Archive for the ‘Beran Samuelson, Melissa’ Category

 by Professor Melissa Samuelson

 A story of protests in India is getting little coverage here in the United States.  The protest leader, Anna Hazare, began a fast, calling for the anticorruption agency to have enforcement power over the entire government.  His opposition wants the agency to have only an advisory role. Undoubtedly, this movement has many political implications, but most interesting is the breadth of support Hazare has gained.  In a country where social issues are usually drawn along party lines, socio-economic status, or caste, the anti-corruption movement has united much of India.  In fact, polls find that 87-93 percent of Indians nation-wide support Hazare.

 In the United States, many people are quick to point to other cultures and claim that ethics and business practices are relative.  That it would be culturally insensitive to impose our laws or standards on the rest of the world.  In some ways I agree with this: cultures and values do vary around the world, sometimes greatly, and imposing your culture on others can have disastrous consequences.  But I think this viewpoint comes with a great danger: we ignore the voices of those in communities who want to change the prevailing system, we ignore the rights of people who suffer from unjust systems by claiming that the injustice is “cultural”.

 There is no doubt that the poor suffer greatly from bribery and corruption, yet prevailing systems leave them trapped.  This movement in India shows that we cannot ignore corruption as something is culturally determined or even as a culturally accepted “cost” of doing business.  By fighting corruption, or even recognizing and supporting those who fight it, we help to create systems that are more conducive to business, development, and true expression of human values.    

 Recommended reading link

 Melissa Beran Samuelson, is a clinical professor at the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship at Thunderbird School of Global Management. Her research focuses on enhancing effectiveness of microfinance programs. She teaches business ethics and sustainability in the Entrepreneurship program in addition to a course on Microfinance and Microenterprise in India.  She oversees programs that enhancing entrepreneurship capacity in emerging economies.

By Professor Melissa Beran Samuelson

 As a business ethics professor, nothing annoys me more than ethics taught as a system of rules that students and business leaders must follow.  In fact, what draws me to the field is challenge of the topic, the ambiguity of finding your own path to deal with the practical challenges faced both personally and in business.

 This past week I attended the first Global Faculty conference on Giving Voice to Values.  This conference was the best I have ever attended on teaching ethics and gave great practical attention to empowering (NOT instructing) people to live their values through their business. 

 When we are in an ethical dilemma, we often know what the right thing to do is, but the trouble is being able to effectively act on our values.  Instead, we often work out our alternatives backwards, looking for what we think will give us the best outcome and then rationalizing the behavior.  Giving Voice to Values (GVV) turns this thinking around, focusing on developing tools (enablers) that allow us to expand those alternatives while also recognizing and breaking down barriers that disable or block our tendency to act with integrity.

 My favorite thing about the Giving Voice to Values philosophy is that it works for anyone, working in any corporate environment, in cultures around the world.  The challenges we face in ethical behavior are often embedded in context: our industry, workplace, laws, culture, values, and even individual personalities.  GVV allows us to develop a personal strategy for dealing with the individual challenges we might face so that we can do what is right, regardless of the context.

 The conference was at Babson University and is rooted in the work of Mary Gentile, author of the book Giving Voice to Values: How to Speak Your Mind When You Know What’s Right.  I’ve met Mary on a couple of occasions and I’m very excited about the growth of Giving Voice to Values and I highly recommend her very readable book to anyone looking for more effective ways to break down the barriers to ethical business practices faced around the world.

 Melissa Beran Samuelson, ABT is a clinical professor at the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship at Thunderbird School of Global Management. Her research focuses on enhancing effectiveness of microfinance programs. She teaches business ethics and sustainability in the Entrepreneurship program in addition to a course on Microfinance and Microenterprise in India.  She oversees programs that enhancing entrepreneurship capacity in emerging economies.

Professor Melissa Beran Samuelson

Between the oilfields and sand dunes of the Sahara desert in Algeria is a town called Ouargla.  Kasdi Merbah University of Ouargla is a bustle of activity in an otherwise quiet town.

I was in Ouargla last week as a part of the University Linkages program, supported through the US Department of State and through a partnership with World Learning International.  The goal of the program is to enhance cooperation and to support education in Algerian universities.  Algeria is currently moving from a government directed curriculum to a curriculum based on the European model of University education.  It’s a great time to work with them to find additional courses and teaching strategies that will enhance the quality of business education in Algeria.

