(Zhu Town, China) Time to refresh the mind.

Random Tidbits

I just got my visa for working in China. The background for the visa is the Great Wall of China. Wasn’t the Great Wall meant to keep people out of China? How inappropriate for a visa.

I met the Brazilian Ambassador to Germany. He was talking to my friend and told him to come to Brazil. The ambassador leaned over and whispered “Brazil has an air of mystique…the girls are really hot.” What a quaint way of advertising the country at a business conference!

Summer Reading

In addition to the papers I will need to read this summer, I have added the following items to my reading list for my research and enrichment:

Fin 101 Honors Supplement Reading (with notes)

The stuff I missed out because I had been so busy. (

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut’s absurdist classic Slaughterhouse-Five introduces us to Billy Pilgrim, a man who becomes unstuck in time after he is abducted by aliens from the planet Tralfamadore.

The Global Transformations Reader

Readings from both sides of the globalization debate.

The Market for Virtue

What corporate social responsibility can, cannot, and must accomplish in a modern capitalist economy.

Harvard Business School on Corporate Social Responsibility

Random articles on the topic of CSR.

Corporate Social Responsibility and the Shaping of Global Public Policy

Addresses the strengths and limits of contemporary corporate social responsibility (CSR) by describing in detail the rich networks that have grown up in the last decade to support and drive business sustainability.

Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility

Textbook overview to modern CSR movement.

Mountains Beyond Mountains

A biography of Paul Farmer, renowned doctor who has embarked on changing the global medical debate.

Pathologies of Power by Paul Farmer

Pathologies of Power is a jeremiad on how the “structural violence” of denied opportunities, economic deprivation, violent despots (and the powers supporting them), and international financial organizations harm the health of billions of people who are so distant that they are glibly and uncomprehendingly referred to as living in a “third world.”

(Muju, Korea) Friends! Celebrating many years of their support!

On the cheerier side of life, my birthday passed on April 19, and I have been touched by the number of well-wishing I have had from friends in Penn and beyond. It is really gratifying to know that there are so many people on campus who care about me, and I hope to spend more time staying in touch with them next semester.

The last grant I received is the Wharton Summer Research Grant. As much as I bitch about Wharton (admittedly undeservingly), it has been most supportive of my research. I also met Prof Hsieh, another Wharton professor who has been really supportive of my research, to discuss how I should go about it. He is really excited as the subset of companies I am looking at has never been really examined in corporate social responsibility literature. He believes that my work could potentially make an important contribution to the field.

Considering all the help I have had from professors who have expressed confidence in my work, I really hope to put my heart and soul into my summer work, produce excellent literature and use this literature as a starting point to drive change in the corporate world. And as a side benefit, good research produced will give me the satisfaction of showing CURF that I can live as a scholar without it.

(Bangkok, Thailand) The wonderful night markets in Thailand.

The past week has been an emotional rollercoaster for me. While my disappointments pale beside the tragedy at Virginia Tech, the proximity of my trifling failures make them loom large in my mind.

Failure 1:

The paper on healthcare corruption and how healthcare model we created can tackle it, which I submitted early this semester to the Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics, was not accepted. This was really painful as I worked hard on that paper, and the conference was a good opportunity to share our healthcare solution with an interested community. Then again, I should have been wary of writing for a tangentially related topic (corruption) as my paper seemed like fitting a square peg into a round hole: the corruption I talked about in my paper focused on institutionalized corruption while the winners all come from countries that have corruption in the form the World Bank is trying to tackle.

Is there any takeaway from this? I knew beforehand that the corruption I am focusing on differed from what the organizers wanted. Given a second chance, I would still have written and submitted the paper anyway. I will still be heading to the World Health Organization to discuss my ideas, and that will probably allow me to have a greater impact on the field.

Failure 2:

I did not get the Provost Undergraduate Research Mentorship (PURM). I applied for four research grants, getting all except for the PURM. The other grants I received have greater prestige and involve full research on my part, instead of the research assistantships that PURM largely supports. However, I am upset as PURM was the largest grant, especially for living expenses. More upsetting is the process by which the grant recipients were chosen, and how PURM makes certain assumptions about freshmen.

