book, Lies my teacher told me

Note: I only finished reading the first 2 chapters. There are so many historical details that my brain is not ready to store. The key idea is that the winner tells the story to his favor. All the living human should be aware of that the history is not only about the glory heroine past, but also about the struggle and the brutal evolution. I read the 1st version. The 2nd version has included a few more textbooks and latest research.

lies my teacher told me, 1996, 2007

By James W.Loewen, whose Ph.D. in sociology from Harvard University is based on his research on Chinese Americans in Mississippi.

The book reflects Loewen’s belief that history should not be taught as straightforward facts and dates to memorize, but rather as analysis of the context and root causes of events. Loewen recommends that teachers use two or more textbooks, so that students may realize the contradictions and ask questions, such as, “Why do the authors present the material like this?”

Because textbooks employ such a godlike tone, it never occurs to most students to question them. “In retrospect, I ask myself, why didn’t I think to ask, e.g. who were the original inhabitants of the Americas, what was their life like, and how did it change when Columbus arrived. However, back then everything was presented as if it were the full picture, so I never thought to doubt that it was.”

sale figures are trade secrets.

1 handicapped by history: the process of Hero-making

Charles V. Willie

By idolizing those whom we honor, we do a disservice both to them and to ourselves.. we fail to recognize that we could go and do likewise.

The hidden history of Helen Keller advocate socialism and President Woodrow Wilson invaded South America.

Keller learned how the social class system controls people’s opportunities in life, sometimes determining even whether they can see.

I had once believed that we were all masters of our fate— that we could mold our lives into any form we pleased… But as I went more and more about the country I learned that I had spoken with assurance on a subject I knew little about. I forgot that I owed my success partly to the advantages of my birth and environment…

There are 3 great taboos in the textbook publishing: sex, religion, and social class. The notion that opportunity might be unequal in America is disliked by many textbook authors and teachers. Educators would much rather present Keller as a boring source of encouragement and inspiration to our young — if she can do it, you can do it!

A host of other reasons may help explain why textbooks omit troublesome facts:

• pressure from the ruling class
• pressure from textbook adoption committees
• the wish to avoid ambiguities
• a desire to shield children from harm or conflict
• the perceived need to control children and avoid classroom disharmony
• pressure to provide answers

We don’t want complicated icons. We seem to feel that a person like Helen Keller can be an inspiration only as long as she remains uncontroversial, one-dimensional.

Conclusions are not always pleasant. Most of us automatically shy away from conflict. We particularly seek to avoid conflict in the classroom.

1493

textbooks don’t tell:

• advances in military technology.
• social technology: bureaucracy, double-entry bookkeeping, mechanical printing
• ideological: collect wealth and dominate other people is positively valued as the key means of winning esteem. Pursuit of wealth as a motive for coming to American. Authors believe that to have America explored and colonized for economic gain is somehow undignified.
• readiness to embrace a new continent is the particular nature of European Christianity. evangelization
• Europe’s recent success in taking over and exploiting various island societies.

Deep down, our culture encourages us to imagine that we are richer and more powerful because we’re smarter. We are smarter so “it’s natural” for one group to dominate another.

Most important, his purpose from the beginning was not mere exploration or even trade, but conquest and exploitation, for which he used religion as a rationale.

When Columbus was selling Queen Isabella on the wonders of the Americas, the Indians were well built and of quick intelligence. They have very good customs, and the king maintains a very marvelous state, of a style so orderly that it is a pleasure to see it, and they have good memories and they wish to see everything and ask what it is and for what it is used. Later, when Columbus was justifying his wars and his enslavement of the Indians, they became cruel and stupid, a people warlike and numerous, whose customs and religions are very different from us.

It is always useful to think badly about people one has exploited or plans to exploit. Modifying one’s opinions to bring them into line with one’s actions or planned actions is the most common outcome of the process known as cognitive dissonance. No one likes to think of himself or herself as a bad person. We cannot erase what we have done, and to alter our future behavior may not be in our interest. To change our attitude is easier.

the truth about the 1st Thanksgiving

Humans evolved in tropical regions. People moved to cooler climates only with the aid of cultural inventions: clothing, shelter, and fire.

William McNeill reckons the population in 1492: Americans (100 M), Europe(70M). It is the plague that help European settlers dominate the population over the centuries.

In 1970, Wamsutta Frank James went to Plymouth and declared Thanksgiving day a National Day of Mourning for Native Americans.

