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Final Paper should draw on specific race or gender issues from the workplace; norms will vary depending on kind of work, e.g. non-profit vs. large law firm.

Are race and gender negotiated differently because of the subculture of work? Specific ideas, like “marked” and “unmarked”, “coded” and “un-coded”, glass ceilings, miscommunications, et al, should be contextualized; also note whether the subculture of work accentuates these problems. Why is the subculture the way it is, e.g. the boss, tradition, et al.

Due March 4, or electronically by March 7.


Short paper on Managing Change is due on March 15. Talk about change precipitated by a specific cause. How was the change concretely triggered?


FIASCO

How do individuals and societies deal with risk? Will derivatives lead to the downfall of Western civilizations, or a necessary hedge against financial risk? Derivatives help manage risk. In traditional or primitive society, what could threaten the lives of people? Nature could lead to famine. Nothing could be done about the lack of rain or excess water from monsoons, but people created damns, began to preserve food rather that eat it in order to reduce risk. Today, it is loss of a job, illness, or divorce that can have the greatest negative impact on people’s lives. Is it better to lose a job, have a catastrophic illness, or divorce in the U.S., Germany, or Sweden? For job loss, perhaps Germany is best, but the U.S. may be better for catastrophic illness if health care can be afforded. The U.S. is the best place to find a new job, but Sweden may be the best place to be unemployed in the long-term. The U.S. is the best place for a divorced woman, because of the stigma attached to divorce in Germany, and her greater likelihood of gaining employment in the U.S.

Societies manage risk differently. When a risk-free society seemed close, health care risks went up with the spread of AIDS and avian flu, and nuclear proliferation has become a serious problem; not only is the world not risk-free, but also it is more risk-conscious.

It appears that managing our own money is more complex, but we are in greater control over our own money. Risk is sought; poker is watched on television and played by kids for money. A derivative is worthless on its own, it isn’t an individual security, but is a position taken on the movement of the price of a security. Put is the right to sell at a specified price for a specific period of time; a call is the right to buy at the “strike price”. Derivatives are hedge tools.

In FIASCO, Morgan Stanley traders use the derivatives to make money, rather than hedge risk. Fund managers, who are prohibited from investing in certain securities, invested in derivative instruments on behalf of their shareholders. What tempts the money managers to invest in risky instruments for ½% difference? The aggregate result looks good for the manager; though the difference to the individual investor may be small, the fund managers make a bonus. Individual investors are not qualified to assess the risks of their own funds’ investments, and the instruments themselves create, rather than control, volatility. Enron fell because its management chose to speculate on energy, and invested in bad contracts.

Are these people rogues, or is FIASCO symptomatic of financial markets in general? Is it individuals or the system? Where does the culture come from? Making money was the only priority of the Morgan Stanley traders, the temptation to make extraordinary returns, or maximize profit, is high. The quest for dough is what created the culture.


Comparing Nickel and Dimes with FIASCO, what is valued in each type of work is clear; the money culture has diluted other values in many companies, and profit should not displace other values in the health care industry, for example. In FIASCO, money is clearly what is valued, to the exclusion of all else. Is money-culture contained in the Wall Street world, or is it spreading? In the 1970s or 1980s, money took over as a dominant value…have all professional athletes suddenly become corrupt drug users at once?

Dilip suggests that like Aristotle’s principle of “geometric proportion” that a person is capable of an evil is he is capable of a greater evil, companies that are capable of mistreating employees are also capable of mistreating stockholders, and abstract entity.

In the past 20 years, priorities have changed to revolve around money; the Comm school has no development officer, and no access to a pool of money raised by other schools or departments. This does not reflect old university values.

Michael Walzer’s Spheres of Justice: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D0465081894/002-8716181-0814453

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How Race is Lived in America

Three Friends – Which of the three friends felt the most pressure? The Black Muslim Girl said she had no one to hang out with…there is such a thing as white and black behavior. Public school is the place where people of different races interact, often for the first time. In a city like Evanston, there is a “middle bulge” where people of different races interact a lot, including dating. The bulge shrinks through high school. Why? Where are the cues to separate coming from? Music, sports, advertising are racially coded. Consumption of African-American culture is an American culture experience.

Who Can Tell A Black Story? - Why the social assumption that only black person can tell a black story?

A Limited Partnership – Black man yields the CEO position for which he is more qualified than his white partner, because it would be more difficult to do business in GA with a black as CEO.

Why Harlem Drug Cops Don’t Discuss Race – Racial profiling, Dominicans believe that 90% of their community is involved in drug trafficking, other blacks support the police against the Dominican community. The cops disagree whether the shooting of an unarmed man was justified, the division runs along racial lines. The Dominican police think they would be more careful, wouldn’t have shot Aiello.


Gender Issues


Deborah Tannen – Talking from 9 to 5

She assumes that:

1) Men and Women work together more now than ever.
2) In much of American work the relational aspect of talk is an integral part of the functional aspect; communication is integral to work.
3) Talk is culturally “coded”; race and gender are cultural factors.
4) These factors influence the effectiveness of communication, and women are at a disadvantage at work as a result.

In Chapter 2, Tannen notes that women say they are sorry as a way to initiate communication; it is a part of social ritual. Men consider someone who says they are sorry in a “one-down” position, indicates a lack of confidence on the part of the person who says he or she is sorry. Because of this, men and women should be more aware of the speech rituals they engage in, and realize what the rituals of the other gender really mean. Tannen calls this “anthropological linguistics.” The use of personal pronouns shows identification with a group; linguistic practices reveal our view of the world. “Us vs. them”…speech between equals and between subordinate and superior are examples of hierarchical relationships that are reflected in language.
Chapter 4, “Marked”, says that everything about a woman’s speech and appearance is an identifier, reveals something about her, whereas nothing about men marks them. Judgments are made about the speaker as a result of markers. People are more concerned about Laura Bush’s dress during George Bush’s speeches than his dress. Men have the “privilege of invisibility”. Women’s non-functional “cattiness” at work is marked, whereas men’s non-functional speech and action is not marked. Because of the marking, women have to be constantly aware of their appearance.