I know one person receiving PURM and he is brilliant and definitely deserving of the award. However, I feel that the way PURM was divvied out could be improved on. PURM is available only to freshman and was introduced last year. Many of the academic advisors I talked to told me that no one really knew how the selection process was like, as it was a newly implemented grant rushed out because the President was appalled by our falling rates of academic awards. The application required only the applicant’s GPA and 250 words talking about his or her interest in the project and previous research experiences. No resume or recommendations were required. This leads to the follow flaws:

1. Flawed axiom leading to flawed process: Freshmen have to do research assistantships as they are not ready to conduct their own research. Process thus focused on selecting professors rather than students (see 4).
2. Lack of other support information placed undue emphasis on GPA. This weed out applicants who might not have the strongest GPA in the first semester, but whose research interests and talents reveal themselves in other ways (e.g. a research assistantship).
3. Because most freshmen cannot get internships, many applicants have little interest in research and simply wanted a summer job. Perhaps the program wanted to attract these people and expose them to research, but I feel the heavy concentration of grant money makes this a poor policy for pursuing this aim.
4. Because of the brevity of the application, the first selection probably was of the professor’s projects which the university felt were worth funding. If this was the case, they should not have posted all the projects submitted by professors up. This was unfair to students who have an interest in a specific project but would not receive PURM funding not because the student lacked merit, but because the project they chose was not favored.

The matching process was terrible. I admit to being a little bitter and disappointed with the Center for Undergraduate Research and Fellowships (CURF) at Penn. I have met some amazing advisors at CURF, but in general, most of my dealings with them have been disappointing (I could give a list of my complaints but I probably have bored you by now). From talking to seniors and juniors, I realized that a lot of people have had bad experiences dealing with certain departments at CURF.

(Tokyo, Japan) Hoping to return to the ABCDE again - subways to me symbolize the metropolises of Asia. How I miss them!

My summer plans are firming up and they should look like as follows:

May 4 – Leave for Beijing (finally) then head to Xinjiang for the first holiday in a year
May 14 – Present at World Bank Annual Bank Conference on Development Economics again for work on developing and implementing the new healthcare model (tentative)
May 25 – Visit Hong Kong for Wharton Global Alumni Forum (tentative)
May 28 – Fly to Switzerland as discussant for International Student Symposium
June 4 – Visit World Health Organization and World Economic Forum in Geneva (tentative)
June 8 – Start work and research with World Economic Forum in Beijing

The joys of free air-travel and pursuing one’s own passion! Human rights, healthcare, global issues, and economic development.

(Singapore, Singapore) Charting a future?

Last night, I discussed the courses I wanted to take next semester, and my academic advisor advised me to sub-matriculate into Wharton’s MBA program. She believe that I will not have difficulty getting in – an unsurprising comment from her considering how she always calls me an MBA student entering sophomore year. If I am able to get in, a big if still, should I consider it? When I entered college, I considered sub-matriculation but rejected it.

The key benefit to an MBA would be to open up career options unavailable to me as a fresh graduate, or to accelerate progress within a certain career path. Jobs in multilateral institutions such as the World Bank and World Health Organization would be accessible to me. If I were to join the banking sector as an intermediate step towards my long-term goal of development policy advisory work, an MBA would also help me leapfrog some stages of the career. Most importantly, my academic advisor believes I have the maturity and work experience that will allow me to take full advantage of an MBA.

There are opportunity costs to an MBA that exceed those of the tuition fees. The two main costs for me include exploring the possibility of a different academic path (i.e. an MPA instead), and the costs of exploring a career first to figure out whether further studies is worth it. This is of course only an additional one year, but it is an additional year that will require me to put in much more effort to complete all my undergraduate classes in my next three years. My former boss at Centennial Group, who I have great respect for, recommended against this specifically for exploratory reasons (he did an MPA at Harvard instead). Furthermore, an MBA program is not academically rigorous, and at this point in life, I might prefer a more intellectual program.

