Bill Gates - the greatest entrepreneur

Bill Gates is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. He is co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation - the world’s leading provider of software for personal computer, co-founder of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest charity in the world

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Monday, April 16, 2012

Culture



Definition of Culture

The word “Culture” has many different definitions. For some, it is refers to literature, music, art and food. For other, it is the full range of learning human behavior patterns. For me, the definition I like the most is belonging to Hofstede (1980) “Culture is the collective programming of the mind with distinguishes the members of one human group from another”. Culture determines the way we see ourselves and the world around. Culture is inheritable and not constant. It can be change due to time or the changing of surrounding environment. There is no right or wrong in culture.

3 layers of Culture


Each culture has three layers. First, the outer layer is the behavioral or explicit level. It is what you notice immediately when you go abroad for the first time such as language, food, architecture, houses, building and so on. In addition, it is also the communication style. For examples, in Latin culture, people prefer touching each other when talking, while in Finland, people always keep a private space around, and they don’t like someone touch them.
The second layer is the norms and values. Norms are the rules of a society, determining what is good or bad with people of that culture. It can be written or not. Values are things that are considered important or unimportant, beautiful or not beautiful, right or wrong. A value is something experienced inwardly and which is not up for discussion. For examples, in Japan, the norm is younger people always have to bow lower than older ones when greeting to show the value of respecting the older.
The third layer is the most inner which lies at the core of “culture” and contains its assumptions and beliefs. This layer is hard to describe or explain. For example, why people in some countries eat with fork and knife while in other countries people eat with chopsticks?

Values of societies

Due to Ruano (2002), there are 4 categories of society
1. Traditional society, in which religion plays an important role, large families are encouraged, conformity is rewarded and individualism rejected. For examples: Arab countries.
2. Rational society, in which interests of individual come first, birth control is encouraged and  the authority of the state is recognized. For examples: Germany
3. Society in which survival is the primary concern, people are unhappy and intolerant, materialism is predominant. For examples: ex-communist countries.
4. Post-modern society: tolerant and democratic, Scandinavia countries.

Level of culture in business context

According to Schein (1999), a culture starts developing in a context where a group of people have a shared experience.  In business context, culture can develop at different levels, within a department or at the various ranks of a hierarchy. There are 6 levels

Culture and nation

For examples, the Celtic culture includes different countries and part of countries. This culture distinction can have a bearing on the way organization operate. It influenced organization in both macro and micro level.
At macro level, it has influence in law and economic situation. The nation must be considered by organizations going about their business.
At micro level, organization is influenced by cultural elements relating to employer-employee relationships and to behavior among employees.

National culture

In national culture, the elements that contribute to the creation of culture are physical environment and history of nation
Due to Tayeb (2003) the institutions that contribute to the establishment of a national culture are
-          Family/Religion/Education
-          Mass communication media
-          The multinational company

Organizational culture

In organization, culture affects the way strategy is determined, goals are established and how the organization operates. Furthermore, the key personnel involved are influenced by their own cultural backgrounds and shared experience since these have helped shape their own values and perceptions.

Corporate culture

Corporate culture is a combination of organizational culture and national/region culture. The extent of the influence of corporate culture is disputed among experts in the field. To be succeed, it is necessary to clearly defined corporate culture and to be flexible culture.

Professional culture

There are three professional cultures in management. They are operators (involve in production), engineers (design and monitor the technology) and executives (senior managers). The questions for professional culture is how they are co-exists. How they connect to each other to work effectively.

