Through the looking glass.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2013
One of my favourite lectures of 2012 comes from the field of quantum physics, entitled The End of Space and Time?, delivered by Robbert Dijkgraaf on 20 March 2012 at Gresham College in the United Kingdom. Dijkgraaf was President of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW), and is currently Director and Leon Levy Professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, USA.
Attilio Rapisarda:
Hi Cheryl,
Interesting article: thanks!
I am very interested in learning about the reasons why people in service & knowledge-based societies are reluctant to marry and have children.
I believe that a fundamental reason is the changing economic value of children: from assets to liabilities.
In rural societies, children were “energy”. In our modern societies, children not only start being productive increasingly later in life but are also less willing to provide for their elderly parents. Labour markets’ demand for “flexibility” also means that children find it harder to be physically close and economically solid enough to serve their “filial piety” corvée. Some people will find that the wish to have children should not be based on economic incentives and should rather be based on “love”.
Still, as you have pointed out in your article, having children for “love” is a relatively recent idea in our history. Traditionally, political or economical reasons based the decision for marriage and children. Also, although humans are certainly capable of acts that transcend individual interests, they generally are driven by the satisfaction of practical needs, just like any other mammal: food, shelter, accumulation of resources.
I think that such shift on how children are perceived – from “asset” to “liability” – reflects a reality that is more certain, stable and lasting for potential parents than any of the incentives the Singaporean government is currently proposing. For this, I believe such incentives are destined to failure.
I wonder whether we are in a situation of “heterochrony”: two systems – the productive system and the reproductive system – that evolve at different speeds. The societal forms subserving the reproductive system evolve at a much slower pace and we are now stuck with forms of marriage and family that fit the rural productive system but not the knowledge-based one.
A plot of a multifractal wavefunction at the Anderson transition in 3D can be found as Fig. 1 of Vasquez, Rodriguez, and Roemer’s (2008), “Multifractal analysis of the metal-insulator transition in the 3D Anderson model I: Symmetry relation under typical averaging”. arXiv:0807.2217v1 [cond-mat.dis-nn]:
Coming from a social sciences background and continuing in the line of transformative theories, I could liken the wave particle duality to researcher’s interference, where the act of observing would in itself render a certain bias to the data collected and observed phenomenon simply because the observer becomes an entity to be considered in that which is being investigated and studied. Related then to this uncertainty principle is how in the field of international business, the concept of culture which is one of the most sensitive of concepts to be influenced by researcher perspective, where each researcher embodies his/her own values and belief systems, continues to be dominated by the western cultural dimensions construct in an era of increasing globalization and of advancing information communication technologies that render a blurring to traditional geographical boundaries. Social media platforms for example create an entirely new type of virtual landscape, bringing together people from different parts of the world, with different languages, values and beliefs.
Jason Padgett’s wave particle duality.
It is to this extent that culture, that has thus far been studied as national averages and have had differences as a measurement of complementarity in the success or failure of a foreign enterprise entries, should perhaps be re-conceptualized in terms of a fuzzing of boundaries to include a multi-levelled perspective that works across groups of individuals that share a common motivation system, regardless of nationality for example.
It is in this light that the multifractal system to the study of culture in international business might cast light beyond the Yin Yang concept of culture, where the latter eastern perspective of culture, if not taken in its original sense from the book of I-Ching (Book of Changes), of being an infinite system of duality, but reduced to simply duality of properties, would further contribute to a dichotomous point of view of the theory of culture i.e. if not west then east.
Social Network Visualisation: e-mail between the members of a project. Every square depicts a participant. Its colour indicates which departments he/she belongs to. Grey lines indicate that there’s at least a weekly frequency between the two linked participants. Source: Orgnet.com; Infovis.net.
Groups of social networks for example, regardless of national boundaries, may exhibit similar values and belief systems in a complex spatial structure much like those found in social networking theories, where individuals are characterized by not just a single (i.e. nationality or race for example) independent characteristic value but rather a set of values that belong to different contextual “multifractal” backgrounds through a space-time dimension.
Pictures from Jason Padgett and Q.A.T.
Text and Photo © CM Cordeiro 2012
An evening thesis:
Beyond the eastern Yin Yang perspective of culture, visually represented above in a metaphoric nomogram, is the concept of a pluralistic, aperspectival view of the concept of Multiculturalism, that to some extent, I would liken to the “most favoured nation” (MFN) clause following bilateral trade agreements in the norms of GATT and WTO, which is that of reciprocity and non-discrimination. What I find interesting in these visual representation from quantum mechanics is how the aperspectival fallacy often referred to as “aperspectival madness” is negated / neutralized via a heterarchial construct – an organizational construct deemed most advanced and most difficult to achieve, that I would to some extent, liken to multilateral trade agreements in international trade and a true understanding of Multiculturalism that encompasses the reductionistic view of the Yin Yang concept, though not vice versa.