The true history of Thanksgiving reveals embarrassing facts. The Pilgrims did not introduce the tradition; Eastern Indians had observed annual harvest celebration for centuries. Our modern celebrations date back only to 1863 during the civil war when the Union needed all the patriotism.

The antidote to feel-good history is not feel-bad history, but honest and inclusive history. If textbook authors feel compelled to give moral instruction, they could accomplish this aim by allowing student to learn both the good and the bad sides of the Pilgrim tale. The conflict would then become part of the story, and students might discover that the knowledge they gain has implications for their lives today.

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organizational behavior

Organizational Behavior, 13th, 2009

Robins, professor of SD state university

(15th, 2012),(16th, 2014), (17th, 2016)

content structure:

1. Introduction
2. individual: diversity, attitudes and job satisfaction, emotions and moods, personality and values, perception and decision making, motivation concepts and application
3. group: foundations, understanding, communications, leadership, power and politics, conflicts and negotiation, organization structure
4. organization system: organizational culture, HR policies and practices, organizational change and stress management.

1 what’s organizational behavior

In today’s increasingly competitive and demanding workplace, managers can’t succeed on their technical skills alone. They also have to have good people skills. This book has been written to help both managers and potential managers develop those people skills.

Organizations exist to achieve goals, someone has to define those goals and the means for achieving the: management is that someone. there are 4 functions:

1. planning: define an organization’s goals, establish an overall strategy for achieving those goals, develop a comprehensive set of plans to integrate and coordinate activities
2. organizing: determine what tasks are to be done, who is to do them, how the tasks are to ge grouped, who reports to whom, and where decisions are to be made.
3. leading: motivate employees, direct the activities of others, select the most effective communication channels, resolve conflicts among members.
4. controlling: monitor the organization’s performance,compare with the previously set goals, get the organization back on track.

Management has 3 roles: interpersonal(including symbolic head,leader, liaison), informational, decisional

Management has 3 skills: technical, human, conceptual (identify problem, develop alternative solutions to correct these problems).

Management has 4 activities:

• traditional management(decision making, planning, controlling),
• communication (exchanging routing information),
• human resource management(motivating, disciplining, managing conflict, staffing, and training)
• networking (socializing, politicking, interact with outsiders)

Average manager spends equal time to every activity. Effective managers (performance-oriented) spend 44% on communication and 26% on human resource, but successful manager(promotion-oriented) spend 48% on networking and politics, 28% on communication, 13% on traditional management, 11% on human resource.

Whether or not you’ve explicitly thought about it before, you’ve been reading people almost all your life. You watch what others do and try to explain to yourself why they have engaged in their behavior and predict what they might do under different sets of conditions. You can improve your predictive ability by your intuition and a more systematic approach.

You have a lot fo preconceived notions that you accept as facts. While OB is based on a number of behavioral disciplines, such as psychology, social psychology, sociology, and anthropology.

James March, Professor of OB at Stanford

God gave all the easy problems to the physicists.

OB was developed by applying general concepts to a particular situation, person, or group. OB scholars would avoid stating that everyone likes complex and challenging work. why? because not everyone likes a challenging job. Some people prefer the routine over the varied or the simple over the complex. A job that is appealing to one person may not be to another.

melting-pot assumption: different people would somehow automatically want to assimilate. It is being replaced by one that recognizes anv values differences.

3 attitude and job satisfaction

attitudes have 3 components: cognition, affect, and behavior.

cognitive dissonance by Eeon Festinger: any incompatibility an individual might perceive between two or more attitudes or between behavior and attitudes. Any form of inconsistency is uncomfortable and that individuals will attempt to reduce the dissonance and the discomfort.:

• change attitude
• change behavior
• develop a rationalization for the discrepancy

e.g. smoke. They can deny, brainwash themselves by articulating the benefit. Or they can quit their job because the dissonance is too great.

No one can completely avoid dissonance. The desire to reduce dissonance depends on:

• the importance of the elements creating it: fundamental values, self-interest, identification with individual
• how well he can control the element
• the rewards of the dissonance

Dissonance are more likely to occur when social pressures to behave in certain ways hold exceptional power.

Altitude-Behavior relationship is likely to be much more stronger if an attitude refers to something with which the individual has direct personal experience. Asking college students with no significant work experience how they would respond to working for an authoritarian supervisor is far less likely to predict actual behavior than asking that same question of employees who have actually worked for such individual.

Job Involvement/psychological empowerment. Good leaders empower their employees by involving them in decisions, making them feel their work is important, and giving them discretion to do their own thing.

