Saturday, January 25, 2020

The Need For Employee Motivation In Mexico Commerce Essay

The Need For Employee Motivation In Mexico Commerce Essay It is impossible to understand a Mexican worker without understanding the Mexican history and culture in its basic aspects. The Mexican culture is a very traditional, family oriented, religious and also nationalist organisation in corporate identity. This is to the extent of, the only way of knowing the person is by knowing the family and without knowing the person they wont do business with the person. The Mexicans given more importance to the time they spend with their family and do not reduce that time at any cost. The close family concept includes the parents, children, grandparents, uncles, aunties and cousins and the weekend recreation includes relatives and friends also in the above said. This kind of extended family gives them a sense of stability. The culture is more of traditional gender egalitarianism with the father as the authority and the decision-maker. The Mexican males believe nothing must be done in such a way that it would tarnish their image as a man. The role of Mexican women has been homemaking and family, regardless of their great position in workplace. Education, title and family background provide social status, as they value title and position as important as money. In organisational structures Mexicans accept a large power distances and emphasize hierarchical relationships. In Mexican culture they are used to work like, company and society as a unit. They avoid uncertainty and respect their authorities, expect them to guide and take decisions. But still personal relationships must be nurtured and maintained carefully to get commitment from the working Mexicans. The personal respect and recognition motivate Mexicans. The Mexican cultural employees are very diplomatic, very courteous and have fixed loyalty towards the organisation they work. The Mexican culture is not task oriented. They are more punctual and optimistic in calculating time. They are warm and gracious and give respect to their sense of time and traditions. It is also imp ortant to give more stress on friendship in Mexican culture. There are staffing practices such as internal recruitment, personal references, succession planning, psychometric tests, and elaborate bio-data associated with these cultural dimensions, e-recruitment and panel interviews are not predominant in Mexican culture. After the basics in the Mexican culture and outline knowledge of how it works in the organisation, now we are going to see on the hurdles that it causes in the implementing an environment with learning strategy focussed on employee involvement and empowerment. On global focus organisational learning is very important in an organisation not only for the progress of the individual but also for the organisation attain a steady growth as the organisations are dependent on individuals. The organisational learning strategy focussed on employee involvement and empowerment gives more focus on the growth of the individual in accordance with the growth of the organisation. But the Mexican culture does not give or very less room in organisational learning or in a strategy of it focussed on employee involvement. The employees in the Mexican work very much dependent on the hierarchical structure in their organisational culture. They dont take any decisions on their own and relay on their immediat e boss for everything they do. If they take also the decisions are very conscious in relevance to their bosss decision making. They listen to the boss very carefully without any intervention and also with full consciousness and do what the boss recommends. This procedure in an organisation will not give any space for organisational learning or individual learning as the decision making process facilitates a lot in it, by which you can learn by mistakes and experiences. There is no way for knowledge diffusion inside the company or organisation. In the western organisation they persuade what they think, listens half to boss and learn a lot in experiences and mistakes. The acceptance of status in the organisation is very much and not demanding for human rights. Next is about communication styles, in the Mexican culture the way of communication to the top management is indirect as they have to communicate through their immediate boss. They have lots of inequality in the organisation and because of that they become very reserve, introvert less expressive of their views to the management of their organisation. In the highly stratified and vertically structured way of organisation promotions are not performance based and are on age and seniority based which does not facilitate any learning. The learning strategies relay heavily on the employee involvement in everyday decisions and experimentation but all the above said factors does not involve employees in anyway resulting in no room for organisational learning. There is lots of importance given to relationships than to the facts and figures within an organisation. Their organisation is more focussed on collectivism than on individualism which is again a hurdle for learning. They also take contracts inside the organisation for renegotiation than taking them as binding with and working on them by learning more new concepts. Moreover to all these Mexican organisational structures are more male dominant making the views of one gender of the society less or non expressive. This also contributes to the hurdles. All these factors make the Mexican culture as a less ideal environment in which to implement a learning strategy focussed on employee involvement and empowerment. EMPLOYEE MOTIVATION TO ENGAGE IN LEARNING: Equipos is a plastics producing company in an industrial city in the Gulf of Mexico. This plant is a technology-driven plant with employee strength of 170. In 1995 the company was bought by the American partner which was initially a joint venture with a Mexican partner. Initially there were Mexican managers heading the plant and the organisation was in the Mexican was of organisational culture. Then the employee empowerment began resulting in implementing self-managed teams. The teams divided functional roles within the team and the role of team leader changed every three months. The plant was down to three managers others becoming the team facilitators and served as team leaders in the absence of team leaders. Then the interviews were conducted asking the managers, facilitators how to reduce the cultural