Ethical Issues in My Profession
There are many things that I saw in Vietnam that would not be allowed to go on in America. First and foremost are the rights of the workers. They work so much and get compensated so poorly in comparison to an American doing the same type of work. Also the corruption in the government goes into many of the businesses because the government owns so many of the businesses in Vietnam that those companies become corrupt. This is a deterrent for foreign investors because there is a serious risk that they might lose all their money due to the government mishandling it. However, the low labor costs could definitely allow for a foreign company to do very well and make a lot of money then using higher priced labor. I felt that while in Vietnam I did not notice many diversity issues. There were churches and coadi temples so clearly religion is free. There was no racism other than being stared at for being white. One difference that I did see was women especially when they were driving wore masks over the nose and mouth. However, there were men I saw with masks and there were some women without them, but masks were largely worn by women and seldom by the man. That was the only major difference in diversity that I really noticed.
Educational Breadth as Professional Development
There are many differences between the education in Vietnam and America. Vietnam’s education system is undergoing a huge reform because it is so far below the global standards; however, there are still opportunities for students to do extraordinary things in some of the more elite schools. From our experiences we went to UEF almost daily and saw students who seemed smart and from talking to them we learned that they do many things similar to American universities. Another example was the morning trip to the gifted high school. We saw students who were very smart and extremely motivated to succeed in life. The work they did was of high quality and an education from that school was basically a guaranteed college education down the line. Because of the opportunities that students in Vietnam have people going to work in Vietnam will have to deal with many talented Vietnamese and that requires knowledge of the Vietnamese culture. As for courses that would prepare me for a global economy would be specified history courses pertaining to a specific area I am interested in doing business. Also I would definitely take international econ to get the broad base of how a global economy truly works. Finally a language class is essential at least the basics should be known by anyone entering into not just Vietnam but any foreign country
Lifelong Learning, Continuing Education as Professional Developement
At Glass Egg Digital Media we were told that each of the designers had some background in art however it took an extensive training period of about a year before the people would be fully hired into the company. For that job therefore, most of the skill set are acquired there on the job. But for a company like ascenx their employees clearly have a much more solid base of knowledge for the work they will be doing. Because of that it is more likely that less training would be required. Also I feel that because some companies probably do not trust the educational system it makes them have a training session just to make sure the person can really do what their degree says they are able to do. The lack of education would definitely cause an American company to retrain employees. While talking to the employees I got the sense that many were well educated and even if they needed to be retrained the process probably went quickly because the universities at the least provided a small foundation of knowledge for them to be able to learn the things necessary for the job they were hired to do.
The Social Environment of Professional Life
It seemed that the employees of the companies we visited were extremely friendly with their coworkers and more than likely were very good friends outside of work. Also I noticed that many of the owners in the Etown buildings seemed to get along very well and I heard from Hoy that they do things while not at work. So clearly their social and professional lives overlap. From some of the articles I noticed that many of them are about what the government is doing. These were told always in a positive light towards the government. Even with quotes disagreeing with the government the writer of the article always ended with good things about the government. It is always important to know what is going on in a country if you are about to do business in that country. Investing money in a country that is about to have a coup clearly is a horrible idea. Therefore, American business that are or are thinking about investing must always be checking in on the status of the country and the state of the economy in the country. I want to do international business so one of the biggest issues for me is always going to be social. I will have to interact with the people of different countries and cannot do so if I have nothing to add to the conversations. Just because they know the happenings of our lives in America does not allow me not to find out what is going on in their country.
Functioning on Multi-Disciplinary Teams
I found there to be very little challenges in communicating with the engineers. There were times were they may be talking about something and I had no idea what they were talking about, but that can happen in any situation where I just do not have that information. We all got along very well so our educational differences were not in the way of working together and completing tasks. And example would be the group PowerPoint that we did before we left for Vietnam. I was in a group with two other engineer students however we were able to finish the PowerPoint on time with both business and engineering information on there. Actually in groups it really helps having both business and engineering because if it was all one type of student then students researching the opposite area of study would be reading stuff that they just do not know. Also because we got along as a group so well it actually allowed for us to learn a little about each other’s areas of study. I learned about superconductors to the point where I actually understand what they do. And once I helped explain how the supply chain is why an engineering company could not expand. This trip had great kids on it and that made it very easy for me to interact with both engineers and business students.