An insight into the day to day studies at Les Roches on the MBA Program

Hello PEOPLE!!!!!!!! My name is Natalie Staff I am an MBA student of Les Roches with specialization in Marketing I am from Panama. I am going to tell you about the day to day studies at Les Roches from my point of view. The things that happen to me every day are most of the time normal things; I already established a routine when I am in the school.
Besides my academic schedule, I can say that I also have a social schedule. Of course the most important thing when you study is to devote all your time and energy to this. But you also devote time to meet new people. Especially in a school like this, with a lot of students from different nationalities. I feel an extreme curiosity to meet people that are not from my country because is something new that I am going to learn. New cultures that show me how different I am from other people and how good is that for me. So, I am always having this experience day to day.
As you can see, my day to day at school is a combination between studies and friendship. Daily, I meet my professors and also my classmates and friends. I really enjoy my actual routine more than my last routine. In my country I did not have the opportunity to meet the quantity of foreign people that I have been met here in Switzerland.

Myself – In my own words

Who am I ?
This question is always present in my mind. I do not yet what is the right answer to this question. I am going to try to describe myself in my own words.
I am a human being that is the result of a mix between different ideas and beliefs learned by life lessons and for a man and a woman that raised me to be the best possible person in life.
By nature, I am distrustful with people, it is hard for me to trust. It takes me a lot of times to trust in somebody, no matter the kind of relationship that I have with the person that I am suppose to trust.
The contradiction about me is I do not trust in people to tell my problems or doubts. But I trust in the idea that people can change their life if they made mistakes and want to change to be a new or better person.
The place that I come from likes to trust in people and believe that everybody could be good and kind without any reason or interest. But reality is far away from this, which is why we lock our doors and have security systems to protect us. Trust has been replaced by fear.

How do I see the world?
I see the world as a dangerous place that is worth to fight to get a better one. I do not have any control of this world that I live but I want to think the opposite to stop the fear that I feel for the world.
I see the world with the two elements that are part of it: people and nature. The first element is destroying the second element in a furious way. But not all the people want to do that to nature. Many people are find the way to create harmony between these two elements, but as I say many not all the people.
With this lack of harmony, I understand why they like to destroy. It is about domination and this mean damaging and destruction to the things that be consider week and useless and also represents an obstacle to get what we want.

How do I relate to other people?
I relate to other people in a positive way. I like to be sorrounded by them and also work with them. I like to share idea and listen opinions from different people.
I am not consider myself as an individualistic person. I do not know if is good or bad but that is the way that I like to relate to other people.
When people ask about me I try to be honest and describe myself in the most faithful way. I always tend to talk about my family because is part of me. I always refer to it with love, admiration and pride.

Culture – What does it mean?

I want to start it with this question because I realize that for every person it has a different meaning. People refer to this word as art, beliefs, behavior, ideas or activities relating to literature, art, and music of a particular society or group of people. I totally agree with all these definitions, but I believe that there are more definitions about it such as family, language, identity, stereotyping, raising, expectations, economic situation and so on. I refer to family because this is the place, in which society begins, and also, in many cases families are part of different countries and consequently have different cultures.
Now I would like to talk about the elements that are part of my culture answering the next questions:

What are the important elements of my culture?
The important elements of my culture are : my beliefs, behaviors, ideas, family, language and identity. Let me tell you why these elements are part of my culture :
Every one of them is part of my culture and part of me. I truly believe that culture is everywhere and can be represented in many ways. Of course for every person culture is different, with this I want to say that for somebody art is a famous painting from Leonardo Da Vinci but if this person see a graffitti wall from some group of boys, it is not going to consider it art just a draw on the wall.

Which of those do I think I can easily give up?
For me, this is a hard question to answer. All the elements that I mentioned before are important, but if for some reason I have to give up could be my language. I could learn other language and stop speaking my language. Actually, learn something new is always very interesting for me. Of course, I am always going to feel more comfortable talking in my language but I can get accustomed to speak other language.

Which do I think important to keep?
I keep the rest of the elements of my culture. All of them are essential in my life. I have to give an honored mention to my family. Every member of my family taught me my beliefs, behaviors and ideas. All these elements helped me to build my identity that is the way I am.
So I have to say that my family is the best of my cultural elements. The importance of it is reflected in every aspect of my life. My decisions are based on the advices and life lessons that they gave me since I was born and until now, because they still advice me when I need it.

Davos World Economic Forum

Recently was held the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland like every year since its creation in 1971 by Klaus Martin Schwab.