difference and the barriers in implementing learning. The interviewed Mexican managers, facilitators and employees who attended the meeting were asked for the direct feedback reduci ng the communication gap and also making them responsible towards the company. The teams also gave issues inside the plant with the problems they have and the management also believed in the employees and consequently trust built between the employees and the managers. By the way of having both horizontal and vertical way of communication and facilitating the reduction of hierarchical and moving towards flat organisational structure. There are lots of factors that surfaced in the process of doing the interviews and few of the important factors are going to be discussed. Environmental factors are being one of the most important factors in this case. The work stability over the region, the plant had an advantage of permanent work-force due to the family atmosphere in their region while others have high turnover rate due to constant mobility. Education was another factor as there was a low level of education as the average level of education for the manufacturing sector in Mexico is 5 to 6 years. They hired younger age employees who are more open to change and wanted to learn new things. Finally they also came up with powerful unions and Equipos chose to work with unions providing high wages and cooperative relationships, these unions dint have any objection to the use of teams and increased participation. The primary organisational factor they found was the joint venture between an U.S and a Mexican partner. The joint venture gave a Mexican top management team to afford a thorough understanding of the Mexican culture and aide in the implementing if these programs. The other factor is, the top management gave a management philosophy that geared towards the empowerment and learning. This was first initiated by the Mexican top management by approaching the U.S partner for management aide. One of the important factors in this case is the size of the plant with strength of 170 facilitating the implementation such programs. Equipos had basically three sets of H.R practices that facilitated the learning. First set of practices were the standard H.R practices that equipos implemented were self-managed team works, setting up clear goals, open communication, ongoing training, reward system, managers were given new roles. To attract and retain the skilled labour they gave the highest pay in the area. The second set of practices to say on a whole were on setting culture specific H.R practices such as retaining the Mexican managers and the other advantageous environmental factors that aided their implementation. The third set of practices was the most important one as it dealt with the translation of U.S MNCs practices to fit in with the Mexican. These three sets of practices contributed to the human resources practices of equipos. INTEGERATED MODEL: This integrated model of the relationship between organisational, environmental and HR practices on employee behaviour show the important environmental and organisational factors that influence the choice of HR practices to be implemented in these kind of culture adopting processes. These variables are similar to the exogenous and endogenous variables given by the Schuler, Budwar, and Florkowski but still the model is based on a case described in the articles by Negandhi and Prasad-1971, schuler-2002. This model highlights the critical importance of the HR practices that support the theories of IHRM that propose the HR practices that can be used to align the MNE goals and objectives with the host-country affiliate dynamics. This also shos the importance of HRM in the task of implementing practices that strategically deal with the challenges provide by the foreign environment. The model first the organisational factors that are to be taken into consideration, they are method of foundi ng joint venture play an important role in the understanding and getting adopted to the foreign environment. The management philosophy and management attitude towards the culture also plays key role in adopting or implementing new culture into an existing one. In addition to all these the ability to deal with the culture size is also given high priority. The environmental factors like national values, regional values, education also play a vital role. Here the socioeconomic and industrial factors also are added as factors in the environmental factors. Now keeping these organisational and environmental factors as variables important HR practices have been selected, first are the standard practices and then the culture-specific practices as the influence the people and can well understand the locals than anybody else. For this they retained the local managers and given them all the freedom to develop a trust between the employees and management. The final and the most important one is the translation of U.S MNC practices into such practices that can suite into the Mexican environment as the practices implemented as like the same will not be accepted in any foreign environment. All the factors, human resource practices all integrated together give a model that was very helpful in implementing organisational learning. CONCLUSION: From the case study we saw how a foreign organisational culture can be implemented into an existing culture. This is to the extent that the management culture which is not congruent to the countrys culture can be also implemented with the help of HR practices. Even though both the organisational and environmental factor are taken as variables for the deciding of HR practices, the environmental factors have influence on the organisational factors or it can also be said it is highly influenced by the environmental factors. This is also shown in the model as the flow from the environmental factors goes to all the boxes in the model, to HR practices, to organisational factors and also to the organisational employee behaviour and culture. The high light of this study is importance of joint venture in the cross-culture management. But when ever implementing cross-cultures the size and the age of the plant must be taken into account as an important caution factor. Thus we studied about the Equipos case study and how it motivated its employees in becoming engaged to an unfamiliar strategy. Also thus we studied about the different cultures and how to manage changes in cross-culture making us easy to implement any strategies in a management in any culture.

