This is the page for: Business Across Cultures

(Course-related content will appear here in reverse chronological order: the newest things at the top of the page, and older posts toward the bottom.)

Stuck in an Elevator

Here’s the Youtube video I mentioned about the guy stuck in an elevator:

… and here is the great article on elevators. Short, wonderfully written, worth reading!

More on Yehyun’s Proposal Topic

I’m pretty sure I promised two links for you in relation to Yehyun’s discussion. One of them was on how Korea ended up dependent on ActiveX controls for its online commerce. That story is very clearly explained — and accurate, as far as I’ve discovered –  on this page.

Here’s more information (from about a year ago) on attempts to make ActiveX work in Google’s new(ish) browser, Chrome… specifically so Koreans can use it. There’s also information on a Professor named Kichang Kim who’s trying to force the Korean government to catch up with the standards and protocols of the rest of the planet’s internet. And here’s an entry about Korea’s continuing dependency on IE6, on a blog all about IT and the web in Korea — and its relationship with the rest of the internet.

On a  tangent, but it’s an interesting one, Brian Deutsch blogged here about what happened when the Korean government  created a website “for foreigners” but followed the very limited and behind-the-times web standards (IE6, Windows only, etc.) common to Korea. And here’s an interesting report about how the Internet developed in Korea in the first place!

I can’t recall what the other topic I promised to give you links about was, but I’ll offer this one to you: Manybooks.net is a website where, at the present moment, over 27,000 ebooks can be gotten for free — legally, because they have been released under a Creative Commons License, or are in the Public Domain.

By the way, Manybooks.net is far from the only site like this. Project Gutenbeg probably started the whole trend — digitizing books in the Public Domain — and now there are many similar sites offering eBooks in many formats for free.

For example, a book by another Gordon Sellar is available on Manybooks.net. It’s from the 1800s and, no, I don’t think he and I are related (though you never know).  In any case, the book is available in a wide variety of standardized formats — 20 of them, if you include a few specific version of PDF. This website gives these books away. If this is possible, I’m sure Korean eBook publishing needn’t require the development of a whole new eBook format. At most, it might take some modification of an existing format to display Korean text properly.

Manybooks and and other sources of free reading material are likely to be important to the development of the eBook hardware business, just as Napster and other file-sharing services that facilitated illegal MP3 downloading were important for the development of the MP3 player business.

So… perhaps what Koreans need to do to get an eBook business started is to start a few websites where free eBooks (in the public domain) are encoded and offered in standardized formats… and make those formats so popular that, finally, eBook hardware makers will have to simply include those formats among the ones readable by their hardware?

If they don’t, then alternative software will be developed and made cheaply or freely available in the iTunes App Store, allowing people to skip buying the Korean eBook reader hardware and opt for something a little more open-standards based.

In other words, by stalling, Korean book companies may well be damaging or even destroying their chances of developing a dedicated eBook hardware market… and even destroying the chances of a legal eBook trade in Korea for the foreseeable future!

See below for the revised course schedule, which I just posted earlier today! (Including the film we’ll be discussing in class on Tuesday!)

Schedule Update:

Hi folks. To be very, very clear, here’s our schedule for the next two weeks:

Tuesday, June 1 (morning): Class discussion of The Boiler Room and the current American financial crisis.

Preparation:

Tuesday, 1 June (7-9pm, IH 340): Make-up class: Hanmoi and Min Kyo will present their midterm papers.

Preparation:

Thursday, 3 June: Mijung will present her midterm paper to the class.

Preparation:

Tuesday, 8 June: Hyelim will present her paper in the first hour; we will begin our wrap-up discussion in the second hour.

Hyelim’s Presentation Preparation:

Download her essay from our Google Docs folder and read it over.

Wrap-up Discussion Preparation:

Thursday 10 June: Final Class

The Next Few Weeks

Folks:Time is getting tight this semester! I will have no choice but to cut something from our schedule, but I’m still trying to decide what.In any case, we’ll need to have a make-up class once this semester; it will take about 3 hours. We can try choose a date next time we’re all together.For next week’s class on 27 May, we will see Yehyun’s presentation.I think we’ll probably move Hanmoi’s and Minkyo’s presentations to the make-up class day, so we can have one more panel discussion. That means we’ll have two more Tuesday classes. For one, we’ll discuss a film — I’m still trying to select  one — and for the other, we’ll have a wrap-up discussion, with a short reading assigned.Your final essays are due on the last class, which is our meeting on the morning of Thursday, 10 June.

Chinua Achebe on “Heart of Darkness”

By the way — I was meaning to give this to you last time we talked about it, but here’s a link to what Chinua Achebe, a major Nigerian author, had to say about racism in the novel “Heart of Darkness.” It’s very interesting and very pertinent, and I wonder what you think of it. (Some similar thoughts occurred to me on reading it for our discussion, and I am happy to say some of what you said in class reflected similar thinking…)

Business Across Cultures

Hi folks.So, a few things.Today (April 27th) I’m not at school: I’ve lost my voice. However, I’m hoping to be back for our next class, and here’s what you’ll need to do before then.