Culture and management

Cross-culture management explains the behavior of people in organizations around the world and shows people how to work in organizations with employees and client populations from many different cultures. Cross-cultural management describes organizational behavior within countries and cultures; compares organizational behavior across countries and cultures; and perhaps most important, seeks to understand and improve the interaction of co-workers, managers, clients, suppliers, etc… from countries and culture around the world.
Understanding cross culture management - Browaeys and Price

The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes

plane cockpit
The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes
Inspired by The Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell






I’ve heard, that most airplane accidents take place during takeoff and landing. I’ve also heard that accidents occur more often because of pilot errors and less so because of mechanical problems. 
But why? Why do pilots make errors? What kind of errors do they make? 
According to Malcolm Gladwell’s book, The Outliers, a large number of plane crashes happen because of miscommunication and language issues. 
There are two places where miscommunication occurs: among pilots in the cockpit and between air traffic controllers and pilots. And, there are two major reasons for miscommunication. The first one is cultural and is measured by a power distance index, driven by respect to authority and attitude toward hierarchy. The second one is driven by ranking and subordination on the job. It causes co-pilots to use highly mitigated speech and to avoid confronting the main pilot when necessary.
Here are 3 examples:

Example #1 (during landing):
A Korean Air plane flying from Korea to Guam was going through bad weather and stormy clouds. The captain had committed the plane to visual landing, which meant that he had to be able to see the airport runway. Here is some of the conversation among the pilots. Pay close attention to a couple of comments from the supporting crew to the captain and to how the captain responds to them, or doesn’t: 

First officer: Do you think it rains more in this area?
Captain: (silence)
Flight engineer: Captain, the weather radar has helped us a lot.
Captain: Yes. They are very useful.
What the first officer is trying to do is warn the pilot that it may not be safe to do a visual approach without a backup plan for landing, in case the runway is not visible. Such communication of hinting from first officer to pilot is not uncommon in Korean culture. However, driven by respect to authority and fear of upsetting their superior, the co-pilots ultimately contributed to the plane crash as they allowed the pilot to start a visual landing without an alternative.
Example #2
The 2nd example of inadequate communication between the first officer and the pilot is illustrated by the two pilots of an Air Florida plane in 1982. Here is some of the chat in the cockpit prior to takeoff:
First officer: See all those icicles on the back there and everything?
First officer: Boy, this is a losing battle here on trying to de-ice those things, it gives you a false feeling of security, that’s all it does
First officer: Let’s check those wing tops again, since we’ve been sitting here a while?
Captain: I think we get to go here in a minute. 
Later that plane crashed because of problems caused by ice on the wings. If the co-pilot had more strongly advocated his opinion and forced the pilot to de-ice the wings before takeoff, that incident would have been avoided. Although the co-pilot had hinted 3 times at the possible dangers of not de-icing the wings, the pilot ignored his comments as trivial and unimportant.
Example #3
The 3rd story is from a crash of an Avianca flight coming from Columbia to JFK. A backed up airport and miscommunication between the co-pilot and Air Traffic controllers caused the plane to run out of fuel while circling over New York waiting for landing clearance. Here is some of the exchange that took place between the pilots and the ATC:
Captain: Advise ATC we don’t have fuel.
First officer: Climb and maintain 3 thousand and, ah, we’re running out of fuel sir.
Air Traffic Control: I’m gonna bring you about fifteen miles northeast and then turn you back onto the approach. Is that OK with you and your fuel?
First officer: I guess so. Thank you very much.
Five minutes later the plane crashed because of fuel exhaustion. Later, the JFK air traffic controller testified that he took the co-pilot’s words about “running out of fuel” as a passing comment, instead of emergency signal.
Controllers hear such “running out of fuel” remarks all the time. In fact, it is absolutely normal for planes to be running low on fuel prior to landing. They are supposed to be lighter and not carry much fuel when they land.
The co-pilot had mentioned they  were running out of fuel towards the end of the sentence, without saying the magic word “emergency”. The investigation concluded that the co-pilot’s cultural heritage of Columbia, which is a high power distance culture, was the main reason to feel intimidated by the dominant and snappy attitude of the JFK controller, and not communicate clearly the urgency of that alarming situation.
So what can they do? How can pilots improve communication and eliminate language problems causing fatal plane crashes? Airlines have started to combat mitigated speech. They make co-pilots address superiors by first name, teach them to be more assertive and get more comfortable with pushing back. In turn, main pilots try to be less dominant and operate as organizers, negotiators and facilitators, rather than as commanders, thus making it easier for first officers to speak up in order to correct any mistakes caused by the main pilot.
Public Speaking Toolkit

