Academic Experiences and Skills Acquired through Internships - Essay Example

?Section My chosen pathway is Global Business Management. Embarking on this pathway has been a very satisfying learning experience. Any path is going to have twists and turns before reaching the final destination. This learning pathway has been no exception. I do have a view of the final destination but I have not been able to anticipate every twist and turn. I plan to work for an international hospitality business when I am finished with my education in Global Business Management. I will have the opportunity to work in an established business that my family started two generations ago. While the business has grown to have a presence in eighteen nations in Asia and Europe, it is still primarily a family owned and operated entity. I am excited to work with a network of uncles and cousins in this venture, but I know that I have to complete my learning pathway so that I can make a real, meaningful contribution to the company. One of the modules that I am learning a lot from deals with a systems approach to solving problems. Many of the situations that I will face in my management career will require me to solve complex problems. These problems may be intertwined with the everyday operations of our hotels and hostels. Understanding a systems approach to solving problems will help me to untangle the many skeins that create knotty problems in a global business operation. Working through modules that involve problem solving has shown me that I have some strengths and weaknesses in the area of employability skills. I know that I need to develop strong problem solving skills in order to successfully reach the end of my learning pathway. This is obvious to me based on discussions with family members that currently are working as managers in the hospitality business. Customer service and price are the two most important aspects of our business because it is after all based on hospitality. In order to accomplish this basic mission of our business model, solving problems that keep customers from being happy with our services and problems that cause costs to rise must be solved of the business will fail. Finding solutions to problems in innovative ways is a strength I have developed as a result of work I have produced in these modules. The ability to think beyond the normal confines of business is something I have learned how to do. The key to this learning and skill acquisition centers on the willingness to be self-motivated and to take initiative when decisions need to be made. From working with my classmates, I have learned that most people shrink away from putting the work into solving knotty problems. It is much easier to hope that the situation will work itself out or to try to devise a quick fix that never really gets to the root of the problem. As my chosen pathway is Global Business Management, I realize that I will be working with an international clientele as well as an international set of employees. At first thought this was very exciting for me. I grew-up hearing about how operations were doing in Bangladesh compared to how things were going in Indonesia or Cyprus. As a young person, my dreams of traveling to these places and working inspired me to want to take on a role of responsibility in the family business. What I have learned over the course of my pathway is that I have a lot to learn about how other cultures work. I have always thought of myself as a broadminded and accepting individual. I have learned that many of my cultural traditions and beliefs have been challenged since I have been studying here. I have had to rethink some of the beliefs that I have always held dear. The journey along my pathway ahs shown me that I tend to be an ethnocentric thinker and that I need to overcome my tendency to think in black and white terms. Sometimes there is more than one positive solution when solving a problem given the cultural subtext. Accepting this has not always been easy for me, but I am learning and improving. Section #2 One powerful learning experience I had while working on a module involved working with two other students with different cultural backgrounds than myself. I learned some important lessons about the academics of Global Business Management and more importantly some important lessons in how to work with people that see the world differently than I do. The assignment was a simple one. It was in a module that had an exercise involving hypothetical human resources situations. It was a “What would you do if….?” type of assignment. I did not know the other students that were working with me on the assignment. The three of us were all from different cultures. One girl was from Ireland and the other guy was from Saudi Arabia. We all had extensive exposure to people from different cultures so I assumed that we would have very few views that were different because of our native cultures. I assumed that we would all have similar points of view. I was very wrong. On the first question, I felt that the solution was obvious. The situation involved a female employee that was uncomfortable with the “extra attention” her supervisor had been giving to her work. From the wording in the scenario, I felt that it was a clear case of misunderstanding between the female employee and her supervisor. I suggested that what was needed was formal intervention from the human resources department. Perhaps the services of an ombudsman could be employed to hear both sides and to evaluate how the company as well as the supervisor approached this individual employee. I thought that the other two students in my group would welcome my suggestion of a disinterested third party. My friend from Ireland immediately objected. Why should the female employee be dragged into an uncomfortable confrontation with the offending boss, she wondered. Hasn’t she already been harassed enough by her supervisor. Now she needed to confront him face to face. She questioned the gender of the ombudsman as well. Was this disinterested third party going to be a man of a woman. I reluctantly agreed that I had envisioned this position being filled by a male. “So it will be two men against one woman?” was her response to this. I was shocked. I really didn’t think that my suggestion was out of line in any way. What matter does gender have anyway in a modern workplace? After asking this I was informed that I was naive and had no idea what it was like to be a woman in the workplace. I admitted that I knew nothing about being a woman in the workplace, or any other place for that matter. She proceeded