Ethical Issues in my Profession:
China has the fastest growing economy in the world. Many people are predicting that China will take over the title of world’s superpower from the United States. With this being said, there are still a lot of problems in the Chinese Industry. For example, we learned that many Chinese companies were privatized in the 1980’s. Today, 67 percent of the companies are in private hands. When a company is privatized, they tend to seek higher profits at the expense of the workers. This means lower wages and terrible working conditions in order to keep the expenses down. In the U.S, there are laws set in place to help out the American workers. For example, there is a minimum wage set for everybody. There are also safety laws that companies must follow, whether they are government owned or privately owned. Chinese industry appears to care less about the environment as well. There was so much smog and pollution everywhere. That type of pollution would not be acceptable in the United States. Due to the lack of regulation, laws for wages and working conditions, Chinese companies can do far more than American companies at cheaper costs. This causes American companies to send jobs overseas taking jobs away from our citizens, just so they can make even more money than they already do. Due to the higher population, there job search is much more competitive, this also leads to bribery and corruption which would be illegal in the U.S.
Educational Breadth as Professional Development:
The Chinese are extremely competitive when it comes to education. Although the numbers have risen over the years, not a lot of students can make it into the Chinese colleges, which is the reason for their competition. Once in college, schools seemed to be very similar to the U.S. However, I did notice that they seem to take school a lot more seriously than Americans just because it is also extremely difficult to get a good job out of college. They know that in order to get a better job, they need a better education. Although education is similar to that of the U.S, I have learned that we still are completely different cultures and different cultures think differently. This also means that the way businesses are run can be different. I think that based off of the differences in culture alone, there is a need for furthering our education in different cultures. I feel that it is extremely important to understand the culture you are doing business in, in order to have the most beneficial transaction. If one were interested in doing business in China, I would take a Chinese language class and maybe a class about their history to get a better understanding of the country and what type of customs they have. If you don’t understand how your clients think, then making transactions becomes extremely difficult.
Lifelong Learning:
While we were visiting the companies in China, we did not get to interact with a lot of the workers. However, based off of my parents experiences I can guess that going to school is needed to learn about the field of work that you are going in. You only learn the basics. It isn’t until you get a job that you learn the specifics. For example, if you are an engineer, you may learn how to build or design certain things in school, however, when you get a job, you take what you have learned and expand upon that into the particular field your job is in. Every job does things differently. For example, you could go from one job to the next in the same field, but you may need to do things completely differently, which could require learning new things. In China, many people do not have some kind of higher education. This means they are learning everything as they do it. Technology causes the learning process to never end as well. One day, you may be keeping track of everything on sheets and organizing them in filing cabinets, and the next day you may be learning a new program that does all of that stuff for you. Because of these reasons, as employees, we are constantly learning throughout our entire life. If you or your company doesn’t learn or adapt to the constantly changing environments, you may be out of a job or your company might go out of business. In order to be successful, you must continue to learn and adapt throughout your career.
Social Environment:
There was one main thing that surprised me while traveling to China; they are very similar to Americans in many ways. When it comes to getting a job, men and women want one in order to take care of their of their family. That is their number one priority; even if it means working for low wages in terrible working conditions. When they have a job, I always thought that China was a lot stricter about doing work and strictly work; no social life allowed. However, when we visited Hanwang, I saw ping pong tables set up. It appears that Chinese workers might be allowed to have more fun than we thought in certain jobs. When it comes to teenagers and college students, they just want to have fun like American kids do. There was another thing that I noticed when in China; they seem to know a lot more about the U.S and the rest of the world, than Americans know about China. Some even know more about American politics than Americans do. They are more educated about world politics.
Their news stations were all about international problems and politics with some local stuff thrown in there. In America, it seems like the only world news that they talk about involves some kind of war. Other than that, we don’t hear about a lot of the countries in the world. However, when it comes to the news, the government has control in China. Therefore, if they don’t want something to be shown, it won’t be shown. I also noticed that the West is really influencing China. They are influencing the way they dress, the music they listen to and even the movies they watch.
China is a very big producer, whether it is for a Chinese or American company. For American businesses, it is very important to know about Chinese issues and the economy for that reason. If we import materials or even products from China, we need to know about their issues. The same goes for other countries that Americans work with globally.
Functioning on a Multi-Disciplinary Team:
When you have a cross-functional team, there are always going to be communication problems. Business people will know very little about engineering and vice-versa. In order to overcome this barrier, engineers need to use terminology that business students can understand and businessmen/women need to use terminology that engineers can understand as well. They also need to listen to everything that is being said. They have to be open-minded because an engineer may not know enough about a certain topic as a businessmen and vice-versa.
A good way to get along in this cross-functional team is to start off by getting to know the people in the group, even if it is just for a little bit. If you can get to know the people that you are working with, then you may be more likely to listen to ideas that they come up with or you may just work more efficiently together.
When working with businessmen and engineers internationally, a big problem could be the language barrier. I personally thought that a lot of people in China would know English, but that certainly was not the case. There is also a challenge of different cultural backgrounds. One culture may find one technique unacceptable while the other may not. That is why it is important to understand the cultures with which you are working with.