Moran 2011 citing R.D. Lewis on page 257 reminds us that the Muslim religion expresses open tolerance for other faiths and enrichment of coexistence is the rule rather than the exception. Additionally, the famous term “jihadist” terrifies people and they associate it with external violence to non-Muslims. When in fact a true “Jihadi” is the person who does “jihad” against his inner evils such as greediness, lust etc. basically a battle against what is known as the seven deadly sins. This week we learned about how Islam isn’t simply a religion but a way of life. There is no separation of church and state like we have in USA. What many people fail to understand is that Islam is a religion of peace not war. Many people have a stereotype of Muslims as terrorists. This stereotype is actually untrue. The religion of Islam actually teaches peace and tolerance just like most other religions around the world. The problem is that many people’s exposure to Islam came on September 11, 2001, in New York City. This is what is known in psychology as the availability heuristic: calling up a known event to form an opinion even when the information is atypical (Lesson 7:The Middle East Focus on Saudi Arabia, 2014).Even the common greeting amongst Muslims “As-salamu alaykum’’ literally translates to May peace be upon you. For the past decade, the media has been full of how women in the Middle East have been oppressed because they are forced to wear a headscarf and are not allowed to work.

 

What the people don’t realize is that Islam considers the women and men as apples and oranges. Two different entities not to be compared. And if they were to be compared, women would always come out to be on top. Over fourteen hundred years ago, Islam gave Middle Eastern women rights that women in the west have only recently began to enjoy. In the 1930’s Annie Besant observed, “It is only in the last twenty years that Christian England has recognized the right of woman to property while Islam has allowed this right from all times. Both men and Women are equally encouraged to seek knowledge despite the stereotype that women are not allowed to study. The prophet (peace be upon him) said, “Education is compulsory for every Muslim.” Indeed the literacy rate for majority of the Middle Eastern Countries are quite high as compared to other countries. For example according to the CIA World Fact book, 87.2% of the total population is literate. Out of that, 90.8% are males while 82.2% are females. Job training and education have become a focus on the government. One of the recent developments is the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (CIA, n.d.). Thus doing people should be eager to do business with middle easterners but a lot of them aren’t. Why you may ask? Islamophobia is the reason in my opinion. Some people blame it on 9/11 but in my opinion, the roots of it go further deeper. 9/11 just added fuel to the fire.

 

In 1993, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee confronted the Walt Disney Company about Anti-Arab racist content in its animated Film Aladdin. At first Disney denied any problems but eventually relented and changed two lines in the opening song. Members of the ADC were still unhappy with the portrayal of Arabic characters and the referral to the Middle East As “Barbaric”. According to Wikipedia, America rebuilt and Americans came together after 9/11. In doing so, however, Islamophobia and anti-Middle Eastern sentiment imbedded itself into the American Psyche. Furthermore, America was put on high alert. We had been attacked and we felt as though we may be attacked again at any moment. To this day, no one can sit in an airport, on a bus or subway, walk in a mall or be in any other public space without constantly being told to keep an eye out for “unattended bags” and “if we see something suspicious, report it.

Thus cross-cultural learning is a must and not be taken lightly. The Latin term “Ignorantia juris non excusat”: ignorance of the law excuses no one applies here. The media is filled with stereotypes about Islam and with it the Middle East. Take the recent example of the debate between Bill Maher, Raza Aslan and then Ben Affleck who read up on it instead of just believing the stereotypes ((Link to video provided in References). One example he provided to defend his position about Middle Eastern people were the rules of War in Islam:

References:

Article & Video: Bloomberg, A. (2014, September 30). Reza Aslan Blasts Bill Maher, Media For ‘Unsophisticated’ Reporting On Islam. InHuffington Post. Retrieved October 12, 2014, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/30/reza-aslan-bill-maher_n_5907612.html

Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ). ( n.d. ). The world factbook. Retrieved at https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/index.html

Pennsylvania State University. (2014). OLEAD 497B: Lesson 7: The Middle East:  Focus on Saudi Arabia. pg. 2 Retrieved at: https://cms.psu.edu

Moran, R. T., Harris, P. R., Moran, S.V. (2011) Managing Cultural Differences Leadership Skills and Strategies for Working in a Global World. Oxford:Routledge. pg. 25.