  1. Upload your Heart of Darkness-related questions and thoughts to the appropriate folder (you should have gotten an email from Google Docs. If not, try signing into Google Docs using your email address (the one you gave me in class or normally use), and see if you can find the folder for our class.
  2. Upload a copy of your midterm essay to the appropriate folder. You will each be doing a presentation on your midterm essay data and interpretations on a Thursday between now and the end of semester. The presentations will begin on May 6th and continue to the end of semester. The link to an online sign-up sheet was emailed to you. I’m trusting that you won’t delete each others’ names, since anyway if you do I will find out and change back what you changed — whatever changes you make are tracked on the document. By the way, everyone will be responsible for reading your paper before your presentation, and preparing some questions. I expect 20-30 minutes of presentation, followed by discussion for the remainder of the class. Don’t stress out about preparing a perfect powerpoint — if you want to use one, I don’t mind, but the point is not to show off your powerpoint skills, and your time is better spent thinking about how (and preparing) to really to communicate your questions, thesis, research, and conclusions to the other students and to start an interesting discussion. Presenters and listeners alike should come to class prepared to participate in a discussion, which means both presenters and listeners alike should do a little more preparatory research, have some questions and ideas prepared for discussion, and so on. Disagreement is not only acceptable, it’s encouraged: we should all be able to defend our ideas from criticism, as well as to learn from criticism when it is valid.
  3. Review your thoughts on Heart of Darkness.  If I remember right, I said that we would continue that discussion, looking at your questions a little more closely. We can do that for Thursday, and follow it up with something a little lighter next week. (And then followed by more readings and discussions for the rest of semester.)
  4. Begin thinking about your final paper (essay) for this class. You will be required to write one more essay, and it should be different from the midterm essay, though it can be in a related subject. One thing I ask is that you branch out in your approach: if your midterm paper was from a literary perspective, then take an historical perspective; if you talked about real-life business, maybe discuss business as depicted in entertainment media (for example, in the film Thank You For Smoking). All I’m saying is — come at the field of Business Across Cultures from a different approach — literary, historical, political, economic, cultural, cinematic, or whatever.

If everything works out as planned, I will have some reading material copied for you and give it you on Thursday, and it will be required reading for our class meeting for 2 weeks from now. See you soon!

Another Comparison of Avatar and the Situation in Orissa

I thought this might interest you guys!

I also hope you’re ready to discuss Conrad’s Heart of Darkness! And I’m looking forward to seeing your report on the ecological footprint of one product you own, and your 500 word proposal on how to get people to “care” about some of the issues we’ve been discussing (like, say, the environment).

For the Coming Week

On Tuesday, we will be discussing the first hour of The Corporation, and, if there is time, watching the second hour.

Normally, I expect that you will be writing Discussion Preparation Papers for each discussion we will have. As usual, you will also write a Response Paper following the discussion, staple the two papers together, and submit them as one document the class following our discussion.

For The Corporation, however, this would normally result in 3 discussion and response papers, which is too much. Instead, I want you to write Preparations for each discussion as we go along, bringing them to class to help you with the discussion. After each discussion, you will write up your response to the discussion. The full set of preparations and responses will be due the class after our final discussion of The Corporation. When that will happen will depend on how fruitful our discussions are, and how quickly we move through the film.

By the way, for those who wish to use the free, legal Bittorrent release of the film to preview or review at home, the link is available at the PirateBay torrent website. However, be careful to click the correct link: the big green download link is an advertisement, but the “Download This Torrent”  link beneath it is the link you want. (In case you have any problems, this is a copy of the correct link.) If you have never used Bittorrent before, you need a problem like μtorrent to download the file.

Some Texts to Check Out

Here are the texts I mentioned in class today. I recommend you get onto them as soon as possible, and remember: feel free to read a Korean-language translation of either or both, as long as you also read the English-language original. The originals are both public-domain and freely available online. (They’re probably also in the library if you want to look for them there.)

We will be discussing Heart of Darkness in a few weeks, and “Bartleby, The Scrivener” after midterms. Get onto those texts now, because I will also be giving you a few critical essays on them for preparation the week we’ll be discussing them. (You’ll want to finish the texts a week before we discuss them, in other words!)

Also, remember: your Preparation and Response Papers for the discussion of Posco in Orissa & Avatar are due this Thursday, March 18th. See you then!

Stuff for Next Week

Folks,

For next Tuesday, we’ll be concluding the discussion  of the situation involving Posco and the Orissan government in the state of Orissa, and its comparison with the film Avatar. This discussion will mostly be you, with me providing support and questions, so be ready to talk with others for about an hour. Have some questions, facts, and ideas to share.

For the second hour of class, I’ve decided we’ll be looking at the first hour of the documentary The Corporation. Since it sometimes takes a couple of viewings before a documentary in a foreign language makes sense, feel free to pre-watch the first hour or so online. The first hour of the documentary is online here. If you like, the script for the documentary is available online, too. Look for “Complete Film Transcript” on this page.

Remember that your discussion preparation and discussion feedback paper for the topic of Posco/Orissa/Avatar will be due on Thursday, March 18th.

For The Corporation, you should prepare a discussion preparation paper for part 1 (the first hour) for the discussion we will hold on March 18th; it will be due on March 23rd, along with the discussion response paper you will write after Thursday’s class.

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