Bibliography
Van Den Bossche, P. 2008. The Law and Policy of the World Trade Organization, Text, Cases and Material, 2nd edition. Cambridge.
Me, together with Professor Tony Fang, Stockholm University, School of Business. As I am right now working on a collaborative research project with Professor Fang, it was nice to listen in on his guest lecture at the Department of Applied IT, at the University of Gothenburg and Chalmers University of Technology.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012
Tony Fang, who is Professor of Business Administration at Stockholm University, gave a guest lecture today at the Department of Applied Information Technology (IT), on his concept of a Yin Yang perspective to culture. In today’s Internet culture, where collaborative work can be done through Dropbox, Skype and via emails, that he was in Gothenburg proved a good opportunity for us to meet in person.
I read with interest, Peter Ho’s RSIS working paper no. 248 on “Governing for the future: what governments can do”.
It is a paper based on an adaptation of his speech delivered at the Australia-New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) Annual Conference 2012 in Wellington, New Zealand on 26 July 2012. Mr. Peter Ho is Senior Advisor to the Centre for Strategic Futures and Senior Fellow in the Civil Service College. He serves as an Adjunct Professor with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. He is a Senior Fellow of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, and was formerly the Head of the Civil Service in Singapore.
In brief, Ho outlined in his paper, how accelerating changes in the 20th century, for example such as population growth, rapid urbanisation in combination with technological innovation has come to result in complex interconnected environments that in turn give rise to unpredictable trajectories and “wicked problems” (Horst and Webber, 1973) or interesting problems that have no immediate / obvious solution.
Globally, there are many international diplomatic talks that revolve around “wicked problem” issues such as climate change, food, water and energy supply, all preferably within a sustainable economic development framework. At a local level in Singapore, Ho cited the example of the complex nature of extremist religious pursuits that led to the need for new warfare strategies that counter forces both material and cognitive in order to keep the nation secure and how Singapore was under the constant challenge to disarm extremist ideologies.
But whether facing global political-economic environmental changes or ideological extremism, Ho’s point was governments that have the agility and capacity to act swiftly in such circumstances will benefit and thrive in today’s complex environments. And my perspective is that it is in this aspect that Singapore’s regional geo-political position and albeit seemingly contradictory socio-economic policies have most of the time benefited the country and its people on multiple levels.
As a national security strategy in coordinating counter-terrorism for example, Singapore has continuously worked towards and adopted a multi-layered, integrated and holistic “Whole-of-Government” (WOG) approach, leveraging on the diverse strengths of existing agencies and ministries at various levels from strategy and policy to operations.
Part of what makes being in academia so exciting for me is the very incompleteness of each project as expressed in Gödel’s theorem [1], here not referring strictly to its origins in mathematical logic of incomplete axiomatic systems, but rather used in a general linguistic sense of how research by definition, lies in a perpetual state of unfinish, the completion of which would warrant it redundant.
It is this continuous dialogic and dialectic process of thought, creativity and innovation of ideas, a journey that continuously reveals and uncovers what was previously obscure or even unknown that I find oddly comforting – finding familiarity in the unfamiliar, a constant in the flux of things.
As part of a collaborative publishing effort with friends from the IESE Business School in Barcelona from the International Faculty Program (IFP) of 2011, where colleague Peter Zackariasson was an editor, I contributed a chapter to the book entitled, New Perspectives in Management Education (Amann et al. eds, 2012) entitled “Chinese Wisdom. World Quality” Looking East for brand innovation and change management: reflections from a study on Geely automobile 2007-2011. It was a paper that reflected upon brand innovation and change managment in China’s Geely automobile from the years of 2007 to 2011.
It was also during this time that Geely acquired Volvo Cars from American Ford in 2010, landing China the single largest foreign acquisition, at the same time (McDonald 2010, Wang 2011) setting up several technological and knowledge platforms for China that lent support to the country’s efforts in the aggressive acquisition of knowledge in general.
Although American owned, Volvo Cars continued to carry a strong Swedish heritage in quality and branding where many of their engineers continue to sit in Sweden today. This meant that the acquisition of Volvo Cars by Geely was under sharp and curious observation both East and West, not in the least by Swedish academics and researchers from the disciplines of management science and international business (IB).
Having previously studied the Swedish management style in comparison to the Singapore Chinese management style (Cordeiro-Nilsson 2009), a hypothesis of mine with regard to Geely’s acquisition of Volvo Cars was that the strict vertical hierarchy and authoritarian leadership style of the Chinese might end up severely clashing with the more lateral, egalitarian and consensus seeking leadership style of top level Swedish management, even if under the steering of American Ford. It made interesting observation to see how these differences in management ideology of which one had its roots in centuries of authoritarian dynastic rule, compared to the more individualistic developments of the occidental cultures, might be construed and subsequently manoeuvred in a cross-cultural setting.
