Semester Outcome Paper
Ahmed Shaban
1/20/14
Bus300s

Introduction

When I decided to enroll in this class, I had certain expectations I really wanted to achieve. I thought that my moral values and business ethics were set on an unchanged pedal, but I came to realize that I’ve learned so much in these past weeks that I was not even aware of existing. A lot of interesting discussions that had expanded my way of thinking, some them were emotional, and some of them created some doubts. With my experience with the community service volunteering program, I had a chance to get to know the community on a closer look, and because of the fact that this program was mandatory, I felt like it was a smart way of enhancing morality and social awareness for us toward a better future.

Planning your future

Since I was a kid, I always dreamt of being a millionaire, and some people will argue that this is not a dream, but it’s a goal to achieve. Where I come from, a dollar means something, so I was raised to appreciate and always know that nothing lasts forever. When I was around thirteen, I saw my dad work 8 hours a day to come home tired and not in the mood to talk or listen. So I always had a question in my mind, do I really want to end up working for a company that tells me what to do and how to do? Or do I want to be my own man? Be my own boss. And at that moment I realized what I wanted to be. An entrepreneur. I was always fascinated by technology and how it will make our life easier. I want to open up my own software company, it will be mainly for creating and developing applications for phones and other gadgets, the first main issue I might face will be to financially be secure when I start this project, I have talked to my brother and he agreed that he will be joining me in this project, which boosted my confidence that I am a step closer to achieve my dream. To be successful in this path, not only you need to know what’s new in technology, but you need to be able to create new ideas, enhance technology, and always give back to the community. Some of the ethical problems I might face will be the over price value of the products, I am a person who believes that better quality costs more, I know this mentality might not work for me people, but my target is not to sell to people, but to firms and large companies that could use my software and product knowledge. And the key to success is to always make sure your community is happy, not only to give back to them, but to try to upgrade the community with building new schools with safer routes, healthy products to offer, and most important to prove to the people that there some people in this world that cares.

Real world ethical problems or dilemmas

As I said before on the discussion forums, I am a person that tries to find the roots of the problem instead of addressing the smaller issues, and for me the main problem is the way the government works and operates. We have a problem with government spending. The government has the power of disconnecting the people from the real issues and create illusions for people to believe, to be successful in this country you have to understand the law and not just follow it. First of all we have to get to the roots of the problem, the government selection of presidents plays a major factor in this country, and we have so many political parties that will create a conflict biased to the party in leadership. Since the bush administration took control of the country in 1990, the country has taken another road of dealing with issues, first they started to recruit more soldiers and send them to bases around the world. And all of that in the name of delivering freedom, now let’s not get this twisted because I am all for freedom, but what is the cost? We have so many issues the government needs to address inside the nation rather than outside. Through a research I made, I found out that 13% of spending goes out to the defense of the country, I was really shocked because I was not able to comprehend how manipulative the system can get? The government need to address some of the issues soon, the media need to change toward telling the truth and not the edited version, people here live in another world, prices are rising, nobody cares for the other, unemployment is rising! Then what is the really going on. So many unethical values being wasted, at my work I get so many veterans coming in living on social security checks, and is that fair to the soldiers? But what can we do is try to work hard so that someday we could make the required change to create equity between the people and establish peace all around the world instead of conquering. Many people are affected in one of the ways, either helping these people get more, or get people to get less. We pay taxes not to send soldiers to other countries, if we are trying to improve education, then how come the US Is not even in the top countries of level of education.

Self and Social Awareness

What is really good about living in the US is its diversity, you get to learn about so many cultures and all celebrations differ from one another. You have neighborhoods completely mixed with many people from different countries. Diversity has its pros and cons, some people will believe that having different ethnic background is a plus, but also you have to put in mind that certain groups will be created, people will only be nice to their own ethnic people. In conducting business, it will be very good toward the business to have diverse clientele, because if this product reaches to another country it will help in marketing the business name. I sometimes notice that most of the educational institutions teaches people how to be independent and not to rely on anybody, this has a lot negativity on the outcome because it is very important to work in teams, so It made me think how this could affect the country on a different level, independency is good, but what about the appreciation of the neighbor, help the needy, make the earth a cleaner place, but then again, the world has a lot to learn about at. This class has made me to stop generalizing stereotypes, I have learned to get to know someone before putting assumptions on how they are. Stereotypes has been creating problems between people because that what diversity could create. Some countries will not even grant citizenship unless your bloodline carry the origin of the country, and ironically I had a conversation about this with a guy I know, I was firm on originality and that by only having original people having the citizenship, originality will be maintained and racial profiling will be less. Overall I enjoy living here because any dream can be made, there are no limits to where you can reach, so many places to visit, habits to learn.

