Corruption, sexism and thrift

In the podcast called “Corruption, sexism and thrift” 3 problems were mentioned, namely:

1. Sexism

If you look around you will see, that most boardroom tables belong to men. It happens in the developing world and in the rich world too. In the US women make up only about 15% of board members, in the UK it is just 12%. The British government asked former banker Law Davis to produce recommendations for change next year. According to his words, women make up about 51% of the population and about 46% of the economic workforce. But if you take the top 250 British companies only 7% of the representation of the board are women. British companies need more women on board, because that will be better reflection of society and companies will get better performance. He thinks there will definitely be new rules. Ideally he doesn’t want to go to quota (or legal rout). That’s what we can see in Scandinavia, in Norway for example (they have quota of women on board). Law Davis is not convinced that it is the only right course of action; on the other hand it’s one of the options. On the whole, employers and boards should be more flexible to engage women.

The next speaker was Joe Dickson. In the past she worked on the top of the British bank and she was on the board of Premiership football club. Now she is on the board of 2 stock market listed companies. The first time she got a board position was in Newcastle United football club. There was an extremely male environment, which was difficult for her. It was quite rare that she managed to get on board, as it was “male work”. She says it wasn’t an environment that was very conductive to a normal business practice. She agrees, that not many women are applying to go on boards and they are making perfectly logical choices to stay in middle management, because they have a better life there, they won’t have 24/7 job, therefore they have time for their family and, besides, they earn enough money. She thinks that, if the organizations could flex their own approach to working, they would get a bigger pool of talented people.

2. Corruption

            The annual corruption barometer from International Transparency polls the views of ordinary citizens. And this year international effort to curb corruption is failing dismally. The vast majority of the almost 100000 respondents said they believed corruption in their country was getting worse. The fact is that in many countries bribery and corruption is the backdrop to everyday life.

            If you have a contract and you have an agreement to pay an agent, written into the contract, you are both interested in how much you will pay, then you don’t call it bribery but in fact you are paying back an agent. In most cases what you are paying to these people is money. For example, your cost is $20 million and you want a tender on it. Then they tell you that they are gonna give you $25 million, but you should give them the rest. It is their money you are giving back to them. It is bribery in way but it’s a revenue mutual to the business.

            There are a lot of countries where corruption is minimal only because we call it corruption. If we call it lobby, then the level of corruption will increase. In the US they pay congressmen to get contract in a certain area, they pay for campaigns. So, it is like corruption.

            There is a moral obligation for people to refuse to pay bribes, but there is also a moral obligation for them to make sure that their workers have work to do, that they are not starving etc.

3. Thrift

            Cycling is not what it used to be: it helped poor people travel cheaply. Nowadays people who drive cars prefer cycling in their time off. In Britain a market research group estimates that in 2005 5,6% of the population rode bikes  regularly, last year that figure was 9,1% and combining with occasional cyclist the number rises even to 18%. According to statistics, people with 2 cars are more likely to be regular cyclist that those with 1 or none. Historically you rode bicycle if you were poor. But it is just not the case anymore. It’s more than just affluence. For many people a branded bike makes a healthy fashionable statement about their affluent lifestyle. For the cost-conscious commuter it saves on high fuel prices. The contradiction explains why the bicycle market continues to grow in the recession. 

Microfinance crisis

This time I have listened to the podcast called: “Microfinance crisis”. This podcast is dedicated to the risk, which borrowers of microcredits take. Here is the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00c343p

            The duration of this podcast is 18 minutes but I’ve listened to it till the end because it was a really interesting record. During the first listening I understood almost everything, because English of the speakers wasn’t that fluent as English wasn’t their native language. But I listened to this podcast twice, because I needed to jot some ideas down during the second listening.

            This podcast is about so called microfinance. Microfinance (or microcredit) was born in Bangladesh in the 1970-s and operated by non-profit making groups. But international lenders and mane western governments led the industry to a great commercialization and aggressive marketing. The idea of microcredit is simple: it provides small loans to poor people, who have no other access to banking system. So, microcredit empowers poor people across the world to start their own business and create economic growth. But in some cases it pushes poor borrowers into taking high cost loans they can’t afford. The borrowers often don’t know the interest rates or the terms and conditions of the loans. Many microfinance agencies charge interest rates of 20-50%. After series of complaints over exorbitant interest rates and stern debt collection methods Bangladeshi authorities have now kept the interest rate at 27%. Reports of suicides among the desperate people unable to repay microfinance loans have rocked the industry in Bangladesh. There is more than a thousand microfinance institutions in Bangladesh now. We can see the same situation in India. India’s microfinance industry is reported to be facing a possible collapse as almost all the borrowers in one state Andhra Pradesh have stopped repaying their loans. Politicians there have accused the industry of profiteering from lending tiny amounts to the poor. They have introduced tough new laws restricting how the companies can lend money and forbidding intimidation of borrowers, who can’t pay.
The main problems of people who take microfinance loans are:

·         A borrower has to start repaying money from the first week after money is borrowed. But not everyone can make weekly repayments:

·         The majority doesn’t buy an additional piece of land, machinery to start some business or upgrade it, they don’t develop their skills on the money borrowed. But as we can remember, microfinance is aimed at business developing.

I think that microcredit can be a “death-trap”. People who borrow money and can’t pay it back, borrow money from another source to cover their debts and so on. As a result, they are becoming poorer and poorer.

Entrepreneurialism: Nurture or nature?