Friday, April 13, 2012

Bill Gates - the greatest entrepreneur


Bill Gates

Bill Gates is one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the world. He is co-founder, chairman and chief executive officer of Microsoft Corporation - the world’s leading provider of software for personal computer, co-founder of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the biggest charity in the world. He is the world’s third richest person since 2008 (Forbes, 2012) and one of the 100 most influential people in the world (Time Magazine). Bill Gates is the living statue for not only entrepreneur but also everybody in all over the world.
William Henry (Bill) Gates III was born on October 28, 1955 in a family having rich business, political and community service background. Since he was a child, he has showed his interest in computer system and software. In 1974, he attended Harvard University but left there after one year to focus on his interest, computer. With Paul Allen, he formed Microsoft - the leading company in IT and successfully drove Microsoft till 2008.  Then he almost left all the work in Microsoft to focus on his charity, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that he formed in 2000 with his wife.
To be a successful entrepreneur, Bill has some special characteristics. Firstly, he has a very broad vision. Since the first day he found out about his future work with computer, Bill has dreamed about “having a personal computer in every desk and Microsoft software for each and every computer”. He built his Empire around this vision and still continues working on it. Secondly, Bill is a person with high passionate. To follow his interest in computer and software, he dared to drop out of studying in Harvard University, a famous university that every single student would have wanted to be part of. His passion is one of the reasons to make him the richest man of the world. Bill is an intelligence person. It helped him to attain top position in the profession he chooses. Furthermore, he is also very intelligence to choose the way and chance to be successes. He knows how to borrow the idea, or even workforce from competitors to perfect his product. The symbolized evidences are MS-DOS and Windows.  Bill Gates is not only intelligence but also a hard working man. In his college days, he used to work all night long on his computer. When Microsoft was started, Bill used to sleep only 6 hours per day without skipping a single day of office. Hard working is one of the major keys for his success.  Gates is known as a IT architecture, however, his communication skill is also a key to success. He take an important role as a sale man for MS-DOS, and also through communication, he convinced many talents to work for him hardly and faithfully.
Bill Gates is an icon of the entrepreneur with his characteristics. However, thing that makes me admire him the most is his philanthropy. Bill and his wife gave over 28 billion USD to charity.  They also plan to eventually give 95% of their wealthy to charity. Thanks to them, the war against poverty and disease has gone to the new level.
Through his success, his characteristics and his generosity, Bill Gates is the greatest entrepreneur, in my opinion.


Minh Nguyen

Bibliography

Bellis, M., 2012. Bill Gates - Biography and History. [Online] Available at: http://inventors.about.com/od/gstartinventors/a/Bill_Gates.htm [Accessed 2012].
Forbes, 2012. Bill Gates. [Online] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/profile/bill-gates/ [Accessed 2012].
Miller, C., 2008. The secret of Bill Gates' success. [Online] Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7464074.stm [Accessed 2012].
Paluri, R.K., 2011. Bill Gates - A story of Success. [Online] Available at: http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/7-19-2004-56835.asp [Accessed 2012].

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Advantage and disadvantage of Da Nang tourism






Da Nang

Introduction

Da Nang is the centre of economic, political and culture of the Middle of Vietnam. Being known as the gateway to the “World Heritage Road” in Central Vietnam, Da Nang is located near four UNESCO World Heritages. They are Hoi An Ancient Town, My Son Holy Land, Hue Imperial City, and Phong Nha – Ke Bang National Park. (DaNang, 2011) Da Nang has many beautiful attractive places such as : Da Nang beach - one of the most beautiful and luxurious beaches in the world (Forbes, n.d.), Marble Mountains –wonderful mountain with a lot of caves used as Buddhist sanctuaries, Ba Na Mountain - located in northwest of Da Nang city, known by their eco-tourism villages with four seasons in one day, Son Tra Peninsula - a “Monkey mountain” with a fantastic view to city and Hai Van Pass - the most imposing landscape, located at the natural border between Hue and Da Nang. (DaNang, 2011). The city’s total area is 1256 km2 and the population is 800000 people. (Hung, 2009)