But two collectives of events took place with Geely’s acquisition of Volvo Cars that made the hypothesis redundant, the first was a change of Volvo Cars’ core executive management to a more global oriented team and the second, a juxtaposed strategy of old (going back to its scholastic roots) and new (a fairly hands-free approach to the acquisition) strategic concepts applied to the management of the enterprise taken by China with regards to its acquisition of Volvo Cars:
“I want to emphasize that Volvo is Volvo and Geely is Geely — Volvo will be run by Volvo management. We are determined to preserve the distinct identity of the Volvo brand.”
~ Li Shufu, Chairman of Geely (Bradsher, New York Times 2010)
That China realized its authoritarian rule over its western acquisition was not optimal led to it taking what could seem a radical move – autonomy to Volvo Cars to continue being, Volvo. It then turned towards its scholastic roots, to become ‘student’ in this aspect, observing business and management practices whilst at the same time, educating itself on various technological and knowledge platforms with the purpose of going beyond replication, of becoming forefront innovators themselves.
Where the theme of executive management education comes in is, with the support of the Chinese government, Geely had in 2000 set up Geely University with a mission to train individuals in the practical skills needed to build the company to its full potential of being a global player. By 2010, the company had an extensive talent management education program, offering in-house training and education opportunities in collaboration with Beijing University at all human resource levels from frontline factory workers to its top executive management teams that included doctors in research and development for Geely technology.
Today, the Beijing Geely University is one of China’s top ranked, largest private universities (Forbes 2010) that offers a range of subjects across disciplines from Humanities to Science and Engineering.
From the talent management strategies of multinational corporations then comes the question of the role of Business Schools in executive education – what lies ahead for business schools and executive management of the future? Where do Business Schools see themselves fit in and what / how can they meaningfully contribute to this changing demographics of the education of a workforce in a trend where business acumen is necessary but not a sufficient variable in the required range of skills of a workforce that needs to be trained across different levels of expertise?
Since management and organization is an applied science with theory and practice ideally combined in such a manner as to be practically applicable in the corporate world, such realities of executive education in multinational corporations could be argued to have put pressure on business schools in realization for a need to evolve with current corporate happenings and trends.
In the field of IB for example, while the call for a more interdisciplinary approach to the field has been going on for the past two decades, it is more so today that scholars are beginning to take that call seriously, seeding as it were, the beginnings of a review of the role of business schools and what perspectives they can offer for corporate practicalities in future that includes executive education.
On July 4, 2012, AsiaOne News ran an online article entitled “Social media drives MOE to revise sex education”.
In the past few days, news of sex education in Singapore had hit the international scene, crossing both geographical and virtual boundaries. Having only read some about this happening, I can share here that I remain ambivalent on the choice and use of words between “sex education” rather than “sexuality education”, the distinction of which might seem inconsequential but shows a general attitude and level of discomfort with the subject, AsiaOne indicating greater comfort in managing the topic than Singapore’s Ministry of Education (MOE), the very institution responsible for the education policy planning and general dissemination of knowledge of the subject to promising young individuals upon whose shoulders Singapore will need to depend upon for its future.
In today’s world of the Internet savvy where information is literally at one’s fingertips, and where search retrieval results act as general classifications, associations and even branding of identity, what is perhaps more important than a false sense of modesty is the accessibility and availability of information retrieved.
A google search and retrieve (dated 10 June 2012) for the terms “sex education” and “sexuality education” renders 661,000,000 hits in under 20s to the former and about 45,700,000 hits in about half a minute to the latter.
On the perspective of branding by association, the term “sexuality education” in contrast to the more direct “sex education”, carries ambivalent connotations. While the term is used by UNESCO under its efforts on improving prevention on HIV/AIDS, it at the same time appears in retrieved searches that tend towards the ultra-conservative in political views. From The Huffington Post, for example, a news article entitled “Abstinence-Only Sex Education Bill in Utah Prohibits Teaching Contraception” (posted Feb 2012) appears close in searches retrieved with Singapore’s MOE pages. Utah is one of USA’s most religiously homogeneous state, with approximately 60% of the population reportedly belonging to the Mormon Church that greatly influences their culture and daily life. Other closely associated results retrieved with the search terms “sexuality education” include videos, one of which is a cartoon version of “sexuality education” from Belgium targeted at children aged 6.
