The major cultural challenges facing a global enterprise is understanding and adapting to local business customs and norms. In the Real World Case we saw how business in Africa tends to go on at a leisurely pace – a practice that undermines the principles of efficiency and expediency that multi-national enterprises thrive on. Understanding cultural…
Category: Economics
Book Review: Dust Bowl, USA: Depression America and the Ecological Imagination, 1929-1941 by Brad Lookingbill
During the 1930s, the American Midwest region witnessed one of its most acute agricultural droughts in the history of the nation. But this tragic event does not get as much attention as it deserves in history textbooks. The main reason for this is its coincidence with the Great Depression that precipitated in 1929 with the…
Against Marx and Engels’ criticism of private ownership
One of the cornerstones of Marxist economic theory is the abolition of private property and in its stead have common communal rights. This is a noble and idealistic idea but one suffering from lack of applicability. It has been proven true on many occasions that people are motivated to work hard when they are offered…
Defense Spending and the Military-Industrial Complex
Dwight Eisenhower’s warnings about the Military-Industrial Complex have proved prophetic in the years since. Addressing the nation on occasion of his tenure’s closure, he reminded Americans about the threat to democratic policy-making posed by this corrupt nexus. Levin-Waldman’s concept of the ‘iron triangle’ closely aligns with Eisenhower’s understanding. Indeed, the former President had to strike…
What is Social Capital?
The journal article by James Coleman titled Social Capital in the Creation of Human Capital talks in detail about the concept of Social Capital. The author identifies three predominant forms in which social capital manifests: “obligations and expectations, information channels, and social norms”. Social structural conditions under which social capital is created are explained in…
Speech Analysis: President Obama on student financial aid in the Democratic National Convention (2012)
President Obama has often included issues related to financial aid to educational institutions in his political rhetoric. Although his reference to the ailing education system is articulated with a sympathetic tone there is also ambivalence and equivocation. In the Democratic National Convention of 2012, where he formally accepted the Democratic Party’s nomination of him as…
Management Research: Merger & Expansion
The fictitious company chosen for this exercise is a medium-sized investment bank called Armor Bank, which has a footprint in states in Southern United States. The bank has plans for penetrating markets in the rest of the country and is mulling options for a merger. Explain why government regulation is needed, citing the major reasons…
Is Social Policy primarily determined by the needs of the economy?
There is much truth to the statement that social policy is a product of economic imperatives. This is not in the true spirit of social democratic principles espoused in the legislatures, but has nonetheless become inevitable under the heavy influence of private capital (both domestic and international) in the era of neo-liberalism. Britain was for…
Is unemployment within the labour market primarily voluntary?
The worldwide recession precipitated by the financial crisis in the United States has had disastrous consequences for the UK economy as well. This most recent episode of recession in the UK happens to be the worst it had faced in the period following the Second World War. Based on the GDP numbers for the years…
Op-Ed response to ‘Move Over OPEC – Here We Come’ by Ed Morse
The Op-Ed article titled Move Over, OPEC—Here We Come is compactly written with suitable supporting evidence. The author Ed Morse having had experience in both the government (former State Department Official) and the corporate world (presently holding high office in Citigroup) has the requisite credentials for foraying into the topic in question. And his command…