4 personality and values

Stephen Schwarzman , CEO of Blackstone, might be described as relatively narcissistic. He says his mission in life is to inflict pain and kill off his rivals. “I want war, not a series of skirmishes.”

Personality is the sum total of ways in which an individual reacts to and interacts with others. Managers use personality tests in the hiring process or managing process.

Self-report surveys work well but the person may fake good to create a good impression. And the mood also affect the accuracy. Observer-rating surveys are a better predictor of success on the job.

Research in personality development has tended to better support the importance of heredity over the environment.

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator(MBTI) is the most widely used personality-assessment instrument. 100 questions.

• extravered/introverted (E/I)
• sensing/intuitive(S/N)
• thinking/feeling(T/F)
• judging/perceiving(J/P)

I may be ISTP

In spite of its popularity, most of the evidence suggests MBTI is not a valid measure of personality. One problem is its dichotomy division. Anyway, MBTI can be a valuable tool for increasing self-awareness and providing career guidance. But the results tend to be unrelated to job performance.

big 5

• conscientious: very careful about doing what you are supposed to do. responsible and dependable, an indicator of job performance
• emotional stability: positive and optimistic in their thinking and experience fewer negative emotions.
• extravert: experience more positive emotions and more freely express these feelings, perform better in jobs require significant interpersonal interaction. More socially dominate and a strong predictor of leadership. The downside is more impulsive than introverts. engage in risky behavior.
• openness. more creative, more comfortable with ambiguity and change, cope better with organizational change and more adaptable in changing contexts.
• agreeable: better liked, do better in interpersonally oriented jobs such as customer service. more compliant and rule abiding, do better in school. However, it is associated with lower level of carrer success, especially earnings. They may because they are poorer negotiators; they are so concerned with pleasing others that they often don’t negotiate as much for themselves as do others.

core self-evaluation

self-perfective: whether they like or dislike themselves, see themselves as capable and effective, in control of their environment. One study of Fortune 500 CEO showed that many are overconfident. But the point is, if we decide we can’t do something, we won’t try, and not doing it only reinforces our self-doubts.

Machiavellianism

Kuzi makes no apologies for the aggressive tactics he’s used to propel his career upward. “I’m prepared to do whatever I have to do to get ahead”.

pragmatic, maintains emotional distance, and believes that ends can justify means. “if it works, use it”.

manipulate more, win more, less persuaded, and persuade others more.

high Machs flourish in 3 situational factors:

1. interact face-to-face with others rather than indirectly
2. situation has a minimal number of rules and regulations
3. low Machs are distracted by emotional involvement with details irrelevant to winning

Whether high Machs make good employees depend on the type of job. In jobs that require bargaining skills(labor negotiation), offer substantial rewards for winning(commissioned sales), high Machs will be productive.

Narcissism

• likes to be the center of attention.
• tend to talk down to those who threaten them, treating others as if they were inferior.
• selfish and exploitive, carry the attitude that others exist for their benefit.

self-monitoring

• individual’s ability to adjust behavior to external, situational factors.
• show considerable adaptability in adjusting their behavior to external situational factors.
• highly sensitive to external cues and can behave differently in different situations.
• capable of presenting striking contradiction between public persona and private self.
• receive better performance rating, more likely to emerge as leader, more mobile in their career.

low self-monitor is politically inept, unable to adjust her behavior to fit changing situations. tend to display their true disposition and attitudes in every situation.

risk-taking

donald trump

Type A personality

aggressive, always moving/eating rapidly, feel impatient with the rate of most event, can’t cope with leisure time. obsessed with numbers. operate under moderate to high level of stress.

Type A do better than type B in job interviews because they are more likely to be judged as having desirable traits such as high drive, competence, aggressiveness, and success motivation.

proactive personality

identify opportunities, show initiative, take action, and persevere until meaningful change occurs. They create positive change in their environment, regardless of or even in spite of constraints or obstacles.

values

although values and personality are related, they’re not the same. Values are often very specific and describe belief systems rather than behavioral tendencies.

8 emotions and moods

emotional labor:

• felt emotion: individual’s actual emotions
• displayed emotions: the organization requires workers to show and considers appropriate for a given job. They are not innate; they are learned.
• surface acting: hiding one’s inner feelings and forgoing emotional expressions in response to display rules. deal with displayed emotion.
• deep acting: trying to modify one’s true inner feelings based on display rules. deal with felt emotion.