At MOE’s website under “Education > Programmes > Social and Emotional Learning > Sexuality Education > Scope and Teaching Approach of Sexuality Education in Schools”, readers will find find in the opening paragraphs (retrieved Tuesday, 10 July 2012, 22:40 hrs):
Sexuality Education
Scope and Teaching Approach of Sexuality Education in Schools
Abstinence before marriage is the best course of action for teenagers. Sexuality Education teaches students the possible consequences of sexual activity and that pre-marital sex is not desirable as there are inherent risks.
To reduce the incidence of STIs/HIV and teenage pregnancies among our young, a practical approach is adopted. Sexuality Education teaches students facts about contraception, repercussions of casual sex, and the prevention of diseases from a health perspective. This is in addition to teaching teenagers about building healthy relationships and how to say “no” to sexual advances.
Sexuality Education teaches students what homosexuality is, and the current legal provisions concerning homosexual acts in Singapore.
Both teachers and MOE-approved external speakers should respect that they are in a position of trust with respect to students and ensure that schools are not used as arenas for advocacy on controversial issues.
A quick discourse analysis of the text uncovers the Singapore governmental institution’s underlying sense of Victorian values and lack of ease with the subject of sex education. The opening paragraph that outlines the “scope and teaching approach” of sex education in Singapore schools raises a few questions due to inconsistencies in conceptual definitions (defining “secular” vs. “mainstream” values in multicultural, multi-religious Singapore) and logical fallacies, one of which is faulty correlation that the discourse tries to equate facts (how STIs are spread) with social values (preferred abstinence from pre-marital sex).
One wonders what kind of cat and mouse game teachers and students would play during class on the topic of sex education, or on whom the blinkers will lay when “abstinence before marriage” (a material act of individual choice) is considered “the best course of action for teenagers” (a social value hegemonically advocated in this discourse) that is also “a practical approach” (begs the question, from whose perspective and for which party concerned – the teachers, the parents or the teenagers?). Even the Roman Catholic Church in their long history of struggle and balance of politics and power, where abstinence, the result of which was a purposeful lack of heirs that dissolved assets in their division amongst many, was deemed a necessary measure of wealth building, power retention and consolidation for the institution and regime of the Church, has had trouble keeping their ordained leaders chaste.
Late morning marketing at Kuta market, Bali.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012
If you live in Southeast-Asia, a piece of information you neeed is the opening or business hours of the morning wet markets. Some beginning as early as 05:30 hrs in the morning, where by late morning at about 10:00 hrs, business is concluded, the stalls washed and goods neatly stashed for the next day’s trading.
In search of pulot hitam at Kuta market, near one of the almost invisible entrances.
Having had some requests for specific goods only to be found in Indonesia and likewise, Bali, I conveyed my brief shopping list to a local taxi driver, who was happy to be our guide to the island. He quickly settled where to go and so we were off towards one of his favourite markets – Kuta pasar – though I had gathered from what he told, I would need to improvise with my spattering of the Malay language since Balinesian and Indonesian languages differ, in order to do my shopping as no one in this market would speak English.
Cleaning up for the day at Kuta pasar.
True to marketing times, when we arrived in the late morning at Kuta pasar, the floors were being washed, and the white tiled counters cleaned. It took a brief moment to orientate ourselves, across language barriers, I managed to locate the stall that sold most items I had wanted to purchase, including pulot hitam, that is black glutinous rice that they call nasi hitam, and gula Bali, a variant of palm sugar produced right on the island.
This narrow corridor leads to houses behind the market. On the left and out of sight, food stalls that cater to the local area.
The ground floor to this market is compact, with stalls selling wet goods situated in the center of the square and shops selling dried goods and vegetables, lining the outer rim of the square.
Through one of the back lanes, a narrow path leads to the village houses where two or three stalls selling food can be found. We were invited to try their variety of food from nasi campur (rice with mixed food) that included ikan goreng (fried fish) to mee ayam (chicken noodles).
Kuta pasar, Badung. The sign to look for.
Compared to the enormous wet market at Denpasar well equipped with supply chain outlets running as arteries towards the main centre of activities, I think I’m most grateful to the taxi driver for introducing us to this little market square, as another peek into the lives of the locals of this island.
Residing in Batuan village and founded in c. 1020 AD, the Batuan Temple is a conflux of Indian Hinduism with Indus architecture.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson and CM Cordeiro 2012
The surprising aspect of this temple visit is the realisation of how accessible local religion and philosophy is made to you as visitor in order to partake of their song, dance, rituals and daily activities that mean a lot to them. One could of course reason that it is all part of the tourism industry here in Bali, but at the same time, there’s the feeling of there being something more to it. There is nothing imposing in the Balinesian behaviour towards visitors, rather it is their subtle invitation and hospitality that make you feel all at once at home on this island even if for a few days.