One of the most enthusiastic professors I met was the University’s sole Entrepreneurship professor.  His energy was contagious and when he talked about teaching Entrepreneurship as key to business education for the students in Algeria, the whole faculty nodded their agreement.

When I asked about the barriers to entrepreneurship in Algeria, I was told that it is not a question of funding.  There is a strong financing system in place for local entrepreneurs, and the students just need to know how to access it.  Further, the business culture of Algeria has not been one of risk-taking or entrepreneurship in the past.  It is now seen as a hope for the future.  “The opportunities to work in the multinational companies in Hassi Masoud [a nearby town] are limited. Entrepreneurship is something they can take advantage of wherever their home is.  We need to motivate the students and show them it can be done.”

Certainly, I saw that the enterprising spirit is there.  In addition to our partnership with Ouargla on developing their business curriculum, they are starting a career center, aimed at creating greater linkages between local business and the University.  Even the students themselves have taken the initiative to fill educational needs: English students at Ouargla started an English club, and from there found support at the University and US Embassy to take a room on the campus to create the “American Corner”, a center with computers, a library, and a circle of tables for discussion and topical speeches.   The students created a campus magazine called Student’s Haven to capture articles and information about life on campus.

As we work with Kasdi Merbah University of Ouargla, we will conduct webinars, faculty trainings, support course development and look for opportunities to link students across the campuses.  The program will connect Thunderbird with a part of the world that few have the opportunity to visit and will give both Universities a chance to learn from each other.

Melissa Beran Samuelson, ABT is a clinical professor at the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship at Thunderbird School of Global Management. Her research focuses on enhancing effectiveness of microfinance programs. She teaches business ethics and sustainability in the Entrepreneurship program in addition to a course on Microfinance and Microenterprise in India.  She is in charge of programs enhancing entrepreneurship capacity in emerging economies.

A note from Melissa Beran Samuelson, Clinical Instructor of Global Entrepreneurship: We finished our Winterim in India last Friday. Below, a student shares some of what she learned on the trip. The debate around microfinance interest rates in India is heated, especially around the role government regulation should play, if any.  There is talk of capping microfinance interest rates in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, but lenders claim this reduces incentives for competition, which they prefer as a more robust way of lowering interest rates. However, there is no research supporting the idea that competition reduces rates charged by microfinance institutions in the industry. Even so, it’s hard to find microfinance clients in India who are concerned about interest rates or even take it into consideration when deciding to take a loan.

By Thunderbird student Jacquelyn Hunter

When people hear on the news that microfinance institutions charge 25 percent, 30 percent or even 80 percent interest on loans, they often are outraged. How can these organizations get away with charging the poor these high rates, and why does no one regulate the industry? And most of all, why are the poor paying these exorbitant rates?

One of the biggest surprises to me during my three-week trip to India to study the microfinance industry is the fact that the interest rate on a microfinance loan is basically a nonissue for the poor.  When a poor person takes a loan from a microfinance institution, the interest rate is not the No. 1 or even a top 5 concern. Since the loan repayment cycle is so short, sometimes only 30 weeks, the interest rate does not have as much of an impact compared to a loan, for example, that is repaid over 20 years.  Also, the interest rate is a simple interest rate, so the impact on payments is not as dramatic as it would be on loans with compounding interest rates.
Read more »

A note from Melissa Beran Samuelson, Clinical Instructor of Global Entrepreneurship: After spending our first few days in Delhi, students went on their first visit into the field, seeing microfinance in action. Our first visit was to Bazaari Microfinance, an organization that has been doing group lending for about three years.

The staff at Bazaari opened their organization to us, from meetings with the Board and Chairman, to the CEO, all the way to allowing us to meet and ask questions of their clients, microloan recipients who make around $2 a day creating beautiful tie-dyed shawls with an art called “bandage.” Others have small stalls for selling jewelry.

We spent one day in the field with them and then a day speaking with their leadership and board. A short article on our visit can be found here on the Microfinance India news page. As I watched the students in the field, it was clear that this was the moment that they had come on this trip to experience. It was a moving experience for all of them. Below is one student’s perspective on this first visit, working with loan officers, branch managers, and microfinance clients.