Surface acting is more stressful to employees than deep acting because it entails feigning one’s true emotions.

salary: (cognitive + emotion) > (cognitive-emotion) > (-cognitive-emotion) > (cognitive + emotion)

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book, Consumer Behavior

Consumer behavior: building marketing strategy, 10th,2007

Hawkins, Mothersbaugh

updated version: (11th, 2009), (12th, 2012), (13th, 2015)

content blocks:

1. introduction
2. external influences: cross-cultural variations, the changing American society(values, demographics and social stratification, subcultures, families and households, group influences)
3. internal influences: perception, learning, memory and product positioning, motivation, personality and Emotion, Attitudes and influencing attitudes, self-concept and lifestyle
4. consumer decision process: situational influences, problem recognition, information search, alternative evaluation and selection, outlet selection, postpurchase processes, customer satisfaction, customer commitment
5. organizations as consumers
6. marketing regulation

1 introduction

Modern human society is based on all kinds of exchanges. We are all consumers and already affected by various marketing strategies.

This textbook is to help student build careers in marketing management, sales, or advertising. Utilization of knowledge of consumer behavior in the development of marketing strategy is an art. it means the successful application of these scientific principles to particular situations requires human judgment that can’t be reduced to a fixed set of rules. Like masterpiece, great marketing strategies not only require knowledge and practice in general, but also require special talents, effort, timing and some degree of luck.

These products are targeting the same consumers with very similar products, yet they use 2 very difficult approaches. Why? They are based on different assumptions about consumer behavior and how to influence it.

All marketing decisions and regulations are based on assumptions and knowledge about consumer behavior. Decisions based on explicit assumptions and sound theory and research are more likely to be successful than are decisions based only on hunches or intuition.

consumer value

For example, owning a car can provide a number of benefits, depending on the person and the type of car, including flexible transportation, image, status, pleasure, comfort, and even companionship.

Providing superior customer value requires the organization to do a better job of anticipating and reacting to customer needs than the competition does.

Places like Starbucks and the Hard Rock Cafe are selling experiences more than food and beverages. An experience occurs when a company intentionally creates a memorable event for customers. Today, many firms are wrapping experiences around their traditional products and services in order to sell them better.

Failure to adequately understand one’s own strengths can cause serious problems. Like IBM’s first attempt to enter the home computer market beyond business customers.

evaluating all aspects of the firm:

1. financial condition
2. general managerial skills
3. production capabilities
4. research and development capabilities
5. technological sophistication
6. reputation
7. marketing skills: new-product development capabilities, channel strength, advertising abilities, service capabilities, marketing research abilities, market and consumer knowledge**

evaluate competitors:

1. If we are successful, which firms will be hurt( lose sales or opportunities)?
2. If they are injured, which has the capability (financial resources, marketing strengths) to respond? How are they likely to respond (reduce prices, increase advertising, introduce a new product)?
3. Is our strategy (planned action) robust enough to withstand the response of our competitors, or do we need additional contingency plans?

marketing communication

Many segments would not appreciate this ad, but it works with the targeted segment.

Marketing messages can range from purely factual statements to pure symbolism. The best approach depends on the situation at hand.

2. cross cultural variations in consumer behavior

Often these products are adapted to the local culture and assume meanings and use that greatly enrich the culture and the lives of its members. e.g. many American holiday traditions are spreading throughout the world.

On the other hand, some imports can be disruptive or controversial. e.g. Valentine’s day. Hindu and Indian beliefs generally restrict public displays of affections. American tobacco companies have aggressive marketing campaigns in most developing countries. In Japan, Western cigarette brands marketed as a kind of liberation tool.

Much of human behavior is learned rather than innate, culture does affect a wide array of behaviors. The nature of cultural influences is such that we are seldom aware of them. One behaves, thinks, and feels in a manner consistent with other members of the same culture because it seems “natural” or “right” to do so. We tend to obey cultural norm because the other way would seem unnatural.

For example, the topping of pizza is each country is quite different.

Cultures are not static and they evolve slowly over time. Marketing managers must understand both the existing cultural values and the emerging cultural values of the societies they serve.

There is a list of 18 values that are important in most cultures. Most of the values are shown as dichotomies but they are actually a continuum. e.g. 2 societies can each value tradition, but one may value it more than the other. For a society to place a low value on cleanliness does not imply that it places a high value on dirtiness.

In the US, the family is defined fairly narrowly. Strong obligations are felt only to immediate family members, and these diminish as family members establish new families.