to enlighten me. She explained that the first thing a woman feels after being harassed, especially in a male dominated workplace, is shame. The woman is going to wonder what she did to invite the unwanted advances of her boss. Then she gets angry, because she feels helpless and finally she just wants the situation to go away so she can do her job in peace. Making a formal issue with a third party right away is not going to work, she said, especially if the female employee feels as though the third party isn’t going to understand her feelings. The fact is, most women do not believe a man arbiter will take their side or understand their feelings because they are not in vulnerable positions in the workplace. After listening to her, I realized that I had never thought much about the culture of gender in the workplace. My Saudi friend then took issue with my solution as well. He felt that getting the man and the woman together with a third party was a bad idea as well. He felt that this situation would call the honor of the man into question simply for his communication style. Having the employees meet together was inappropriate he said because it put too much right out there in the open between the man and the woman. He felt strongly that there should be a meeting with each employee, that the woman’s concerns should be handled in a more discreet way and that whatever action was taken should be communicated back to the women without her ever meeting with her male supervisor. I explained my rationale for wanting to get everyone together. I though that getting feelings and concerns out in the open would allow lasting solutions to be met. We would also have immediate feedback from both parties as to whether or not they though the solutions were workable or not. Both classmates disagreed. They both felt this was the wrong thing to do, but for different reasons. After we worked through the other scenarios, all of which progressed in a similar manner, we communicated some of what we learned with the teacher. We were praised for the solutions we found to each scenario based on the academic understanding of various human resource theories. She then pointed out how much culture comes into play when Global Business Management is the pathway chosen by a student. She showed us that there really was nothing wrong with any of our proposed solutions. They all showed a theoretically sound approach to the situation at hand. The one variable that favored on approach over another was the variable of culture. From this activity, I learned that culture has the potential to make even the soundest theoretical argument for an action worthless if the action does not match the accepted cultural norms and attitudes of those involved. In a multi-ethnic workplace, this could be a real challenge. As a group, we came to the conclusion that not every facet of a person’s home culture will be able to be accommodated in the global marketplace. My friend talked about a global business culture that helped to breach some of the differences between cultures. The work in this module helped me to gain a broader cultural perspective of management. This is something that will surely help me be a good manager wherever I end up with my family’s hospitality business. Section #3 Another valuable learning activity that I had this past term was an internship at a bookshop. I was attracted to this position initially because the books featured in this boutique were literary works from many different parts of the world. My pathway in Global Business Management had me looking for anything with “global” or “International” in the title. I met with the owner and his small staff and was soon taken-on as an intern. I almost immediately regretted my decision to take the position. The work was drudgery after a few days. There were three things that bothered me about the position right away. The first was the pace of the work. My supervisor would give me tasks to do that only would occupy me for a fraction of the time I was at the shop. I grew bored so quickly. The second problem was the isolation. The shop was not very busy and I had almost no one to speak to for my entire time there each day. The final problem I had with the internship is I didn’t feel as though I was going to be able to learn anything. After two weeks at the shop, I was ready to quit. I spoke with one of the pathway leaders about quitting and they cautioned me against it. I was encouraged to find something to do each day that would contribute. That is when I realized that I needed to muster some personal initiative to learn and work or the internship at the shop would be awful. My next visit I viewed as a challenge. I was determined to find something productive to do. Nothing presented itself immediately. I did my filing tasks for the day and started to speak with he owner about the shop. I asked about the inventorying system. I was shocked to find that the owner still kept inventory in a pencil and paper ledger. She explained that she had never felt comfortable with computers other than for personal communications with friends around the world. She also liked the feel of a ledger and argued that her shop wasn’t all that busy so she did not need to worry about being efficient. We spoke for a bit longer and an idea formed throughout the conversation. I offered to make a database for her shop that would allow her to have a digital backup copy of her pencil and paper ledger. I explained it would not replace what she loved to do, but would help her should she find herself in the mood for something new, such as selling books online through Amazon or some other ness nefarious site. She smiled and thanked me for offering. I thought for a minute she was going to decline my offer and send me back to dusting shelves and entering billing transactions. She gave me a pleasant surprise when she informed me that she thought it a lovely idea. She especially liked the way I offered the proposition. She liked the fact that I was not telling her she was antiquated in the way she did business. Rather, I presented my idea as a backup with a purpose. She said that she could hardly decline such a graciously presented proposition. I worked one the database each day for the rest of my internship. I learned about the daily management of a boutique bookshop but more importantly learned how to present and idea to a supervisor. I have no desire to work in a bookshop ever again, but I did learn some valuable lessons in interacting with people and taking personal initiative to turn a bad situation into a situation where learning can happen. Read More