see in this chapter, there are a lot of ways to get a decision. And I don’t want to say that if there is a monocultural group, there wasn’t going to be problems on getting the decision, because all decisions making have rigor.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

·         Nelson,D.L.& Quick,J.L (2010) Organizational Behaavior: Science, The real World and you. South-Western College Publication

·         Nelson, Debra L. and Quick, James Campell. 2010, Organizational Behavior- Science, the real World and you; South- Western Cengage, Learning, Mason, USA, Chapter 5

THE CORPORATION

The documentary that we watched in the class was very explicit talking about the role of corporations in the community, the consequences of this role and the impact of some corporations in our society.

It’s necessary to be clear about what is a corporation. Corporations are big enterprises that can manage their market sector, and could enter through another market without any problems because they have a lot of power to do it.

Despite thousands of rules that exist against the manipulation of the market, corporations would make a lot of things against human society that is what the documentary tries to make, explaining the damage that corporations cost to the humans.

image souce:http://trashi.lacoctelera.net/post/2005/05/14/la-empresa-como-psicopata

There are not only environmental prejudices that corporations do for our society, those are the most mentioned by the newspapers or by television, but actually, environmental issues are very important but they are not the most perverse ones. In the documentary shows us many prejudices such as the damage of habitats such us human habitat and animal habitats too, there they also mentioned about the dangerous products that some corporations make to their clients.

image source:http://opinionmatters.flatoday.net/2011_03_01_archive.html

The thing that I considered the most impacted was the human rights violations that the corporations make for the community, in the documentary shows us a very good example about an scandal human rights violation in which a big corporation take a small society from Honduras as their labor hand, and they exploited them, make them work hard and large hours for a few amount of money, taking advantage of the economical situation of the mentioned community. The corporation didn’t even pay them social security, and extra hours. The worst thing is that these persons thought that this terrible corporation was a miracle for their lifes. But they didn’t know about the prejudices that this corporations cost on their society. Corporations similar as the one of the human right violation there thousands of that, they exploited lots of communities and when they saw the community is economically better, they leave and search about other communities that have economic problems.

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

I think corporations started to have a lot of influence on the society after capitalism started to govern most of the world. This situation happened because corporation started to become the most powerful entities in human´s life, so at the beginning, they make the economy grew because of the thousands of employs they gave. So that’s why they started to influence culturally on all people so corporations  started to manage the behavior of their consumer and also they can manage the decisions of their suppliers.

How they influence people? It’s easy to understand, because all corporations entered to the market by the most common Medias, and they make aggressive marketing plans in which they participate to make people see their marks wherever they go. So its impossible that people didn’t see all adverting, and be influenced by them.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

·         Michael Anderson (2002), Transnational Corporations and Environmental
Damage: Is Tort Law the Answer.

·         Documentary “The Corporation” by Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott. Retrieved from: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=FA50FBC214A6CE87

MOTIVATION

A good definition of motivation is all factors that encourage people to conduct or behave some way or other. You as a human, need motivational factors to do all things you used to do every day, if you think about all acts you make, you have a good reason for make it. But there are some motivational theories that would better explain the types of motivation that humans have.

image source:http://sakkarah-1.blogspot.com/2010_08_01_archive.html

Those theories are: Internal (works with individual’s variables), Process (mix individuals and environmental elements) and External (that focus the theory on environmental issues). In the study of the motivational process, everyone has to take into account THE NEEDS of each person, such as internal need which are related to intrinsic motivations and external needs that are related to extrinsic motivation. Both concepts have to work together, because both of them generate movement. Pr. Maslow proposes a hierarchical Pramid of needs, in which a lot of ana of needs, in which a lot of analyst based their theories on this.

video source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvGqIVy-_G4

He also implement theory X  (in which he includes first two chain of needs), and thery Y (in which he includes the other three need), but is relevant to understand that if a manager chooses theory X their workers are going to be costs, on the contrary, if he chooses theory Y, their workers are going to be assets.

