Journal 5 –Ethical Principles in Business

When in face of a decision, what would you choose? The one that would benefit many, the one that would respect the rights of an individual or would you rather base your decision according to culture or religion? This was what was discussed during our fourth session. It was really interesting as there’s really no right or wrong answer especially when you look at different points of views.

During this session, we discussed the Five Ethical Frameworks. They are Utilitarianism, Rights and Duties, Justice and Fairness, The Ethics of Care and Virtue Ethics. Without delving into the specifics imagine a doctor making a life and death decision. Currently, his got a patient who was just into a vehicular accident and has a very slim chance of survival whilst on the other hand his got other patients waiting for immediate organ donors. Should the doctor try to save that patient and risk saving no one in the end? Or should the doctor play safe and harvest his organs to save more people as his got only a slim chance of survival? It’s a bit tricky choosing to save an individual versus choosing to save more people at the expense of one. In this instance, it’s helpful to evaluate the choices according to the Five Ethical Frameworks as “no single framework is perfect.”

I also asked our professor during this session a conversation I had with my colleague from Australia. She shared to me that before they had a female colleague who was a Muslim. Her argument was its unfair that they have the same salary while she works more hours than her as the Muslim was given by the company her 3 prayer breaks (aside from the coffee breaks and lunch break) and a prayer room. She further argues that with the rise in cost of office space, the company was incurring more expenditure keeping the Muslim than her and their other non-Muslim colleagues altogether due to the cost of the prayer room. Our professor responded by telling it’s the same as companies providing a breast feeding room for female employees. It took me a while to process this and honestly I was not satisfied with the answer as a breastfeeding room will benefit all females regardless of religion unlike the prayer room which will only benefit only one or a only a few.  However, after thinking about it all night I finally seem to realize that it’s the same. Imagine if the Muslim was doing her prayers in the production room, in her cubicle, near everyone. It would probably distract or even annoy the other employees. On the other hand, if the company fires the Muslim it would be unethical as they will not be respecting her right to practice her own religion. This may in turn lead to reputational risk for the company that may have financial loss attached to it in the future. Thus, it really pays to consider other point of views, the Five Ethical Frameworks, and find a middle ground or compromise. Initially it’s hard especially our normal tendency is to look at our interest before others. However, with a little bit of effort in understanding the other side, we may be able to make the best ethical decision and make the pressure of making that decision more easier knowing the fact that we had considered all stakeholder’s interest.      

Journal 4 – Life Plan

Formulating a “Life Plan” is a tricky one. Initially, I thought it’s going to be easy as I have already my short-term to medium-term goals already set in my mind and it is already in action (I’m already starting my mba studies). However, when I wrote it down and break it down to different priorities it suddenly became a little bit tricky and difficult.

I googled it up just to find something that can perhaps help me in creating my own “Life Plan.” Walla, a dozen results came up with different “funeral plans.” Good thing, out of the dozen, one came up from www.forbes.com.  It did not only provide a guide on how to write one, however, it also tells what the purpose of having one in place is. According to the site, “when we we’re growing up, we were taught that life can be predictable.” When you study hard, you will have your dream job, be happy, and become successful. However, this is not entirely true even for those who are already happy and in their dream job. Truthfully speaking, I completely agree with this as in real life there are always unpredictable things that happen. Furthermore, I believe our lives are not drawn on a straight line; every now and then, we make turns we did not want to make and sometimes even a u-turn. When this happens, rather than picturing our goals in our head, it is more ideal to have a written plan, a “Life Plan,” in order for us to remain focused and be clear sighted towards achieving our goals. 

Journal 3 – Life as a Juggler – My take on How to balance Faith, Family, and Work according to Pat Gelsinger.

Who’s Pat Gelsinger?

According to www.businessinsider.com, he’s the 15th most powerful person in enterprise tech last 2014. With an industry that’s about a $4 trillion, this no ordinary feat. He’s up there with Bill Gate’s and Larry Ellison to name a few.

With just watching the video and without googling him for more information about him, aside from those mentioned in the video, I was already at awe on how was he able to be so successful in his career while keeping a balance between his studies, work, family, and faith. I have heard and read about other influential persons before but never did I expect to hear from a Westerner giving great importance to faith. Not to be discriminate, but, I have only heard from American business leaders how they are ethical and respects human rights. However, hearing from them about faith and God – I really can’t remember any.     

Personally, I can relate to some of his struggles as we both came from a farming back ground and had our primary and secondary education from the country side. Coming to Manila for college, I was really scared and excited at the same time. I still can remember that my mom was somehow not keen on me moving out as we were never really been apart before. This was also like Pat’s case, however, aside from the city lights, we both know this is the right thing for us to do. He had also the insecurities that I had before with the city kids that are educated from better schools. Though he worked part-time for his studies while my education was entirely funded by my parents, we both proved that even though we’re from the province, with hard work, dedication and prayer we can prove that we can be at the same level as the city kids if not better.