Friday, January 17, 2020

Importance of Karachi in Pakistani literature Essay

Discuss the connection between 1947 partition and the fiction of second generation writings. In 1947 partition when people started to migrate most of the Urdu speaking settled in Karachi. The local Sindhis were not very literate but laborers, workers etc but when the Urdu speaking migrated, most of them were highly educated, thus the white collar jobs were given to them. This gave rise to a major conflict between the local Sindhis and the Muhajirs. Mujajirs were looked upon with hatred because the local people thought they’ve snatched their rights. There was a tussle between the two groups. Karachi was becoming the battleground of ethnicity. Karachi is the biggest metropolis of the country with its economic, industrial and financial hub and the main commercial port. According to past census, half of Karachi’s 8.9 million populations had Urdu as its mother tongue, another quarter was made up of speakers of Pashtu and Punjabi while Sindhis were just five per cent of the p opulation of the capital of Sindh, and half of them lived in the suburban area of Malir. On the other hand, Karachi had more Pashtuns than Peshawar, the capital of Pakhtunkhwa! In late 70s and early 80s there were economic issues over the country and the workers from different areas migrated to Karachi, especially the Pathan and Punjabi purely of economic reason. Most of the transport system was dominated by Pathans so it was a blow for the local Sindhis that these strangers are coming to our cities snf tking jobs that belong to us. Same was the case with the Punjabis. They were laborours who used to work on low wages but the main thing was that they were employed. Karachi is a multiethnic, multilingual, multicultural and multireligious metropolitan city. There are many communities in Karachi. There are: Ethnic minorities Sectarian minorities Religious minorities Same thing was happening with the karachians as it was with Bengalis. Bengalis were immigrants on 1947 but in 1971 they were once again asked to leave the country and move to Bangladesh. There was ethnic crisis in Karachi in 1980s and 1990s. It was really hard to live there at that time. Every single day people were massacred. When you have grudges in your mind, it multiplies, you can’t forget about it. These conflicts are highlighted in  Kamila Shamsie’s novels as well as in Tawfeeq Rafat’s poems. In his poem â€Å"Karachi 1968† he writes, â€Å"No, I do not think I shall come in terms With this grey place. It shortens my breath And pinches my eyes.†According to Tawfeeq Rafat, Karachi is a dead city. There is no activity there except that of violence. There is eco melancholia everywhere. Jonathan Raban has described city into two types. Hard city: Material fabric of built environment. Soft city: individualized interpretation of city. So when the karachians dream about Karachi, how it will return to its normal place is example of soft city. Likewise Tawfeeq Rafat talks about a positive region. â€Å"Children salute smartly as we pass, And the old women gathering faggots Have a smile to spare for the stranger.† The people of Karachi never truly got independence. They are suffering from 1947 till now. All they do is hope for a positive region where they can live happily, where they are not taunted for being a muhajir, where they can live a peaceful life according to their own will and all these things are highlighted by the second generation writers. They refer back to 1947 because all of this started from that point.

