Reflective Journal 2

Reflective Journal 2

The different styles of management reveal the different cultures and societies in the East and in the West.

Google’s way of management impressed me a lot. It is so open and gives its employees so much freedom. The site of the company looks like a tiny integrated city. At first, I wondered whether it is worth building luxurious facilities for employees and why. Now after analysing, I understand that Google provides its staff with a comfortable atmosphere and it is very wise. People can relax comfortably and then go to work with full passion. So it is a way to improve the company’s efficiency and these welfares build up the extrinsic motivation of employees. They are attractive to everybody including me because the comfort and richness of life is being pursued forever.

Besides this, I also appreciate its encouragement to innovation. The ‘20%’ rule as well as peer review gives employees a chance to explore the area beyond their assigned work and achieve something with potential abilities. I think it helps to foster good employees and make them faithful to the company. This reminds me of a company called foxconn from Taiwan. It is famous for manufacturing for Apple. However, it came to public sight because more than ten employees jumped off the building continuously in about half a year’s time because of great pressure and the boredom of repeating the same work thousands of times a day. On the other hand, the company only receives a very small amount of money for each product which is sold at a high price to consumers. There is a stark contrast between the two companies. Freedom and innovation makes business successful while restriction and copying only bring sweat and toil. In China, there is also a phenomenon called ‘shanzhai’, which means fake products. A lot of small companies imitate the make, the name, even the design of appearance of famous companies, but their products’ quality is very poor. Numerous of them appear and disappear all in a very short time. I feel really sorry for them. If they can put effort into creating their own design instead of thinking how to copy, maybe they will have a bright future. The culture of innovation and open mind decides the fate of a company in the fierce competition. There is a saying, ’Chinese are best at copying’. In the current situation, I have to accept this fact but I hope we Chinese can learn how to not only innovate based on what we have copied, but also create something for others to copy. It will make a great change.

Another company we talked about is Lenovo. I think there are two ways for it to survive and thrive: one way is to keep its Chinese style and the other is change itself to be real international. It should be easier to manage in Chinese style but more attractive to employees in Western style. It is reasonable for Lenovo to fail in the second style: it is based on China. Chinese have been used to being conservative and listening to superiors after thousands of years of feudalism. You may say feudalism suppresses people’s talent and freedom but the fact is that China kept a leading position in the world all the way before 19^th century. Similarly, Lenovo returned to be profitable after returning to the first style. Initially I wondered why it works, but after finding out so many new and popular products including the ThinkPad Edge I am using, I get some ideas. The Chinese style is a bit like meritocracy. My opinion is that the key is only talented people will be promoted to a higher position. This ensures that every employee can do the best of his or her ability at the current position. Different from the other style, ideas are often submitted to superiors and been discussed. In some ways, it is even more efficient because it avoids wasting time. This kind of management is almost the same as the Chinese society. The talented people who are selected rule and decide what to do for the whole country. I think the school system I have experienced for many years is like this, too. Students have to follow the form teacher or the monitor they have elected. Otherwise, they may be considered undisciplined. A resourceful and able monitor can usually organise the class well. Of course, it has a big defect that if superiors make a mistake, the consequence will be serious. For example, the Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976, which was started by a mistake of the leaders, caused great damage to Chinese society. But I think this style’s advantage of concentration overweighs its disadvantage because the probability to make the right decision should always be greater.

Overall, if I have a company to run and manage in the future, I will choose combine the two styles together. In 80% of the time, I will use the Chinese style to maintain an ordered and efficient system in the company. In the other 20% of the time, I will leave it to employees, giving them space to innovate and devote their passion to things they love. In this way, I can keep a balance between the interest of my company and the development of my employees.

Reflective Journal 1

After having the first lesson, I have the general idea that SES is a lesson in which we study about society and the economics as well as the relationship between them.

It is known to all that economics is a main concern today throughout the whole world. Because the world is generally in the state of peace and every country wants to be prosperous, people pays much attention to economics, in which way the country can develop better. Also, economics determine the role of a nation that it plays on the global stage. The big powers all have a large GDP. However, there are many things which are unstable nowadays, such as the possibility of another recession. Economics are so complicated things that even the best economist is not able to predict it correctly every time. It keeps changing all the time. Years ago, people perceived Japan to be another super power besides America, but now China has overtaken and replaced it. As a result, it may be necessary for us to do some research on it as we need to know what is happening and to have a clearer vision about it.

Previously, I thought that there is not close relationship between economics and the society. But after the lesson, I have changed my mind. On the one hand, Economics do affect the society in many ways and it cannot be separated from society. If the situation of economics is bad and worrying, the society will not be stable. This could be because of people's desire for a life of quality. Serious debt crisis and inflation have made a lot of people upset in the world now. They lose their jobs and cannot afford the high prices. There have been events which are the chain reactions of bad economics, such as Occupying the Wall Street and protests again the government in many nations. On the other hand, economics are created and run by the society. It is a circulation of money. People rely on it but their actions affect it. For example, if there are not any consumers buying products, economics cannot be sustained at all.

There are other things between the society and economics, such as cultural intelligence, which means the awareness and ability to get adapt to different cultures. It seems that cultural intelligence has nothing to do with economics, but it is also important to everyone. As the process of globalising going on, we have many more chances to meet people from different cultures and we may have to work with them closely in business. We need the cultural intelligence in order to deal with the relationship properly. There are cases that businessmen insult their clients and lose deals because they do not care about the difference between cultures.

As a PRC scholar, maybe I am concerned more about my hometown. It is true that the economics of China are developing rapidly. However, problems also exist. Besides things such as environmental pollution, many social problems are emerging. The first thing came into my mind is that the foreign culture which enters China after 1978 is affecting the young generations. Will Chinese lose our own culture gradually because of this? What should we do?

So that is why we have to learn SES: to understand the society, economics and the world better. When we go to work, we will face the problems of the world instead of problems on the exam papers. SES opens a window for us that we can be exposed to the outside. Some sceneries are beautiful, while others are not. The unknown is waiting for our exploration. Our school's mission is to nurture excellent leaders of Singapore and the world, for whom it is essential to look out to the world and care about the current affairs. Many challenges are ahead on the road of humans’ development and progress, which will certainly involve economics and the society. The solutions can only be carried out when leaders of different parts of the world come and work together.

We are told that the lesson will mainly be in the form of discussion. I think it is a good way of study this subject. Society and economics are aspects where nothing is absolutely right or wrong. The only benchmark is whether it will produce a good result or not. Therefore, there may be many ways to achieve a same goal. We can share everyone’s ideas with each other and this can be much fun, because there may be sparks when minds meet each other. Discussion can also nurture my ability of expressing myself and responding to others, especially in a short time of preparation.

In the end, I want to say that I am looking forward to this lesson. Not only because I am interested in the topic, but also because the things we are going to learn will be of great value to us in the future. Just like what Miss Yeo said, work hard and play hard.