The second event was the final event put forward by our seniors, who've made their peace with one another, and the college. Actually, I could live with this one... it's not so bad. They were taking up our seats in all the courses anyway. But they were pretty kind-hearted, they didn't want to bother any of us juniors, so they went ahead and put forward a send-off party for themselves, with events conducted by them for their families and professors. An interesting way to say bye to the college. Their presence, though abhorred, will be missed.
Ethics in Business Management
A problem with a course like EBM, is that it is really hard, I mean REALLY hard to agree on whether the judgement on a case was right or not. You see, on the one side it looks like the organization had the best intentions at heart, on the other it looks like they didn't do enough good of what they could do. So you actually have two camps in class, fighting each other on the fact that the accused was right/wrong on what they did. The case was that on Unocal and their decision to continue to pull oil from off of Burma's coast, and who had conveniently turned a blind eye when Burma's army was clearing away land from rebels when the pipeline had to go through that. The confusion was on whether Unocal was justified in claiming that they were ethical in their dealings, and were not involved when their partner, the Burmese government/army was doing this. In fact, they justified their presence by saying that they were providing health and education support in the region that was close to the pipeline, so they were actually doing a lot of good.
The prof must be finding it really hard as well. The guy is so sure, that "this party" did something wrong, or "that party" should be held responsible, and when he tries to explain his reasons to us, there is always atleast one bunch in the class that's disagreeing with him. And they proceed to explain why. The crescendo was reached when the prof was putting various tabulations on the board on who did what correctly/incorrectly, and you could see that he wanted to put four ticks in one box, but when he asked the class where to put it, the majority was on the other. You could see him struggling within his mind whether to correct the class again or not, but then he just sighed and put the four ticks on the other box, and three ticks in his. That was actually pretty sweet. Profs don't usually bend to the will of the class, but such is the nature of this subject.
The next day, he was better prepared. Didn't do as badly as the first session. Right at the start, he mentions that 'guys, we need to look at this objectively, keep your personal thoughts on the case aside, and ONLY look at it from the framework. You will have enough time to debate such topics long after. As you saw yesterday, even after twenty minutes of discussing this case, it is still just as, if not more gray than it was before we started. So stick to the framework.' Looks like the class got the message, because a few times when there was strong potential for disagreement, the class just kept quiet, as the framework made it clear as to where the balance tipped. The prof seemed to go home a happier man that day.
Happiness aside, the framework learnt this week was with regard to property rights. Apparently a bunch of our oldest philosophers had very different views on what constitutes right to property, ranging from John Locke to Karl Marx. And the case we discussed was that of the provision of treatment for AIDS in Africa. Funny case that... a few American companies came up with the cure but it was so friggin' costly for use in Africa and they weren't willing to subsidize it. Thanks to a loophole in Indian law, a few Robinhood pharma companies here went ahead and, ahem, built a cheap version of the drug and began distribution in association with Doctors across Borders. American companies yell "friggin' piracy", while Indian companies say "Cross-border disasters!". Being an Indian, I don't know, I couldn't help feeling proud of what these guys did! Was it wrong, well, I don't think so! Luckily, the framework kinda agrees!
Managing Off-shored Software and IT Services
Profs tend to be pretty good at predicting what the class is capable of. Last week, when this one asked how many of us read the case, only two hands went up. So he thought, ok, these guys are not going to read what I give them, so let me just give them a micro-case this week. So when he comes to class, fully prepared to see the same two hands when he asks "who read the case?" imagine his amazement when all the hands go up. I swear, he was so happy! If only there were tears of joy, but alas, there weren't. Totally would have made for a good Bollywood movie. It isn't lost on me that the students actually should be insulted that the prof thinks we don't read cases, but hell, it was such a happy moment.
The class dealt with the different phases of outsourcing, and how the balance of power tends to shift along the duration of the partnership, and the micro case given dealt with something similar. The second session was more to do with how you should control intellectual activity like software development, against how you would control manual activity like factory production. The various types of control systems were being discussed and the typical pros/cons of the same. The class came about lively here, as they were talking of the different ways that their company uses to handle such situations, especially when the customer wants to manage the resources directly, but their company resents external control of their own resources. Kind of portrays to anyone outside that the company is incapable of managing its resources effectively. Doesn't go down well with Indians now, does it?
A very interesting week with a lot of ground covered. I'm already beginning to enjoy this quarter.
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