In South American, Israel, and Asia, the role of the family is much stronger. Chinese have developed family-like links to a greater extent than almost any other culture. It stretches from close family, to slightly distant, to more distant, embracing people who are not really family but are connected to someone in one’s family and to all their families. So in the Chinese context, the family is really a system of contacts, rather than purely an emotional unit as in the west.

The roles of women are changing and expanding throughout much of the world. This is creating new opportunities as well as challenges for marketers. e.g. more Asian women who continue to work after the marriage has led to increased demand for time-saving products. Many Japanese women feel guilty preparing frozen vegetables in a microwave. Marketers would emphasize convenience and nutrition and position them as “modern up-to-date cooking”.

In mainland China, there are a traditionalist and modern segments. The challenge is to sort them out for marketing purposes.

Comparative ads are found to be distasteful in the collective culture. Such culture tends to place a strong value on uniformity and conformity.

US places a high value on cleanliness. Germ-fighting liquid soaps alone are a $16 billion market.

performance/status

power distance: the degree to which people accept inequality in power, authority, status, and wealth as natural or inherent in society.

high acceptance of power: India, China, Brazil, Mexico, France, Honking, Japan. In these countries, expert source has the greatest impact in an advertisement. Consumers are more likely to seek others’ opinions in making decisions.

low acceptance of power: Austria, Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden, US.

Western Europe and US tend to problem-solving, whereas Mexico and Middle-East countries all toward the fatalistic (belief what will happen has already been decided and can’t be changed). In some places, “no problem” actually means: there is a problem, but we don’t know what to do about it — so don’t worry!

sensual gratification (using sexy model) vs abstinence ( the practice of not doing or having something that is wanted or enjoyable)

work-life balance. hours work per week: Hong Kong (48.6), France(34.1).

nonverbal communications

Arbitrary meanings a culture assigns actions, events, and things other than words.

Two time perspectives

monochronic culture	polychronic culture
Do one thing at a time	many thing
concentrate on the job	highly distractible,subject to interrupt
take deadlines/schedule serious	secondary
committed to the job/task	committed to people and relationship
adhere to plan	change plans often and easily
emphasize promptness	promptness on the relationship
short-term relationship	prefer long-term relationship

Even within one culture, time perspectives can vary by age and by the situation. e.g. work is approached by monochromic, but leisure is by polychromic.

relationship

Americans, more so than most other cultures, form relationships and make friends quickly and easily and drop them easily also. This is partially due to their social and geographic mobility. People move every few years and must be able to form friendships in a short time period. In other parts of the world, relationships and friendships are formed slowly and carefully because they imply deep and lasting obligations.

To most Asians and Latin Americans, personal ties is more important than the written word. Good personal relationships and feelings are all that really matter in a long-term agreement. The social contacts developed between the parties are often far more significant than the technical specifications and the price. The major point of the negotiations is getting to know the people involved. Americans negotiate a contract; the Japanese negotiate a relationship. In many cultures, the written word is used simply to satisfy legalities. In their eyes, emotion and personal relations are more important than cold facts.

Chinese relationships are complex and described as guanxi:

• a continuing reciprocal relationship over an indefinite period of time
• favors are banked
• relationship network is built among individuals, not organizations
• status matter
• social relationship is prior to/a prerequisite to business relationship

Under the Chinese system, we would examine the character of a potential trading partner closely. The relationship is everything. The Chinese want to know and understand you before they buy from you.

American assume prices are uniform for all buyers. But in many Latin American, Asian, and Middle East countries, virtually all prices are negotiated prior to the sale, including industrial products.

Japenese seldom say no directly during negotiation, he might say “that will be very difficult” which would mean no. A responding “yes “ to a request often means I “understand” the request instead of “agree” to the request. Many Japanese find the Amercian tendency to look straight into another’s eyes when talking to be aggressive and rude.

American Value

10 motivation, personality, and emotion

Maslow’s hierarchy needs

McGuire’s Motivations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McGuire%27s_Motivations

1. cognitive/effective
2. preservation/growth
3. active/passive
4. internal/external

Consumers do not buy products; instead, they buy motive satisfaction or problem solutions.

Marketers don’t create needs, but they do create demand, the willingness to buy a particular product or service.

2 groups of motives:

1. manifest motives: conform to a society’s prevailing value system, freely admitted
2. reluctant to admit

Personality is an individual’s characteristic response tendencies across similar situations. It is behavioral tendencies. Most trait theories state that traits are inherited or formed at an early age and are relatively unchanging over the years. Differences between personality theories center on which traits or characteristics are the most important.

Brand personality

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