VIRTUAL TEAMS

Because nowadays organizations have to face different things that come with the technology and the globalization, they should take into account factors as geographical position, last minute information, workers, and cultures; to be able to do their activities in the correct way to reduce costs but increase productivity and quality in the services or products that they are offering.

Virtual teams is one of the characteristics of lately business where many of the employees that work somehow to the company, are located in different parts of the world, and sometimes face-to-face communication become a situation that can be difficult for companies that don’t prepare their workers to this managerial changes.

The definition of virtual teams is: “group of teams or coworkers who primarily interact to electronically, by using communication technologies because face- to face communication become difficult, in order to achieve some kind of organizational goal.”

We can take a look on the following video how can we use virtual times and these kinds of technologies for.

Video: “ACCA Global virtual conference 09 “taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuOWpj0xWWs

EXAMPLE

If we have for example a tourism business that works in Brazil and Mexico and managers of these two countries cannot always travel to be present on the company’s meetings, they should use a technological tool in order to be able to communicate to each other and have fresh data bases to give an excellent service to the clients.

If a tourist in Mexico wants to go to Brazil, every single thing in Brazil should be ready for the time that he/she arrives to that place, hotel room, date and time of the arrival, number of days that he will stay. Etc.

If the company has problems with the communication tool, it is possible that the client will not be satisfied with the service because of situations like: the driver that was going to pick him/her up didn’t show up; so the company will have a lot of troubles. On the other hand, if the employees are also prepared to faced those situations, they will be able to manage the whole situation.

That is what a company should do and how it should work in this nowadays environment that is continuously changing.

Image taken from: http://www.onsip.com/stylesheets/images/onsip_virtual_teams.png

COMMUNICATION

 WHICH ONES ARE THE MAIN CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN NON-VERBAL COMMUNICATION?

There are many culture variations that can affect the way people communicate non-verbally, this is an important factor to take into account because there are some actions that cannot be seen as offensive in your home country but they may be deemed so in foreign cultures and business ventures.

This is why there are some factors that are easy to identify and that can be very helpful for all of us, in order to behave in an appropriate way to maintain good relations at the time of doing business, entering in a new market or only establishing relationships with foreigners.

Here we have some interesting videos that are very related to the topic. I hope you like them all !!!

Video: "Body language - Gestures" taken from

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mi6h8zktO1s

Video: "Gestures across cultures" taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxoB6MhmbIg&feature=related

Finally, in verbal communication there are also some problems when we try to speak in a different language from our native language, take a look of this funny video.

Video “Cultural misunderstandings” taken from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_N1Cmt_QB0&feature=related

MIGRANT WORKERS AND EXPATRIATES

HOW CAN BRAIN DRAIN BE STOPPED AND CHANGED INTO SOMETHING BENEFICIAL FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES?, WHAT CAN GOVERNMENTS AND PRIVATE SECTOR DO TO IMPROVE MIGRANT CONDITIONS?

Image taken from: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgd_V-A2Dk6qaogCyKGTsRFGWdhzmJxPBMRGwPsXo9isQteRDFGBsNJab1icP3wEYehf9RdTvs9JQhyphenhyphen3BXkvfVQcu98vOkx57V2710-_uEyxwdL0wck5iZW3ESHzC1MSMq75LbZsORd586u/s1600/america_the_nation_of_immigrants.jpg

As I have been doing in this blog, there is one question related to the main topic. This time, there are two questions because I consider that both are not only related to each other, but they also have a kind of dependence between them.

I want to start explaining the meaning of brain drain that is a situation that has been increasing in the last years and that happens more inside the developing countries. Brain drain can be seen as a process of migration of people with a lot of knowledge and labour skills, that want to show to everyone what they know, but they can’t perform all of this in their nations because there are not job opportunities for everyone; therefore they look in developed countries the opportunities that they don’t have at home.

Image taken from 

http://ciudadania-express.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/fugacerebro.jpg

For all of the above, we can see that the brain drain is a problem that can be resolved only if the governments create job opportunities and start to think more in their habitants, to give them the standards of life that all the citizens disserve. If this happens, developing countries will beneficiate because all the knowledge and skills of the people who was running away of the countries, will be used to progress and to become a more competitive.

Because few governments create enough opportunities to their citizens, the process of migration of all this “brains” continue and here is where the answer to the second question appear and the big dependence is showed.

Developed countries, are nations that, because of their technology and government structure, are able to offer more chances to those workers that are looking for a jobs but due to the increase in the migrants the offer become so big that some companies take advantage of this by don’t respecting the rights of the employees, they make them work as animals without paying them what they really disserve.

Image taken from https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6VyzVSFCZFJUfaZpqV3WzaVCObrEcSLH6TEKQyFv51RTBr6vrYVh-FbA0jyi7bxFEmOiVJmu0avRGWAV6JMix2_Q6BshzDXc5RoEPfuDyzLYg_JSf_Vc-IOey8DXzx7W70C3vNBXpZyEB/s1600/esclavos.jpg

  

This is the moment where governments and the private sector of the developed countries have to start acting to help migrants by establishing some rules to protect their rights and to prevent the exploitation of all the people that since the beginning have been looking for a better place to live, where they could show all the capacities and abilities that they have obtained by studying hard.