Thursday, January 9, 2020

Income Inequality in United States - Free Essay Example

Sample details Pages: 7 Words: 1990 Downloads: 1 Date added: 2019/07/01 Category Finance Essay Level High school Topics: Income Inequality Essay Did you like this example? Introduction The United States has come a long way since it was first established in 1776. The U.S. economy has had its ups and downs, but still manages to be the strongest in the world. Don’t waste time! Our writers will create an original "Income Inequality in United States" essay for you Create order Just because the U.S. has the strongest economy, does not mean that it does not have its fair share of problems. Beginning in the 1970s, one problem that has been hurting the U.S. economy is income inequality. The 2013 documentary, Inequality for All, presented by Robert Reich has shone a light on how and why income inequality has hurt the economy over the years. There are many components that contribute to income inequality. Some of these components consist of rising inequality in wealth, debt, education, and the diminishing of the middle class. Rising Inequality in Wealth Over the years, the gap between the average earning workers and the top 1% of earners has widened. This creates an unequal distribution of wealth and is harming the working class. Robert Reich stated that the typical male worker earned $48,302 in 1978 while the top 1% earned $393,682 (Reich 2013: 5). These statistics drastically changed because in 2010 the male worker was making $33,751 and the top 1% was earning over a million dollars. Many factors come into play when discussing the reasons why income inequality has increased. Some of these factors include technology, government policies, the decline of manufacturing, and globalization. Technological advances have impacted society because it has improved conditions for some jobs, while replacing others. Advancement in computer technologies has minimized the need for bank tellers because there are now ATMs and access to bank statements and transactions online (Manza, 2018, p. 224). However, these advancements have created jobs for financial analysts, who need to have college degrees. Technology has created a college wage premium where people who have less than a college degree have had difficulty finding good jobs and their earnings have declined. This has happened because higher education has not grown as fast as technology has advanced. Therefore, people who have obtained college degrees have become scarcer, respective to the needs of the economy, and their scarcity results in higher paying salaries (Manza, 2018, p. 225). The college wage premium increases if technology advances faster than higher education because the educational system cannot produce enough train ed workers who are qualified to work with the new technology. It is important for people to have affordable access to higher education, so they will be able to find good jobs and better the economy. The government should be funding more money towards higher education and making it more affordable for everyone. The government can do this is by implementing a strict progressive tax system and not allowing the rich to report their income as capital gains. Reich says that the upper class pays about 15% in taxes, while the working class pays around 33% (Reich, 2013: 67). The taxation system is in favor of the rich and this causes problems for the economy. The government is in debt and by not having enoughtax revenue they have to cut spending for things like education, Medicare, and welfare. Giving tax breaks only makes rich people richer and hurts the working class. Another government policy that would help decrease income inequity is raising the minimum wage in relation to the inflation rate. In recent years, about 70% of people who are earning minimum wage are adults and many of them are women and minorities (Manza, 2018, p. 228). It is hard for people to take care of their familie s and pay for all their expenses when they are barely making ends meet. Increasing the minimum wage will help grow the economy because it will increase consumer spending. It will also improve worker productivity and reduce the number of resignations due to low wages. People will want to go to work if they believe they are being paid a reasonable wage. The United States has experienced a constant decline in manufacturing and industrial jobs, also known as deindustrialization. In 1950, nearly 40% of jobs were in manufacturing and industry, and the wages were fairly high for skilled manufacturing workers, but nowadays, merely 20% of jobs are in manufacturing (Manza, 2018, p. 225). The end-less threat of outsourcing jobs to other countries has helped constrain salaries for manufacturing workers. Deindustrialization has harmed workers because they are swapping out good jobs for bad ones that pay less and provide fewer benefits. Globalization is also a key factor in flattening out wages and increasing income inequality. Products that could be made in the U.S. are instead manufacturedoverseas because of cheaper labor. This takes jobs away from U.S. workers, but it gives jobs to people in other nations. However, these people in other nations are working in terrible conditions that are poor and unsafe and are paid immensely low wages. Globalization has caused companies to cut costs and increase their profits by holding down wages, reducing benefits, and disregarding their employees. This creates income inequality because the lower-level workers are making less money, while the executives are profiting and earning more money. Countries that prioritize higher education have dealt with globalization better because they created a highly skilled workforce (Reich, 2013: 41). Their wages are higher, but it is worth it to produce things that are so well made and meticulous. Debt Debt is something that everyone tries to avoid, but it is inevitable. With the rising costs of medical insurance, housing, college tuition, etc., people are taking out loans and mortgages to keep up with their living standards. Since wages are stagnant, people have accumulated more and more debt to cope with not having enough money. