Reflective Journal 2

Question: Reflect on the working culture and management style in Google and Lenovo. You may choose to explore how far their working cultures and management styles reflect their respective societies, share your personal experiences and opinions on your preference of working culture and management style, etc.

The different working culture and management styles in the 2 companies, Google and Lenovo, reflect their respective societies.

Google, a company in America, is employee-oriented and encourages discussion and collaboration which reflects the emphasis on human rights in America. In America, everyone has a right to speak up, no matter what race, religion. This freedom of speech is like the discussions and collaboration Google encourages its employees to do. Furthermore, employees in Google should be passion-driven, creative and innovative. This is like what the education system in America is, the things that schools teach the students are much more focused on passion and creativity than Asian schools.

On the other hand, Lenovo, a company in China, is based on meritocracy where there is a dominant boss and the employees are to follow orders. This is much like some parts of the Confucian ideology inculcated in many Chinese in China : One is to respect their superiors. Furthermore, the employees must obey their bosses most of the without question. This is somewhat like what the education system is in Asian Schools where students learn things mostly through copying and not questioning why is it like that.

Personally, I feel that Lenovo is very similar Hwa Chong Institution and generally schools in Singapore. The syllabus is very structured and most of the time boring. There is a lack of enrichment activities due to the syllabus being based on the A-level-format. Furthermore, when there is enrichment activities, it is always made compulsory(or so they say "strongly encouraged"). When its made compulsory, it defeats the purpose of being an enrichment. Although attempts have been made to make the syllabus less structured, most of them are not very efficient. For example, ACE which is part of our IS marks are mostly given by the teachers and not student-directed. Furthermore, it counts as marks as a subject so students are kind of forced to do it if they want to get good grades and not explore because they are interested. This kind of structured education system is very similar to Lenovo

I would prefer working in Google to Lenovo. This is because I want to have the freedom of my work life. I do not want to work just to earn money to support my family but rather also because I am interested in that field of area. I do not want to be bossed around by stuck-up bosses who do not listen to other's opinions and always thinking they are right even though they sometimes maybe wrong. Furthermore, I do not want to be pressured by my working environment as it will decrease my work efficiency and also stifles creativity. I do not want to study hard in school just to learn, I want to apply it into my real life and I am afraid that the environment in Lenovo hinders this. Lastly, I also prefer working in Google to Lenovo because of the chance to interact with new people. It is from other people where you learn a lot of new things from their experiences. Google encourages this but Lenovo,however, only lets you interact within your sector most of the time. Teamwork is very important in today's society as an individual cannot survive on his own. Google encourages this teamwork but Lenovo has a lot of competition between individuals as each strive to try to get a better position in the company. Thus, I would prefer working in Google to Lenovo.

Reflective Journal 1

A week ago, we had our 1st Socio-Economic Studies lesson which was a new subject for us. We were briefed about the syllabus, mode of assessment and lessons.

From the briefing, I realized that this year, we are learning things that are much more practical (in real life), there are a lot of case studies and stuff. Furthermore, we are also learning wider. (from both China and the West instead of only Singapore).

About the modes of assessment, I am quite apprehensive about them because instead of the standard pen and paper test like other subjects(for example Math and Science), they are class discussions and reflective journals which has no fixed answers or format.(thus we are allowed to be creative) However, I am not sure I will do well in class discussions as I tend to not speak up in class and I do not actually read up about what is going to be taught before going for classes.(as I expect to be taught there) I am also not sure I will do well in reflective journals either, because I am not linguistically inclined and cannot express myself clearly in my journals. Moreover, I tend to not remember what was discussed during class and I am not good at taking down notes. Luckily, SES is not a subject by itself and only a component of another.

What I am worried about the most will be how class are conducted. Every lesson, there will be a student doing his termly presentation where he will present on what he has researched about the topic and direct the class discussion. I think this is the most problematic for me as you can only use cue cards and not a script and also there will be 30 other people looking at you for the whole time while you have to remain eye contact with them. The teacher will participate minimally and the discussion is mostly led by us. However, I wonder if this will truly be a effective way of learning as I know some people(maybe me) will not prepare for it and anyone hardly speaks up. Then, there will hardly be any discussion. Furthermore, there's a chance of us going off-topic and our research sources being unreliable. Then, we would be learning the wrong things.

Yesterday, we had our 1st academic lesson. We discussed about Cultural Intelligence(CQ), its definition, importance of it, and also the modes of assessment of the CQ test. At first, there were two different opinions on what Cultural Intelligence was, but after much thought, we decided on the 2nd one as it made more sense. Its definition was : Ability to function in a multicultural society. We agreed that we need CQ so that we can interact smoothly with others. Then we discussed about the 4 components of the CQ test and in which areas SES can help to improve in : 1. Drive(motivation) 2. Knowledge about different cultures/societies and understanding 3. Strategy(planning ahead, prevent offending others, reflecting upon experiences) 4. Action(behavior in front of people of different cultures) and we thought that SES could theoretically help in area 1 and 2. Personally, I feel that motivation is the most important area of the 4, as with motivation, you would tend to do well in the other areas too. Taking my own example, I am very interested in Japan, so I take Japanese as my third language where I learned about their culture and language. I also watch a lot of Japanese anime to grab a feel of an everyday life in Japan and their tradtions. Thus, I believe that motivation is very important. Yesterday's class was almost a discussion by ourselves with only a few prompts from our teacher. However, as we were not used to it, the discussion was slow and most participation was by the same person. Thus, I feel that the first few SES lessons can be improved by giving us more guidance. Lastly, I look forward to the SES lessons as I want to learn more about the economical powerhouses and this information may prove very useful in the future.