Advantages of Da Nang’s tourism

The tropical weather conditions (25 C, 300 days sunshine, 80% humidity) are the first advantage of Da Nang tourism. The perfect weather for tourism which stays for almost the whole year helps Da Nang to have an unbroken and stable amount of visitors. It means in Da Nang, there is no special tourist season because it is the whole year. Furthermore, the promising location nears four over five world heritage in Vietnam is also a gratification of Mother Nature to Da Nang tourism. Staying in the middle, Da Nang likes the bridge to connect differently famous heritages that have been known all over the world. Therefore, the potential tourists for are not only the directly visitors, but also the indirectly people that come from the famous places near Da Nang. The multiform of also helps Da Nang to attract various type of tourists such as beach tourism, forest tourism, mountain tourism, etc… When coming there, one of the things that foreign tourists like the most in here is the inexpensive living cost. Due to the data of Numbeo.com, one meal in inexpensive restaurant is only 1.26 euro, combo meal in McDonalds is only about 2.49 euro, one pack of cigarette - brand Marlboro – is 0.57 euro, which is 2 to 10 times cheaper compare to Ireland and other Western countries. Consequently Da Nang is an ideal place for cheap tourist.

In addition, culture is a vital part that can’t be missed when searching about Da Nang’s tourism. Bearing the strong stamp of central region’s culture, Da Nang has various cultures such as Viet-Cham culture, sea region culture, etc… Therefore, culture festivals, relics, cuisine in Da Nang are the resources to attract billions of visitors every year. (IPCDaNang, 2012). Moreover, As the fourth largest city of the country, Da Nang is well planned, well proper governed and it has been considered as the most important city in the central coastal region as a region economic hub. (Dang, 2011). Thus, the support of government for the development of Da Nang’s tourism is one of the conditions for the rapid development. The investment for real estate projects so far lured over 2 billion USD (Agency, 2009). The affluent finance gives Da Nang a competitive edge to improve infrastructure, service, and other things for tourism.

Disadvantages of Da Nang’s tourism

However, there are a lot of difficulties for the growth of Da Nang’s tourism. The weather is great for visitors thanks to the sea-bank position. On the other hand, this location is also a weakness of Da Nang, especially in the rainy season. The typhoon, cyclone and hurricane come from the sea are dangers for citizens and visitors. For examples, typhoon Ketsana in 2009 damaged nearly 170 000 houses as well as crops and irrigation system (MYDANS, 2009). Next the topsy-turvy development of Da Nang is also a problem for tourist development. Plenty of shopping center, hotel, hostel, and guesthouse have been built uncontrollably and lack of scheme (Mitchell & Phuc, 2007). Furthermore, the infrastructure has not developed adequately to meet the demand of fast developing economy. In general, the rank of Vietnam’s infrastructure in general is 95 out of 124 countries. (Mitchell & Phuc, 2007, p.9) Therefore, public transport service is poor; traffic situation gets worse; traffic congestion during rush hour period increases rapidly since 2010. Then ưastewater service is not met the requirement of international standard (Dang, 2011, p.3). They are the barriers for tourists, especially people from Western countries such as USA, UK and European countries.

Moreover, the weak and inexperienced management of local Government is also the obstruction of tourist development. According to this , hotels and tourist services have been opened without scheme. Coming together with the inadequate development of city is social evils such as drug, prostitution and robbery that can destroy the image of city in the eyes of visitors. Last but not least, the complicatedly and slowly working procedure makes a lot of difficulties for investors to invest in Da Nang tourism. For example, it takes 6 months for hotels to get their classification approved. (Mitchell & Phuc, 2007, p.39)