What I really admire about him especially after reading also the 2 chapters of his book is he was really able to have it all. Today, we often hear that if you’re unlucky with your career, you will be lucky with your love-life or vice versa but very rarely be both. Personally, I really think he is lucky! I’m saying this because when he explained to his then girlfriend and now wife of so many years, Linda, why he’s only able to spend Friday nights and Sunday church with her only while other couples are seeing 4-5 times a week or more, she accepted. Having been in a couple of relationships already and being in the same situation, it was really hard to be in their situation. This is because I understand the fact that relationships are built, but in their case if they are not seeing each other as much as possible then, how will they build their relationship? Without being cheesy or bias, I think this is where Christ came in. God must have rewarded for living a Christian Life, with wisdom to understand each other’s situation and good health as Pat was working long hours in the office while studying at the same time and  as result not having much sleep or rest.

In his book, he describes life as balancing act, to which we are currently balancing 3 tennis balls at the same time. This represents career, family, and God. As time passes by and as our situation changes these balls changes to other heavier and bigger balls like softball and football, that makes it harder for us to balance our lives. There are many schools of thoughts on how to have a balanced life. Fortunately, I am in graduate school and I learned from Pat and this class that there’s really no such thing as “work life balance.” Instead, there’s only “living an integrated life.” That’s being the same person 7x a week wherever you are, whoever you are with. Regardless, if you are in work, school, or in another country which has a different culture. In his case, he has sights on his goals and has a plan, however, when unexpected things happened like when the doctor advised Linda that because of her health she has to have a child immediately, otherwise she might be able to do so. He carefully thought the situation over and married Linda the following summer. This is despite the fact that he barely has enough time already as he is studying and working at the same time. Personally speaking, experiencing having to work at the same time earn a graduate degree is difficult. It’s really hard to squeeze some time for friends and family. But looking back at Pat’s experience, it’s really possible as he was able to have a family, graduate with honours, and be promoted every year in his work.             

Journal 2 – Values… Values… What are they?

According to the American Heritage Dictionary, values are the basic notion of what is right or wrong and are fairly stable over time. Also it is a principle, standard, quality, considered to be desirable.

This marks my 2^nd blog for our graduate school requirement under Business Ethics. I must say that writing (blogging) is not my forte as compared to verbal communication in which I have various professional trainings and seminars before. Over the weekend, I just realized that this is the reason why I enrolled in graduate studies. It’s difficult but it is a necessary thing to breakout from the norm to enhance and develop skills which I am weak or I do not currently possess.

In our last class, our professor discussed “Values” and had us do a group exercise with regards to Rokeach Value Survey (RVS). This is for us to know what our values are and where are we similar and different from the rest in our group and in the class. Just to give a little background as to what the RVS is, according to Wikipedia it is a classification system of values developed by social psychologist Milton Rokeach. It has two sets of values called terminal values and instrumental values. Each is composed of 18 individual value items.

Terminal values are the goals that we work towards and view as most desirable. These values are desirable states of existence. They are the goals that we would like to achieve during our lifetime. Shown below is the list of 18 terminal values developed by Rokeach.

Terminal Values

A comfortable life (a Prosperous life)	Inner harmony (freedom from inner conflict)
An exciting life (a stimulating active life)	Mature love (sexual and spiritual intimacy)
A sense of accomplishment (lasting contribution)	National security (protection from attack)
A world at peace (free of war and conflict)	Pleasure (an enjoyable, leisurely life)
A world of beauty (beauty of nature and the arts)	Salvation (saved, eternal life)
Equality (brotherhood and equality opportunity for all)	Self-respect (self-esteem)
Family security (taking care of love ones)	Social recognition (respect and admiration)
Freedom (independence, free of choice)	True friendship (close companionship)
Happiness (contendness)	Wisdom (a mature understanding life)

Instrumental values are the preferred methods of behaviour. These values are not an end goal, but rather provide the means by which an end goal is accomplished. Character traits and personal characteristics, such as being imaginative and independent, make up most of the instrumental values. Shown below is the list of 18 instrumental values developed by Rokeach.

Instrumental values

Ambitious (hardworking, aspiring)	Imaginative (daring and creative)
Broad-minded (open-minded)	Independent (self-reliant, self-sufficient)
Capable (competent, effective)	Intellectual (intelligent, reflective)
Cheerful (light-hearted, joyful)	Logical (consistent, rational)
Clean (neat, tidy)	Loving (affectionate, tender)
Courageous (standing up for your beliefs)	Obedient (dutiful, respectful)
Forgiving (willing to pardon others)	Polite (courteous, well-mannered)
Helpful (working for the welfare of others)	Responsible (dependable, reliable)
Honest (sincere, truthful)	Self-controlled (restrained, self-disciplined)

Our task is to arrange the 18 values in each set according to our preference. It is really surprising that for terminal values we rank “a comfortable life” and “Family security” as the highest. During the discussion, we came to realize the reason that we do so is because it is a common Filipino/Asian trait to be concerned for the family’s well-being. Also, since we are mostly with the same age bracket and amount of working experience, we are all the same on striving to have a comfortable life in the future.

