Category Archives: Commerce

International Commerce

The golden rule across cultures – by Dr. Jessica Wildman

The globalization of organizations is an undeniably reality. Businesses and governments are working together to solve problems too big and too complex for any one country. Unfortunately, a quick glance through the recent news headlines points to a critical roadblock in the path to successful international collaboration: a severe lack of trust across organizational and national borders. Trust is one of the basic building blocks of successful collaboration.

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Social Media: Benefit or Blunder? – Lisa Silva Moore

The tips of our fingers and the swipes of our thumbs have the power to prompt a call to action or to cripple established marketing efforts. Social media is a juggernaut that includes networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram, Google+, LinkedIn, WordPress, and Reddit. In addition, new media types include feeds, blogs, vlogs and podcasts. The list grows and adapts to the global information-on-demand market. However, few global leaders think about the intersection of culture and social media in their attempts to convey their organization’s values and voice. Mismanagement of messages to global audiences can have substantial consequences, and these consequences are permanent.

Online actions made by global organizations exist in a living record that is continually updated to a worldwide online repository.
Nearly 30 years ago, the use of online media for corporate messaging began with assigning website domain names to organizations that many would recognize. Xerox, Hewlett-Packard (HP), International Business Machines (IBM), and Intel were among the first named. These early adopters set initial standards for corporate websites and later social media campaigns to deliberately communicate their organization’s values, mission, and goals.

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Embrace Diversity, Embrace the Future — by Altha Manning

When the issue of diversity is raised, most think of race and ethnicity.  Although these topics are very important, they are just the tip of the iceberg. The lens through which we see the world is significantly influenced by the whole of our life experiences. Factors such as socioeconomic status, gender, religion, occupation, language, where we live, cultural background and a host of other factors are all critical components of the concept of diversity.

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About God Bless America — by Terry Howard

This headline makes for eye-catching copy, does it not? Now, if I said that these are the actual words that accompany the email signature of a person in the U.S. who communicates, often globally, to members of his organization, would you believe me? Well, that’s the truth. I kid you not.

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Recruiting Goes Global — by Michelle Findlay

Many people consider me to be a lesser breed of people. That’s right I am one of them. A recruiter. It’s a dirty word. Along with estate agents and insurance brokers I fall into an ostracized category of people known as the dreaded “middle man”. Inherently, this means people do whatever they can to avoid paying me. People shrink back when I introduce myself. Some call us parasites. But the plain truth is, you all need us and if the law did not protect us, we would never get paid.

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Asian American Women Executives You Should Know — by Dr. Julia Wai-Yin So

To honor the success of Asian Americans in this country, I would like to highlight the professional lives of five prominent Asian female executives.  They have demonstrated a sense of pride in their own heritage and that this has not diminished their professional success in the western world.   They are among the most powerful women in the U.S.

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Chopsticks Made in the USA – Dr. Julia Wai-Yin So

To many of us, the idea of using two sticks with one hand to pick up a piece of chicken or vegetable from a plate or bowl and putting that same piece of chicken or vegetable into our mouth without dropping it is beyond one’s imagination. However, this is what one out of every five people in the world does at mealtime on a daily basis. These people with such dexterity with chopsticks live in what we call “chopsticks nations” such as China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam.

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