Service and Social Responsibility

One of the keys to make a business successful is its relationship with the community and the world. Companies nowadays not only seek profitability, but also the environmental and social consequences of the business. Companies from different sizes tries to participate as much as possible but these companies will eventually face pressure to adopt this method. To make a company run with being involved in social awareness, one of the big arguments will be about cost. These programs often require expensive changes in equipment or costs without any obvious way to get these losses back. So basically there’s no clear way how helping the community will generate profit. Maybe if it is limited and the owner of the business will not get carried away with finding the right balance, then they will have profit while helping the community. Of course embracing this policy will build and improve the reputation of the business. For a company that is helping the environment and not getting profit, embracing this policy could be a way to regain the customers. Some companies get to involved which will harm the business from having investors join the business. Toyota and GE have profited from embracing these policies. And for that reason investors might resist agreeing on a move such as this. Looking at the big picture, building a better relationship with the community will guarantee brand mark credibility, people will vouch for the company, and usually people tend to stick with the company or business they trust the most. There’s nothing better than having the ability to give back to the community, it makes land value go up, more profit for the business, and most important the feeling you get when you know the community is a better place because of you.

Community and Social Justice
Living in California has become expensive and almost impossible to afford for some people, whenever I go to work I see all kind of people, from the person living pay check to pay check to the person with millions. I become to understand and become closer to the struggle here. I can see the different levels of social levels in this area, downtown area will have many homeless people in the morning and at night its clubs and bars. The suburbs are filled with families that work all day just to be able to pay the mortgage, working at companies has changed these days, it is a good thing that they include incentives with the pay because they are trying to reach out to the people with a message that they care about the people, and you have to deal with the tax that is being taken away from you. I noticed that some neighborhoods are completely influenced with one race that the locals will call it with the origin of the town like little Italy and japan town and whatsoever. I have traveled around the US and I can see the difference and the privilege we have in California, I managed to visit the east coast and some cities in the mid-south, I was amazed that some cities did not even have the diversity we have in California, and what I noticed is that the city was not as developed as the towns here, although there so much poverty and racial differences, people in California were able to infuse cultures into one time. And like that I see a lot of tourists which helps the economy in its way. I also have read about the history of these cities and apparently the difference in race was not only which country you are from, but which street you live on, gladly we live in a time where most of these conflicts have been taken care of and people accept each other no matter where you are from, or what religion you follow. I feel bad for the veterans because most of the homeless people I see are soldiers long forgotten about, and what’s sad is these people are seen as the people with disease or have mental issues

Multicultural Community Building/Civic Engagement

When Freedom is adopted as a policy for a country, people will be able to do whatever they please, it amazes me how many religions there are, and how many associations get created every day, you have people worrying about the trees, the atmosphere, animals, health, and whatever your mind sets upon. I think being able to know about every culture just enough to make you connect with them will make you respected in many languages. A system like that would make you think it’s perfect, now the problem lies in creating advocates that does not approve of certain methods or associations. You have people that create hate groups, and one infected cell will infect the cell next to it, which will create so many problems between the people of the same town. I like the fact that for every religious group, they are able to build their own religious house, church, or even mosque. Despite of the political differences of the governments, I think people are more accepting of each other, we have come to a time where the people has so many problems on their mind that they don’t have time to focus on hatred, people have been living in a routine of survival. I think survival methods have changed, it is not what we need, it is what we want, how we get it, freedom of choice will make people do what they want, sell any product, and apply any method. That is one of the reasons that might cause trouble on the longer run. People living here worry about the system and how injustice you could get, sometimes when I get a traffic ticket I lose hope of fighting it because I got used to hearing stories about people judged unfairly. I see the struggle between the federal laws and the state laws. This is freedom, the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement, the exemption from external control, the power to determine action without restraint, to have political independences. But at what cost?