By Thunderbird student Renée Telkamp, R.Telkamp@global.t-bird.edu

After a plane ride surrounded by Indians, some browsing through my travel guide, and with good academic understanding of microfinance, I felt more or less ready for the real deal. The first three days of this Winterim were spent in meeting rooms in Delhi. If this sounds boring to you, you obviously weren’t with us. Cell phone banking, solar lights, unions, government regulations, NGOs, Non Banking Institutions, multiple lending and all the other concepts were discussed and put into place.
Read more »

By Melissa Beran Samuelson, Clinical Instructor of Global Entrepreneurship

Our friends in the US are seeing increasing attention to microfinance in the news through the New York Times and a blog in the Wall Street Journal. For those students with me on the Microfinance in India Winterim, the contemporary debates surrounding microfinance in India have surrounded us.  Our course started in Delhi, where we’ve had the opportunity to be introduced to industry leaders and gain understanding of microfinance, how it works, and the issues surrounding criticisms of the industry.

Byomkesh Mishra of the Royal Bank of Scotland Foundation and Shrikand Shrivastava, Vice President and Head of Microfinance at RBS Global Banking, helped kick off our program, along with playing a central role by arranging access to their partners in the industry.  The program so far has included speakers Brij Mohan, Deepak Alok, Founder and Director of M2i Consulting, and Mathew Titus, Executive Director of Sa-Dhan, the leading microfinance network in India, who have all met with us to discuss contemporary issues and implications of the current conditions of microfinance in India.
Read more »

By Melissa Beran Samuelson, Clinical Instructor of Global Entrepreneurship

MBA students taking Ethics and Governance in fall 2010 got to work in groups and compete in the course’s Sustainable Innovation Project. The project came about as a result of a collaboration between myself and Jenny Cross, Director of Sustainability at Mohawk Industries, the leading flooring manufacturer in the world.  Recently the company has put a lot of effort toward setting sustainability goals in line with environmental and business values. I had met Jenny last spring at a conference where she talked about the business case for sustainability solutions at Mohawk.

As we connected over email, we talked about the issues that keep a Sustainability Director of a global company up at night.  This conversation turned into an idea to engage students directly in sustainability and stakeholder considerations by asking them to work on a project from Mohawk’s perspective.  This project gave the students real-world experience dealing with questions faced by managers and executives that would apply to any industry in the globalized economy.

Two sections of the class were asked to work on the question of how Mohawk Industries could effectively engage various stakeholders and manage stakeholder feedback.  Another two sections of the class worked on issues surrounding extended producer responsibility (EPR) in the carpet industry and how Mohawk might manage potential “government legislated” sustainability demands.
Read more »

By Melissa Beran Samuelson

Microfinance has become a trend that’s catching attention across the world.  This Wednesday, October 6th, the New York Times reported on Vinod Khosla, an Indian Angel Investor who was also co-founder of Sun Microsystems, and his support of microfinance as a powerful social enterprise tool.  In fact, he believes more wealthy Indians should look to these businesses as opportunities and invest (rather than donate) to combat poverty.  It’s a compelling argument, supported by the evidence of SKS’s success with its IPO in August.
Read more »

By Melissa Beran Samuelson

Friday marked the last day of SEEDS and our graduation ceremony for the program participants from Jordan. Owing to our beautiful weather, we took the opportunity to hold the ceremony in the pavilion outside the Yount building on campus. Dr. Angel Cabrera, Thunderbird’s president, gave the graduation address. As he spoke he emphasized what it means to be a part of the Thunderbird community and the Oath of Honor, which places an emphasis on sustainable value creation. It was a wonderful reminder of the power of business and the goals to which we aspire.

As the graduation ended, it became clear what this week has meant to the participants. A few tears and a lot of hugs told us all that what we had done was more than just run a few seminars … it had been a truly transformative experience for the businesswomen. Many of the mentors shared that they felt the same way.

SEEDS was an opportunity for these women to not only build skills, but also connections and relationships with other successful women. The goal is that partnering the women with mentors and other business leaders will provide the women with opportunities to expand on what they learned in the seminars, continue setting goals for their business, and overcome challenges they will face in the future. We are so thankful for the mentors and their commitment to the program as they continue connecting with their Jordanian mentee over email and phone over the next two years.

By Melissa Beran Samuelson

Sunday brunch is a classic American tradition that brings family and friends together for a relaxed meal before the work week begins again. We seem to rush through so many of the week’s meals in the United States, but Sunday brunch is different. Today’s patio brunch with the SEEDS participants hosted by the Walker Center for Global Entrepreneurship was a wonderful event, with great weather and beautiful views of the desert landscape.