Picture retrieved 1 from Wade, L. (2012, February 22). DEFINING WOMEN’S OPPRESSION: THE BURKA VS. THE BIKINI. In Social Images . Retrieved October 12, 2014, from http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/02/22/questioning-definitions-of-freedom/

Picture retrieved 2 from Facebook.com

Picture retrieved 3 from Bloomberg, A. (2014, September 30). Reza Aslan Blasts Bill Maher, Media For ‘Unsophisticated’ Reporting On Islam. InHuffington Post. Retrieved October 12, 2014, from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/30/reza-aslan-bill-maher_n_5907612.html

Women’s Rights in Islam (n.d.). In Islamic Information & Services Network of Astralasia. Retrieved October 12, 2014, from http://www.iisna.com/articles/pamphlets/womens-rights-in-islam/

 

 

After being sick for four months straight and slowly losing all my weight, I finally got diagnosed with Ulcerative colitis in June 2013. The doctor prescribed me steroids and told me to eat as much as I can to gain weight. I was 80 pounds at that time. Presto! Within three days, I was normal and eating numerous bowls of my favorite food like Ice cream, cakes, and brownies as snacks each day. French fries were my breakfast and fattening greasy yummy Indian food were my lunch and dinner. Alas, within two months I got sick again. The doctor increased my steroid dose to the maximum and again within two days I was fine and on my way to gaining weight again. Unfortunately, yet again only a month later, I got sick. I was getting tired of this vicious cycle. Something was not right. A change was needed. Right at this moment, I went through what Schein describes as the process of ‘Unfreezing’. My motivation to change had been created. Unfreezing is stage 1 in Schein’s three-stage model of planned stage.

Stage 2: Changing of Scheins three-stage model of planned changed was the hardest part of the whole concept. Schein provided us with two main mechanism for achieving this change. The first one being identification: connecting with a respected person and learning the new behaviors and/or attitudes from that person. Basically adopting a mentor who has gone through the change himself. In my case, my mentor was a group of people from online discussion forum who had also started on the path of eating healthy and shared their experiences there. They provided me with lots of success stories and helpful tips to succeed in this new diet such as never starve yourself and take several small meals a day so you never feel hungry. Also, satisfy your cravings by eating something on the ‘naughty’ list once a month in moderation so you don’t feel the need to binge eat. I also found numerous healthy recipes online and by adopting the second mechanism of change by ‘scanning the environment’. I discovered an air fryer, which cooks with only a few drops of oil, and mainly through hot air hence we were able to eat delicious food that would otherwise have been considered unhealthy due to the amount of oil in them.

The final stage in Schein’s (1980) planned change theory is stabilizing the changes by freezing the new behaviors into the standard behavior. There are two mechanisms in the refreezing stage: fit to self-concept and whether significant others will accept and confirm the changes. The fit to self-concept mechanism is about being able to test the new behaviors or attitudes to see how well they fit with the person him or herself. This works best if there is a safe environment in the organization to try the change (i.e., without repercussions when failed and with support from others involved). It is important to note that just because people show the changed behavior once or even a few times, that does not necessarily mean that it is a permanent behavior. They can regress to the old ways if that supportive environment is not present. We started this new lifestyle in December during the holidays. Hence, we were not met with any resistance and thankfully were able to sustain this process.The second mechanism in the refreezing stage is highly related to the first. It is about whether significant others in the organization will accept the changes in the person’s behavior as well as confirm it through organizational supports, such as changing technology to match the new behavior or providing access to the people needed to accomplish the changes.(Penn State, 2014). In our case within the first month, positive changes started to happen. My father lost about 10 pounds in a month while I gained five pounds. These changed propelled us to keep going forward. So after the holidays when we ventured out into the social world, as soon as everyone saw the positive changes in us, they were extremely supportive and became encouraged themselves to try and change their life style. Thus it has now been a year and a half since we changed our life style through schein’s three-stage planned model of stage. I haven’t gotten sick again and I am being slowly weaned of all my medications while my family as a whole has also lost a lot of weight and are now great champions of healthy eating.

References:

Pennsylvania State University. (2014). OLEAD 497B: Lesson 5: Learning and Change in a global setting. Retrieved at: https://cms.psu.edu

Picture 1 retrieved from:

http://www.radioactiverunner.com/?p=771

Picture 2 retrieved from:

http://www.justrun.org/JR_for_kids/diet_and_nutrition.htm

Picture 3 retrieved from:

http://ic-pod.typepad.com/design_at_the_edge/organisational_change/

Schein, E. H. (1980). Organizational psychology. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Communication is defined as  interpersonal acts that exchange meaning and information” (Schneider, Gruman, & Coutts, 2013, p. 126). The process of communication is fairly simple. An idea is produced and then molded into a message by an individual known as the sender. The person receiving the message is known as the receiver who then decodes it. This process has been labeled as Encoding-Decoding. Subsequently, if the receiver decides to pass on the message, his role will change into that of the sender. One thing that is important to note about the process of communication is that it always occurs in a context.