What is World Economic Forum?
The World Economic Forum is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging leaders in partnerships to shape global, regional and industry agendas. Over the course of its 38-year history, the World Economic Forum has achieved a proud record of accomplishments in advancing progress on key issues of global concern.
Now that we know what world economic forum is, I can talk more deeply about this organization.

WEF useful or useless?
The WEF brings the most brilliant minds to the forum to exchange ideas and opinions. I believe that this kind of activity is beneficial in the way that all these minds get solutions to problems.
This forum is always a review all the problems that affect the world. This year the central topic was the global financial crisis. This kind of event is very important due to its nature. It means the best path to solve the problems that affect the entire world.
As I can perceive, in these kinds of events about global problems, the assistants have to reach agreements and aims. Once they have all the documents ready to be sign, also there is a big ceremony when they are signing. When this happen I think: “another waste of money and paper” “they are not going to do anything to improve things in life”. Maybe this is a pessimistic point of view but for me is the reality of these organizations that always promise that things are going to change but never happening.
Perhaps I am judging precipitating, but the experience of all past events show me the useless nature of this “signing shows”. I have to admit it, this kind of organizations make some programs and projects that works and help to improve life’s people. But the programs that they do represent a small percentage that is not very significant and do not fill all the expectative that they promised.
This WEF is annually, I mentioned this because every year they make different commitments to improve the deficiencies of the people around the world. But as every year I never see a significant change due to this Forum. When there is no change I start losing my faith in people because this organizations gather the smartest people in the world and with all these brilliant minds thinking, there is no way to get a better life for everyone of us.

Globalization: Good or Bad?

I choose this title because of the controversy that is around this particular theme. This theme causes division between societies: business man and politicians, conservationist and liberals.
First, I think is important to know what globalization is, in order to understand why this topic is so controversial.

What is Globalization?
Globalization is a process that combined social, political, economical, technological and cultural factors. It is the transformation of local or regional phenomena into global ones. People are unified into a single society and function together.
Now that you and I know what the meaning of globalization is, I can start writing about the positive and negative side. Let us start with the positive side.

Good Globalization?
Searching about this topic, I found that many documents refer to multinationals and how these powerful and international companies are important for the globalization process.
Globalization is good for business and trade, especially for multinationals. They are the most powerful force for good in the world.
Now I am going to focus on how these multimillionaire companies help communities to get different and better life styles.
Multinationals can impact in communities in many aspects. First, they look to establish operations such as production, service and sales in countries where they can get cheaper labor and also resources. The meaning of this is the flowing of money in these communities.
Also, multinationals are always looking for new markets. They want to increase sales by trying to create new needs among different target groups. The best examples that have been the principal targets of multinationals are the market of children and young people. These markets have grown into one of the most profitable sectors.
Another way that multinationals help communities is through the construction of public spaces or areas of leisure. Especially for young people; places that they can hang out and feel safe of any kind of danger.
Then, multinational companies have influence with the creation of policies in governments and international organizations such as The European Union and The World Bank. They are also influence in privatization and the opening up of services. They can promote the construction of hospitals, roads, etc. Things that benefit communities, those need these kinds of services.
So, as we can see multinationals spread wealth and work that help to raise people’s life and better ways of doing business.
For this reason, countries around the world are competing fiercely to attract their investment. Especially, developing countries that want to improve the quality of life of every citizen.

Bad Globalization?
The World Economic Forum has been seen as part of the negative side of globalization. Its influence over governments in shaping the global economy has seen as a disadvantage of globalization.
Governments around the world have to follow two rules from WEF.
First, deregulate and privatize. Around 90 countries have been doing it through policies of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. The consequences of these two actions have been the growth of poverty in the regions of the developing countries.
Second, business can regulate itself. Every corporation has to practice ethical standards in social issues and environmental damage. Unfortunately, these kinds of practices are only seeing as a public relation exercise not as ethical practice.
With all these points for and against globalization I cannot say if is good or bad. It looks to me that like everything in this life, has positive and negative side.
For some people, it is very good. I present the case of the multinationals that take a lot of advantage of this process and get a lot of money. I wrote examples about how these companies help communities. This is a good example to realize that not only big business get benefits, this also help to integrate poor people to this phenomenon to get also benefits.
When companies go to different countries to build factories, they employ local workers. So, as I mentioned before globalization brings work and this brings all kind of benefits to get a better life.
On the other hand, I found this negative side about globalization that blames the World Economic Forum because of its policies that impose to the governments of every country. According to the detractors, these policies like deregulation and privatization are responsible for the impoverishment in the developing countries.
So I cannot say that my opinion about globalization is god or bad. Maybe if I get something good about some benefit. Probably I am going to support it, but if I do not get anything or get something that I consider is not enough for me, I am going to be against it.