Essays

I was able to connect with the essays on an emotional level, they included all topics from suicidal thoughts to talking about iconic figures and even common interests. I like to write, and I feel like the essays has helped take off some the pressure I have, I was able to talk about how I feel about many issues, they reminded me of values and appreciation, it reminded me that nothing lasts forever. Some people need to be reminded of many things in this life. And thankfully I was able to, I feel like my interests have changed and I feel like I gained so much knowledge and confidence because most of these essays connect to my life in their unique way. Some replies from other students were interesting because I was able to see the different ways of people and how they think toward an issue, I was able to measure the level of differences and get a background idea on how they lived their lives, I felt like the essays has made a connection between the students on a personal level and it is great that we live in a time where connecting people is easy.

Cases
I was able to differentiate on different ways to run a company after this class, the approach that I learned on how to evaluate a company has become different for me, now I consider the values and ethics to be as important as how much the company would generate profit. The cases covered almost all types of situations we might face in life, it made us write about decisions we would try to make if we were leaders. Created very interesting discussions. I feel like I was changed from a business perspectives as I saw examples on how to treat employees, on how to treat the community and the environment. I like the Johnson and Johnson case the most, because it made me realize that despite your company size or what kind of job you do, there’s always a way to show the community that you still want and can to make a change for a better future. Some cases were just amazing like the Nucor case, it was a new method I learned on how to run a business, an approach that could motivate workers to work as honest and as hard as they could.

Service Learning

I never thought I would volunteer in a company, I always try to give homeless people money or food if I was able to, but this experience has changed me as a person. It made me come to closer relationship with people that are dedicated to helping the needy. At first I felt ashamed that I haven’t helped places like this before, but when I used to tell people that I am volunteering, they looked at me with envy, I felt like they were jealous that I could help the community, and frankly it made feel good, it me feel that I am a good person, I am one of the people that help the community not by building new business or products, but giving people the stuff they need to make their lives easier. I met people that were so dedicated that they would work 5 days a week. It reminded me of when I was young and see my dad work so hard, I always wished that he gets a bonus for his hard work. It is nice to live in a place where you could see business helping the needy. Business need to embrace helping the community, and do it on a daily basis. I talked to my manager about participating in a charity event with this organization, and the company was really happy that I offered them that, I was praised by my job for trying to help the community and I felt even better. I feel like in every company there will be a person or two that want to change the world, but they are restricted by the society, scared of being judged, scared to interact with the less fortunate people. But what they don’t know about is how good it will feel when you accomplish something like that.

Additional videos/readings

Apart from the cases and the essays we had to study, I thought the additional videos and readings completed what would’ve been missing in this class, I liked the videos more because they showed us what is really some of the main problems in the world, and honestly, I would’ve not looked at some of the issues discussed like dumping trash in the ocean, it made me notice things that were harming our mother earth. Some the videos that discussed politics interested me more, it showed how the world really works, by making people see what a they want to see, and make them forget about what is really going on in the world, homeless people and people in needy had the most emotional effect on me, because it makes me sad that a country so powerful had so many people that could not even survive. I am thankful to have seen these videos because they made me a better person that want to see more of what is going on in the world because who knows? I might be one the people that will have a different effect on the world.

Class Discussions
I’ve had online classes before, but what I liked about this class is it had a unique way of communication, we were able to discuss many thoughts and ideas, some of us had discussions on a personal level. It is a very good way, specially that there were no restrictions on what we can write, classes like this is what honestly motivates me to keep on going with my education and make me want to know more stuff about the world. The class connected people from different ethnic backgrounds which was a plus, we were able to see different mindsets, I was able to see how people think in the bay area, and I could also notice the age of some of the students as their way of typing differs from each other. I think online classes will boost the level of education in this country because some people can’t afford to drive to certain schools or don’t like to be surrounded with a big crowd.

Conclusion
In conclusion, I was really lucky to take a seat in this class, because I have improved in so many ways that I was able to witness in my daily life, I have managed to help people more, to look at things from a different perspective and will make me motivated to change the world.