Moran (2013) expands on this concept of culture occurring in a context and endorses the importance of taking context and culture into consideration for both the sender and the receiver. For instance I visited Saudi Arabia a few years ago. While visiting a jewelry store, the call to prayer came on the loud speaker. Suddenly, all the store clerks just put down the jewelry and walked outside without a word. I was perplexed, I tried to stop one of them and ask if we were the reason they were leaving but they just got annoyed. Later, I realized that majority of the transactions stop for a while when the ‘azaan’ call to prayer starts.  Me stopping the clerk to ask was a gaffe. When the azaan comes on you are not supposed to communicate during it, just listen politely. Hence you have to be very cautious about when and how you communicate.

Edward Hall, a prominent anthropologist differentiates between two types of context-cultures: High or low context cultures. High-context culture utilizes more ambiguous methods of communication. Messages are in either physical context or internalized in the person with little communicated in the explicit words. Japan, Saudi Arabia & Spain are cultures that are occupied in high-context communications. In such cultures, the listener is already ‘in the loop’, already ‘contexted’ and thus do not need to updated. While in low-context cultures such as Canada or the United States, the listener knows very little and has to be filled in about everything from the start. Thus it is crucial that people acknowledge what kind of culture they come from and what kind of culture they are dealing with in their everyday life to avoid any kind of communication misunderstandings. A person coming from a high context culture would get annoyed when dealing with some one from a low context culture person because they would have to explain every little detail to them. Thus individuals should not take communication lightly and should pay more heed to how they are conducting it, especially taking body language into consideration. For example Hand gestures: Moran gives the example of a Canadian patting a child on the head being an affectionate gesture while in Malaysia the head is considered the source of one’s intellect and should not be touched. One should always remember that communication is irreversible. You cannot take it back. For example once you send a text message it’s done, you can’t erase it!

References:

Moran, R.T, Harris, P.R, Moran, S.V. (2011) Managing Cultural Differences Leadership Skills and Strategies for Working in a Global World. Oxford: Routledge

Picture retrieved from:

http://beaconnews.ca/calgary/2011/11/how-culture-controls-communication/

Redmond, Brian (2014) Lesson 4, Global Communication. The Pennsylvania State University: World Campus

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2013). Applied social psychology: Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. Los Angeles: Sage.

 

 

Being a senior, who is just about to graduate from university & currently scouting the corporate world to search for jobs (double major in Psych & Econ) I myself have witnessed & heard of discrimination, more specifically marital status discrimination- stories from a bevy of friends who are also searching for jobs here in Pakistan.

A popular question asked of young women in Pakistan, which I have been asked myself is whether they are married or single. Engaged women are often not given jobs because the employers assume that they will quit their job after marriage and all the time/money that the company would have spent in training the employee would have been lost. A lot of women in Pakistan do chose to assume the sole role of housewives & mothers but that doesn’t mean that women who actually want a career should be discriminated against. This kind of discrimination is based on Deep-level diversity, which we learnt about in the lesson for this week. They are those differences in beliefs, values, attitudes, etc., that do affect much more directly how a person behaves. One could also argue that Surface-level diversity (Demographic differences such as hair color, sex, skin color, height, weight, age, and so on) is also prevalent here since men are not discriminated against on this topic due to their gender.

I chose to delve deeper on this topic because it is quite prevalent in my country but alas there are not that many laws in place to counter this kind of discrimination-or of they are then they are not publicised. According to a Policy Briefing series: In America, under Federal Law, only the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 protects federal employees from discrimination based on their marital status. The Equal Employment Opportunity Act, which is a well-known act, does not protect women from this particular kind of discrimination. However, 21 states do offer protection separately against employment based on marital status. Alas in Pakistan you can do nothing about it but fume in anger!

In my opinion, hiring should be based on merit alone & their marital status should be irrelevant. According to our lesson, Diversity falls under the umbrella of human rights when looking at the bigger picture when we look at societies as a whole. Human rights are universal standards for the treatment of all people. These rights typically include basic ideas such as dignity, liberty, and freedom from discrimination. Thus if we don’t stop discrimination as a whole in every aspect of our life then we are hindering our own success.