At the same way, inside an enterprise, managers have to care about motivational process for their employees, but there are also many different ways to motivate them, those are possible motivations that an employee would receive: economic or material, employee recognition, flexible benefit packages, symbols of distinction, and some others.

But not everything is to easy as it sound, there are causes of motivational problems and there are three principal causes: Belief that effort will not result in performance, Belief that performance will not result in rewards, The value a person places on, or the preference a person has for, certain rewards.

Finally, there are some implications that a manager o an enterprise have to take into account when he is trying to motivate their employees, first able, not all theories of motivating are useful as they look like, so the manager have to take care about their choice, second, all employees and all people have different needs, so is very important to understand the variety of needs that an employee would have, and third but not last one because there are too mane implications of a manager, is that a manager needs or can motivate their employees by simple things such as, training, coaching, or tasking assignments to make feel their employees part of the org.

image source:http://factosconsultores.blogspot.com/2010_04_01_archive.html

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

I think there are a lot of motivational processes that a manager can follow up, but I think the most important factors the managers have to take into account are not materials elements, such as money or tangible thing, in my opinion is better to motivate employees with things such as recognition, or motivating with increasing training hours, more than with material things because when they get material things they would stop to increasing their level of performance, however, if they got intangible things employees know that this is great for their professional performance, so they prefer to know much more things that are going to give them added value as professionals than earn more money that they will have to spend immediately. 

BIBLIGRAPHY:

• Dorsch, en Psicología General de: Aceves Madaleno José Edición 2000; Publicaciones Cruz México, D. F.

• Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD, Authenticity Consulting, LLC.
  Adapted from the Field Guide to Leadership and Supervision.http://managementhelp.org/guiding/motivate/basics.htm

• The Administrator's Role in Employee MotivatioN
  Skemp-Arlt, Karen M;Toupence, Rachelle
  Coach and Athletic Director; Feb 2007; 76, 7; ProQuest 
  pg. 28

PERSONALITY, PERCEPTION AND ATRIBUTION; ATTITUDES AND VALUES

These topics are very important to analyze in the context of organizational behavior, because depends on these three characteristics of people, that each person is going to behave some way or another.

According to the dictionary, Personality “Is a relatively stable set of characteristics that influences an individual's behavior”. This concept of personality is a little bit short because the topic of personality has a lot of concepts that we have to know to understand human behavior, in our hand book, the author explain the characteristics of persons in 5 traits theories, it means 5 kind of personalities, those are: Extraversion (the one who is very active and cero timid), Agreeableness (the person that want to cooperate all the time), Conscientiousness (a very hardworking person), Emotional Stability (a very calm person in which people thrust in), Openness to Experience (the one who is creative and curious).

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Another important key point is the PERCEPTION of a person that is defined as “the process by which individuals recognize, select and interpret sensory input.”^1.  It means what you can identify from another person. But as well everybody has a lot of skills to perceive someone personality, there are a lot of barriers of social perception, those are: stereotyping, first impression error, projection, self-fulfilling prophecies, and selective perception, these barriers may you be wrong when you met someone or something and you would make a lot of mistakes in your organization.

Attribution is another topic that is important to understand human behavior, humans’ attributions are such proprieties or characteristics of the identity of a person, there are internal and external attributions.

Attitudes and Values are other characteristics that in an organization you need to focus in, because through attitudes, workers can show the satisfaction or not on their workplace; if they are comfortable, they can have good atiitudes, therefore, they would show better outputs, and if they are not, it’s obviously what is going to be the workplace outputs. That’s why it’s said that the performance of the enterprises. 

And values are also very important to take into account, because you must put a homework for each worker according on his value; some of the work values must be: achievement, concern for others, honesty, fairness.

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QUESTION:

What is your perception of a Japanese aid worker before and after the talk with Yasuko? On what do you base your perception?