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median household income was $57,617 in 2016 (U.S. Census Bureau). However, the average American household is in $137,063, according to the Federal Reserve Bank (Sun, 2017). This suggests that many Americans are spending more money than they can afford. In the mid 90s onward, there was a vast rise in housing prices and Americans used their homes as collateral to pay for expenses. From 2001 to 2005, Americans cashed out over $500 billion in home equity to cover the costs of things like credit cards, student debt, and medical expenses (Reich, 2013: 58). People are in desperate need of money to be able to support thems elves and their families when their wages are going nowhere. How does this relate to income inequality? Well, when rich people are stockholders of a bank, they also own the mortgages and loans the bank has made. So, when someone makes an interest payment, that money is going to the rich stockholder. Education As previously mentioned, higher education is a possible solution to decrease the gap in income inequality. Robert Reich says that inequality is clearly related to education. During the Great Prosperity, higher education is what raised Americans out of poverty and into the middle class (Reich, 2013: 40). It was not until the late 1970s where college graduation rates started to level out. Over the years, tuition rates and fees have risen due to the government reducing spending for higher education, making college less affordable to the average American. Social reproduction is a factor when it comes to inequality in education. Children who grow up in a wealthier class receive more education than a child born into poverty. People born into poverty are stuck in a vicious cycle and it is hard for them to climb the social ladder when they do not have access to a good education system or the money to further their education. Over the last 50 years, the educational achievement gap can be better explained by family income rather than race (Manza, 2018, p. 370). Even though efforts have been made to improve the standards of schools, there has been a growth in the gap between poorer children and richer children. One of the reasons for this inequality is the quality of the access that these children have. Low-income families usually live in neighborhoods that have poor and under-funded public schools. When their children attend these schools, they are at a disadvantage because the schools lack the resources to fully educate their students. On the other hand, wealthy families invest a lot of money and resources to make sure their children are getting the best education possible. This leads to income inequality because the rich children had the opportunity to attend college and learn the skills needed to get a high paying job, while the poor child could not afford college and had to settle for working at a low wage job. Compared to other developed countries, the United States falls behind when it comes to international student assessment and high school graduation rates (Manza, 2018, p. 376). This is concerning because if other countries exceed the U.S. in education, they could potentially gain competition for economic growth and global business. Knowledge-based industries, such as pharmaceutical and software companies, are expected to be the future sources of economic growth and that is why it is important for American schools to continue competing with other countries. The United States should be investing in people, so they can attend colleges and learn the skills needed to join the workforce and in return better the economy. The Diminishing of the Middle Class In order for a country to be prosperous, it needs to have a stable economy and a strong middle class is what makes an economy stable. The United States economy is 70% consumer spending and the heart of consumer spending is the middle class (Reich, 2013: 10). As income inequality increases, the middle class begins to diminish and that is what is hurting the economy. This means that people are spending less money, wages stagnate, tax revenues decreases, companies downsize, government cuts programs, workers are less educated, and unemployment rises (Reich, 2013:59). This is known as the vicious cycle and it happens when the middle class doesnt have enough purchasing power. The middle class has gone into debt because of stagnating wages and this has created a debt bubble. This hurts the economy because people are spending less and GDP decreases. The United States still has one of the strongest economies, but that does not mean anything when it is screwing over Americans. GDP is supposed to represent quality of life and living standards for a countries residents, but that is clearly not the case for the United States. Income inequality and stagnating wages are the reasons the middle class is disappearing because the rich keep getting richer and the poor keep getting poorer. The rich are not the ones that keep the economy going because they do not spend enough money to produce a sufficient amount of economic activity. That is why the middle class is so important for economic stability, and without a strong and vibrant middle class, the U.S. will be stuck in a vicious cycle. Conclusion The United States economy cannot grow, if things remain the way they are. Change and reform need to occur, so that the quality of life and living standards of Americans can improve. The U.S. needs to be a part of a virtuous cycle in order to prosper. Since income inequality keeps increasing, social mobility has decreased. It is becoming harder for people to move up in social status because they do not have the resources to better themselves. The government needs to increase taxes for the rich because this will allow more tax revenue to be put into education and other beneficial programs. Investing in higher education will allow people to learn the skills needed to be able to compete in this current global economy. Creating a vibrant middle class will boost the economy by increasing consumer spending, but this cannot be achieved if wages continue to be stagnant. Increasing wages will help improve economic mobility and this in turn will allow for a big and wealthy middle class. No one wants to be financially struggling and having to live paycheck to paycheck. Change will not occur overnight, but society needs to speak up and address the problems in our economy, so solutions can start to be made.