Today I’ve listened to the podcast called: “Entrepreneurialism: Nurture or nature?” This podcast is about being a successful entrepreneur and how to achieve it. So it is directly the same topic as we studied the previous time. Here is the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00b2rgg

The duration of this podcast is 18 minutes but I’ve listened to it till the end as it is fairly interesting. During the first listening I understood about 90 – 95%. The rest part that I didn’t understand was the new words. But I looked them up in a dictionary after the first listening, and while listening the second time, I caught them all. I’ve learned some really useful expressions from this podcast, such as: gamble with future, overcome adversity, do something on the fly etc.

This record consists of 2 parts: the first is an interview with Julie Meyer and the second is about business schools for kids. In the interview Julie Meyer speaks about the ways of becoming a successful entrepreneur. She is best known for founding “First  Tuesday” (a leading network of entrepreneurs) which she had built up for 2 years and then sold it for $50 million. Today she is the manager of “Ariadne Capital” an investment and advisory firm, focused on media and technology. That’s why she knows much about entrepreneurship. She says that an entrepreneur can be taught to be successful but many entrepreneurs say that they learn quickly rather than being taught because instinctively we don’t wanna feel that we are being taught by anyone in fact. It is better to be taught by life and experience. A successful entrepreneur should think differently, be creative and feel that he or she is capable of much more. According to Julie Meyer’s words, the main difference between a successful entrepreneur and unsuccessful is that a successful business builder is a persistent person. So, in order not to be off the mark you shouldn`t veer away from your ideas and you should keep your own way. Of course, it is tough to achieve persistence, and as a result of all the difficulties on entrepreneur’s way he or she is stressed out, disappointed and exhausted. So you should cope with stress and be able to find a way out to become a successful business builder. Successful entrepreneurs have some distinct features. They are people who feel compelled to gain a certain level of business or affairs. They feel compelled by their ego. It is very tight to their identity, they are impact people. But not only a smart person or a person with a high level of intelligence can stand the chance of success. It doesn’t mean, of course, that he/she can be dumb or lame. He or she should be able to do things on the fly, very fast, readjust them and figure many things out.

In the second part of the podcast it was said, that the British Government was trying to make business the heart of learning, therefore it had helped establishing of business schools for kids over 4 years. But it is going to take a generation to see whether teaching children about entrepreneurship actually leads the young people to be less dependent on unemployment and instead to be creators of their own successful business.

As for me, I agree with Julie Meyer but I think that despite the things mentioned above there must be a lucrative business, economical and political climate to run your business well in a certain country. That’s what we don’t have in Russia.

Come Fly With Me

Dear Lyudmila Vladimirovna! Sorry for writing that late!

This time I have listened to the podcast called: “Come Fly With Me”. This podcast deals with the issue of both building relationships (which we studied during the previous lesson) and international marketing. Here is the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00b5qjn

                While listening the first time I understood about 90% of the record. It wasn`t so hard to understand what the speakers were talking about. As this podcast concerns the matter of competition on the air traffic market, the speakers used some new words connected with this field, namely: low-cost carrier (or  low-cost airline, legacy carrier (or legacy airline) and long-haul airline. It was interesting to get to know this terminology. During the second listening I understood mostly the whole record.

            This podcast comprises 2 interviews with British Airways CEO and AirAsia X CEO . Nowadays budget airlines (such as AirAsia X,  Ryanair) have been piling up profits, that’s why the old so called legacy airlines (such as BA, Air France)  have plunged into loss. Legacy airlines are simply unable to deal with a low-cost challenge of low-cost airlines. Although the economy is not looking too good now and aviation is suffering, budget airlines keep on expanding their markets. For example, AirAsia X (a long-haul low-cost airline flying the world’s longest low-cost service from Kuala Lumpur to London) carried over a million of passengers in 2009 and hopes to double this rate in 2010. Besides, AirAsia X makes a good profit, which is difficult for an airline that has been working only 3 years. AirAsia X CEO Azran Osmar Rani says the key to their success is that they can optimize the way they use their planes and can find an ideal time for their passengers. So he stresses the importance of building relationships with the passengers to understand what the best time for making a flight is. British Airways CEO says that this is an incredibly competitive industry. Legacy airlines have to do something with this low-cost challenge of low-cost airlines. And British Airways CEO sees consolidation as a part of solution to the structural problems. Some of the legacy costs can’t be changed, e.g. pension costs. But a lot of their costs are in control. And he thinks that the challenge for airline management is to exercise as much control over those costs as possible. But they shouldn’t forget about building relationships with their  passengers.

            As regards me, I think that the nowadays consumer has become more educated and it is natural that low-cost airlines become more and more popular.

Brains and emails

I have listened to the podcast called: “Brains and emails”. This podcast is dedicated to the problems of communication at work and usage of modern technologies. Here is the link:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p009hqkh

During the first listening I understood about 90 – 95%. The rest 5-10 % were rather difficult for me because of fluent English of the speakers and some new words and phrases that they used. While listening the second time I tried to elicit the unknown words and phrases. It was quite hard but worth doing.

Although the podcast was very long (about 18 minutes) I listened to it till the end. The speakers on the record were discussing a very urgent problem of using modern technologies at work. According to this record the scientists have discovered that heavy use of technology such as smartphones and laptops affects our brains. It changes the way we think and behave. It was also said there that G-mail had launched a new system which would filter your emails. Of course this system has its own shortcomings: you would probably lose an email from somebody you don’t know offering you something interesting because the system would attribute this email to “unnecessary”. The speakers on the record also talked about annoying colleagues, who always speak too loud at work. According to the latest research the problem of loud colleagues is number one problem of communication at work. The solution is to tell that colleague how loud he speaks.

As for me, I think that using new technologies at work is on one side something we can’t go without nowadays but on the other it is kind of trap. Numerous emails, phone calls really break your concentration and you stop working effectively. You should close down all your destructions and take into account that moderation of using technologies is a good thing to be done.