Teahouse in Hangzhou

Posted on by Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Teahouse. 高山流水.
Tea-drinking at teahouses is a tradition in China that goes back to the Three Kingdoms of Wei, Wu and Shu, 220-280 AD.
Text & Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2010-2013

Walking through the streets of Hangzhou, I could never quite grasp the sentimental feelings of its romantic past even as my eye caught the elegant lines of temples, the fine pagodas and the many intricately carved bridges that made the landscape so picturesque.

But arrive at the calm and mirroring waters of West Lake, and the realization sets in – that the city through numerous phases of transformations, carries within its aura a purity of natural beauty and a sense of timelessness. And it is perhaps this, that rocked the souls of the literati both past and present.

Organization identity and the dialogic process of recreating corporate values

Posted on by Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

In SvD 19 April 2013, Näringsliv.
Conflict and powerplay between Volvo Cars and Geely as presented in the press.
Text & Photo © CM Cordeiro 2013

‘Five conflicts stirring Volvo in China’
Just recently this headline in large fonts headed the front page of the business section of one of Sweden’s most respected morning news papers. It was obvious that something had changed.

As one of many who keep a keen interest in the economic and geographic spatial reconfigurations of the global automobile industry, I did not expect a smooth process of acquisition of Volvo Cars by Geely from 2010 onwards.

Research literature charts a five times more likely narrative of a failed attempt at mergers and acquisitions than one of success. In the case of the Swedish then American owned Volvo Cars being acquired by Chinese Geely, language, culture, values and outlook on life per se are but the tip of the ice-berg to the multiple foundational layers of differences that need to be disentangled in this corporate marriage.

The global trade winds of the Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III

Posted on by Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Kent-Hallgren-490a

Photo: Kent Hallgren.
The Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III in GP 11 April 2013.
Text © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

Though I’ve been in Sweden for just about a decade, I wonder if it is only I who have grown tired at the consistent gloomy headlines of the local Swedish newspapers when writing about the Swedish East Indiaman Gotheborg III, the latest headlines reading – No more sailing for the East Indiaman.

I wonder if this sensationalization of headlines is but a low end marketing attempt to attract readership since there is a general consensus of the ship itself being an entity of high interest. But what these pessimistic headlines reflect however, is a probable trend of lack of confidence in what is considered a good investment for the city of Gothenburg, and a business opportunity that can generate great dividends to all.

From Twin Peaks to twin cities: quantum entanglement IRL

Posted on by Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Like many other cities in the world, Gothenburg, Sweden, has a “friendship city” (youhao chengshì) agreement, with the city of Shanghai.
Text and Photo © JE Nilsson, CM Cordeiro 2013

The ideas in this post covers at best, an intuitive and metaphorical exploratory mapping of some aspects of quantum physics theory, to phenomenon that can be observed in the material world so governed by the laws of nature. Perhaps a tall argument to make, but I’ll try here to figuratively map the concept of quantum entanglement onto the observation of its potential manifestation in international business, taking the the example of Twin Cities, defined as two cities in different regions that have made an agreement on for example cultural exchange and economic cooperation.

It is here not to apply the theories of quantum physics to the material world, because that cannot always be, due to that the quantum world has different laws than that of the physical world. But just to sketch an idea that what is now being observed and measured to accuracy in the quantum realm with its attached values, named phenomenon A’ {-V(N) to +V(N)} is perhaps manifested in the material world of classical physics as phenomenon A {-V(N) to +V(N)}, if one were to view it from a systems level perspective, here defined as the manner of progression of development.

There is [increasingly] no spoon

Posted on by Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Keanu Reeves in the science fiction-action movie The Matrix (1999).
The small boy is played by Uri Geller. Or not.

Admittedly, I like broad sweeps and this is going to be one of the broader that I take. But please bear with me. We’ll eventually be back to the bar of single origin Ecuadorian dark chocolate. Promise.

First we will need to go back a little bit in time to a scene in the 1999 movie, The Matrix, where a little boy flexes a spoon, bending it at will. He then looks up and says, “There is no spoon”.

Now, that is a point of view I will try to demonstrate that is increasingly worth being considered.

J.A. Wheeler’s one particle, the eve of 2013

Posted on by Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

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.

On managing heterochronous developments in Singapore

Posted on by Cheryl Marie Cordeiro


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 multifractal system perspective of culture in international business

Posted on by Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

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.

Transformative theories – when international business can benefit from quantum mechanics

Posted on by Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

Jason Padgett and Q.A.T

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.

The Yin Yang theory, a non-confrontational approach to culture

Posted on by Cheryl Marie Cordeiro

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.