On the other hand, for instrumental values, we all rank being “ambitious” as our number one. This is because we could have spent the time being in this class on other things like having leisurely time with our family and friends, however, we chose to put in the effort and sacrifice to attain a graduate degree which we can use to leverage ourselves from the competition.

The most surprising realization for me in this activity is that among the three of us, both of us who are the firstborn in the family did not rank salvation in our top five. This is in spite of us being educated from Christian institutions throughout our primary to tertiary education. In this regard, I came to really understand that our values are not only affected by our culture, religion, race but also our personal life experiences. Should I have done this survey before when my father was still alive, I would have ranked “salvation” as my top most, however, since I am so focused on looking out for my mother and four siblings I did not really noticed that “salvation” is in the list not until I have already chosen nine other values.   

Understanding further the result of the survey, I found out that I am ambitious to have a prosperous life and to secure my family’s future. This made me realize that I have to give myself some slack and not to be too hard on myself. Most importantly, in pursuit of my goals and objectives, I needed to re-emphasize God in all things that I do. This is to have more meaning in my life as it may seem that even though I am Christian, lately I’ve been paying more emphasis to personal goals over spiritual goals.  

Journal number 1 – The first step… finally! Start of my graduate studies at last.

I am excited, blissful, and nervous all at the same time. Finally, after a couple of years, I am now finally starting my graduate studies.

I initially applied for a different program in 2012. However, things in my previous work did not work as I had planned that prevented me from starting my studies. I have done the entrance exam, enrollment, and even paid my reservation fee but things just did not work for me back then.

Looking back, I can say it’s a blessing. It may be a cliché but it really is! So many things happened in the past 3 years that my goals and objectives back then are significantly different from what they are now. Fast forward to 2015, I am now with a different company, 10 years more matured (even 3 years just passed :D) and after a lot of reflection and consultations with my peers, here I am, officially enrolled and starting my graduate studies.

Being a Lasallian Business Leader

I am starting this blog as a requirement for one of my subjects in my first term in my graduate studies – Business Ethic and Corporate Social Responsibility. If I’m not mistaken, this is the longest name for a subject in our curriculum and I wonder will this be just like NSTP but just on a different level?  

After our first meeting, I can say it is really is not! I’ve been a Research Analyst before for a multinational data provider company before and I have read most of the financial statements of all the publicly listed companies in the Nordic region especially Norway, Sweden, and Finland. These countries are considered to be at the top when considering corporate social responsibility in the world. I do not claim that I know everything but I can say that I know a bit. Then again, those countries are in Europe and their circumstances are different from what we have here in Asia and here in our own country - the Philippines. With their culture and environment entirely different from ours, I always wonder if we can also achieve the same results if we do the same here.

To give an example, I wonder before why does foreigners afford to be away so long from work about 3 weeks or more straight. Is that alright with their company? Are those paid leaves? Here in our country oftentimes it’s really hard just to be on one day sick leave even if you are really sick. After some time, I found out that their companies put importance on their employees’ well-being. They are encouraged to spend time with their family and their government assist and promotes this through legislation and various incentives. Very recently I had a conversation with a two of my friends; one is a senior account manager and the other a manager at a call center. We were talking about paid leaves and they were telling me that based on our “Labour Code” the law states that the minimum is five per year. I’ve been with prestigious multinational companies before and I enjoyed always having 30 days off (15VL and 15SL). Hearing this, I was really shocked and it made me feel ignorant. Fortunately, I am in this class and Ms. Pia told us that our “Labour Code” is really out-dated and not anymore applicable to our current time. This is not the first time I’ve heard of this but hearing it from graduate school and someone who really know what she is talking about really made an impact to me. My friends told me that if I got more than that I should be happy. I don’t think I can persuade them but at least I know what’s right, humane and ethical.    

Life of St. John Baptist de La Salle

Honestly, I enrolled in the graduate school without knowing anything about St. John Baptist de La Salle. I just know that acquiring and developing skills here will be ideal for me to achieve my medium to long-term goals.

After watching the movie, I came to know who St. John de La Salle is and the impact of what he has done before to our current generation. He’s from an affluent family in France and was a canon in the church but he gave them all up to revolutionize the educational system.  This is in spite objections from his family especially his sister and uncle and the troubles he had endured from other teachers and other church people that are jealous of him. 

He taught every child he can for free and he even trained the people who wants to become a teacher.  Most importantly, he pioneered the classroom setting that we still currently have today that is more cost-effective and convenient compared the one-on-one system before. He may not have earned money for himself but I realized that he is indeed a “Business Leader” even though he is a priest and he teaches for free. This is because the community around him profited by having education to escape poverty. In fact our generation still profits from his works today.

I also realized that he is a “Great innovator.” Even with pressures from top church official he still insisted that having non-priest from the LaSallian brothers, whom he founded, is alright. This is very much unheard off during that that time but being the great innovator that he is, he understands the risks at the same time he understands that there are people who are very talented in teaching but is not keen on being a priest.

We are living in the modern era but we can still relate our circumstances to St. John de LaSalle. In our country, many people are still in poverty and uneducated. We are like St. John, we are the ones that are educated so we must take the lead like he did and help the people around us come out of poverty.