I think JICA is a good organization that I had never listened about, previously the conference with the Japanese Yasuko, about the job that she realized in Colombia with the help of Japanese government, I thought that Japan didn’t pay too much attention about our educational system, off course I knew that Colombia received a lot of help of the Asians governments, but I thought that this help was more economically or military aids, but I didn’t know about the interest of the government of Japan on Colombian and other countries educational progress, that with JICA’s aids, they lend support to developing countries to help them increase the educational system. My previous perception was based on the news you can heard about military and economic aids that developing countries received by countries like Japan, you rarely heard about these important aids. You just heard about huge and big aids that involves huge amounts of money, but these social aids are not as well  as mentioned as the firestones.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

• Work Attitude Values Enhancement: Your Personal Principles. CARRER, SUCCESS FOR NEWBIS. Retrieved from: http://www.career-success-for-newbies.com/work-attitude-values-enhancement.html 

• ^{(1) the role of managerial perception, handbook of “Organizations and Cultures” page 308}
• Model for Perception: 1998: retrieved form: http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/neuro/neuro98/202s98-paper1/Mosher.html

National and Organizational Culture

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Culture is a word difficult to define, because this word may defines all contexts we are living at. A common definition of culture is “a collective programming of the mind which distinguishes the member of one human group from another”, but is necessary to add a lot of concepts on this definition, for example culture includes group customs, beliefs, likes, preferences etc, that what make the study of cultural factors be an important lessons on international relations or just in all human interactions. For example an entrepreneur or for an enterprise is very important to take into account all national culture differences to make a decision because all cultural analysis gives you predictability on your enterprise’s profits or goals.

In the same way is very important to take into account the analysis of organizational behavior that is an important topic to analysis, there is a video about a conference called “Getting to the top”, in which the CEO’s of Oodle, Mr. Craig Donato, talk abput organizational or corporate culture:

video source: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eaF-7VolbS4&feature=player_embedded

Finally, it’s important to know about the different types of organizational culture that exist to make an analysis about which of all I belong and how to behave in, those are:

• Clan culture: is like an “extended family”.
•   Hierarchy Culture:  More formal organizations, rules and procedures are the base of the organization.
• Adhocracy Culture: Workers  take risks cause they have to be creative
•  Market Culture: competitive workers, first goal “getting the job done.

Question:

Why is managing organizational behavior in changing times challenging?:

Organizational Behavior in changing times is very difficult, despite all changes crate opportunities, during the change, people found the experience of change as a threat, and most of the people would become rigid and reactive, rather then open.minded and responsive.
But all big changes disrupt people’s habitual behavior and force individuals to learn new skills, so it started to became a positive change. That’s why the recommendation is to see change as positive and challenge as a good rather than bad. if it's not like that change is going to tranform as an obstacle inside the organization.

Bibliography:

Behavior in times of change. (1992).Organizational Behavior and Opportunity. Retrieved form: http://4ltrpress.cengage.com/orgb/sample/ORGB_Ch1.pdf

organizational behavior

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Organizational behavior is one of the topics that concern all social community, first able because with this topic we can understand all the interaction between groups and persons.


 With the study of organizational behavior people can understand many things such as: know yourself and  how to deal with others, how to interact with people of different organizations, work in teams and to control or manage a group. You must have to take into account internal and external perspectives to analyze the behavior of some organization, internal´s one such as the person´s behavior, the preferences o the person etc, and external such as the environment in which these persons interact and which factors make them behave like they do.

There are like two kinds of organizations: formal and informal. First one is the organizations that have official and recognized elements that make people inside them interact together, elements like policies, job description, and authority structure, for example an enterprise, a religion, etc. And the second one are organizations that have unofficial and familiar elements like beliefs, perceptions and feelings, for example: a family or a group of friends.

The changes also make a people behave some way or other; this happens because “CHANGE” creates another perception of all things we are involved in.

Let's watch a video in which a Profesor of the Higher Collages of Technology, talks about all individual and group role and behavior inside an Organization

image source:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdsmUnd8eRU

Bibliography:

• Leadership and Organizational Behavior (19th march 2002). Retrieved from: http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/leadob.html