Reference:

Pennsylvania State University. (2014). Lesson 3: Diversity. Retrieved at: https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa14/olead497b/001/content/03_lesson/03_page.html

Sloan Foundation, A. P. (2009). Opportunities For Policy Leadership On Marital Status Discrimination. Retrieved September 11, 2014, from https://workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/sites/workfamily.sas.upenn.edu/files/imported/pdfs/policy_makers21.pdf

United Nations. (n.d.). The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieved fromhttp://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml

Picture retrieved from:

http://www.paycheck.in/main/world-map-gender-pay-gap/gender-pay-gap-in-india-1

 

Being appointed the Chief Operating Officer of a start up Non Governmental Organization: ‘Hamara Ghar’ also known as House of Dreams, started by my high school, to raise money to provide homes for homeless people, was a defining moment in my leadership experience and made me realize the inherent role that culture plays in determining the success or failure of leadership.

My first plan of action as a COO was to find new members. Being a new organization, I was given carte blanche to recruit my team. Thus I started my search for officers whose values: Personal and Cultural matched my own. According to our lesson, Values are a person’s frame of reference for things such as good/evil, beautiful/ugly, important/unimportant, dangerous/safe, irrational/rational, moral/immoral, etc. Personal values form our perception of the world and our perceptions of how it affects us. Cultural values are the shared frame of reference for a group. They are what the group as a whole thinks is good or evil, beautiful or ugly, important or unimportant, and so on. Cultural values are the average values of the group. Values also determine behavior (Rokeach, 1973) hence after a rigorous round of interviews I selected five members out of twenty applicants whose values matched my own.

Since we were a relatively new organization we followed a long-term orientation of culture, which is when a culture is future oriented (Hofstede, 2001; Hofstede & Hofstede, n.d.). With the help of my team, I had to define the aims and long-term goals of my organization and a plan of action for future leaders for when my reign of two years ended.

My last plan of action as a COO was to organize a massive fundraiser in the form of a carnival that raised a million Rupees and enabled us to purchase an apartment building that would be used to house homeless people. However, organizing the fundraiser was fraught with problems for me. Since I lived in a country, which is based on Hofstede’s Masculinity culture I had a tough time getting people to take me seriously. People believed that in this masculine culture it is men that should be assertive and competitive while the women should tend to be more nurturing(Hofstede, 2001; Hofstede & Hofstede, n.d.). Hence I had to employ various techniques such as prepare a short PowerPoint to prove my seriousness to the numerous advertisement sponsors.

However, all’s well that ends well! The Fundraiser carnival was a great success thanks to unique booths, which integrated the national culture of our country. The idea to ingrain national culture in our fundraiser was a sound one because according to our lesson, national culture is strong as it is embedded in people earlier in their lives during critical value formation stages. We had booths that provided traditional henna application, a concert that had a medley of the most popular national songs and fun national games that drew upon the massive amount of Ethnocentrism, which is present in today’s society in my city. Ethnocentrism is an “exaggerated tendency to think the characteristics of one’s own group or race is superior to those of other groups or races” (Drever, 1952, p. 86). Our lesson states that Ethnocentrism leads to stereotyping and treating outsiders differently-not well usually. However, on a side note, our society is an outlier in my opinion because though there is a lot of stereotyping present, generally most people want to adapt a western image hence any foreign visitor is treated extremely well!

This I ended my reign as COO on an extremely positive note and would say that my rule was a resounding success because I adopted the saying of  famous Chinese philosopher Lao Tsu who said: To lead people, walk beside them … As for the best leaders, the people do not notice their existence. The next best, the people honor and praise. The next, the people fear; and the next, the people hate … When the best leader’s work is done the people say, ‘we did it ourselves!

 

LINK TO NGO: https://sites.google.com/a/nixorcollege.edu.pk/nixor-corporate/home/hamara-ghar

References:

Drever, H. E. (1952). A dictionary of psychology. Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin.

Hofstede, G. (2001). Culture’s consequences: Comparing values, behaviors, institutions, and organizations across nations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Rokeach, M. (1973). The nature of human values. New York: The Free Press.

Redmond, B. (2014). Ethnocentrism. Retrieved September 3, 2014, from

https://courses.worldcampus.psu.edu/fa14/olead497b/001/content/02_lesson/05_page.htm

 

HEY!

Nice to meet you! Hope you enjoy my blog. Link is posted below:

https://sites.psu.edu/hanablog/

Take care,

Hana 🙂