I will probably contemplate this over my spring semester in Beijing, after consultation with more people, and after I have further confirmed my career interests.

(Bangkok, Thailand) The Thai Monarch - a stabilizing force for Thai politics?

I am now also a grant recipient of the Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism funded by the Mellon Foundation. I am excited about research in corporate citizenship, and I am grateful for this grant, especially since Penn’s academic output on democratic theory is highly reputable. This will help supplement my grant from the Zicklin Center for Business Ethics Research.

Dear Oikono:

It gives me great pleasure to inform you that your proposal for a Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism Undergraduate Research Grant has been approved. We were delighted with both the quality and quantity of applications that we received, and the projects that we are able to fund all promise to be truly outstanding.

We will hold a meeting for all recipients at CURF before the end of the semester for all recipients who are able to attend, to get acquainted and to discuss the agenda for the monthly meetings we will hold next year as well as the final presentations of your work. We will also communicate with you and your advisor shortly to clarify how research funds will be distributed for this summer. In the meantime, if you have any questions, feel free to contact me at
[—————]

Once again, congratulations, and I look forward to seeing your project develop!

best wishes,

Rogers M. Smith
Chair, Penn Program on Democracy, Citizenship, and Constitutionalism

In other news, I will also be heading to Switzerland this summer to share some of my ideas on EduHealth as a discussant at an international conference. Always nice to have organizers pay for the plane tickets.

Dear Oikono
On behalf of the International Students’ Committee (ISC), we would like to sincerely thank you for your contribution to this year’s St. Gallen Wings of Excellence Award and your interest in the 37th St. Gallen Symposium. We felt very encouraged that you so openly shared your thoughts on „The Power of Natural Resources“ with us. For the 37th ISC-Team, it has been an enriching experience to deal with the ideas and visions of students from all over the world. Our jury has been evaluating around 1,000 contributions during the past few weeks and has finally decided on the 200 most outstanding pieces of work whose authors will be invited to the 37th St. Gallen Symposium.

Feedback - Learning, Teaching, Retaining Talent.

The EduHealth team is truly the most amazing team I had the opportunity to lead. Motivating them to work with me to achieve our vision is my most exciting role in building EduHealth. I will be using the next few weeks to meet with everyone to learn from them, help them learn about themselves, and hopefully to retain them despite the many other interesting distractions college offers.

I would like to know if you have time to meet this [DATE AND TIME], around lunch (after 1pm) or dinner time for about 30 minutes. This session is for me to deliver the feedback Jeremy has been gathering from everyone. I am also really interested in hearing your ideas on EduHealth’s performance, where it should be headed next semester, and most importantly, whether you are interested in continuing engagement with West Philly and in what capacity.

Some things to think about before meeting:

1. Issues (internal and external) that EduHealth must focus on
2. What do you want to do next semester in EduHealth (and in what position)
a. Also consider your time commitments
3. What is your short-term vision for your work, and where do you see it going in the long-term
4. What do you feel I need to improve on
5. Whether you are interested in taking HIST 214 or another independent study class next semester to continue with this work
6. How should we organized EduHealth next semester, and how should selection for key positions be done

Thanks for your great work! I look forward to working with all of you again next year.

(Germany) Overlooking the Rhine.

I attended a Jazz discussion recently. The session brought my appreciation for the genre to new heights. I realized that Jazz is a genre that loses a lot of its essence in recorded form.

The beauty of Jazz lies in its improvisation and spontaneity. This is built into the way the Jazz community is organized. In New York City, Jazz musicians hopped from bar to bar, and the quality of the Jazz performance at a bar on any night depends on whether the playing style of the visiting Jazz musician matches or clashes with the established band members playing there. Such constant regeneration gives rise to unique and ever-changing Jazz pieces dependent on the team dynamics of these newly created teams. Established players have to change their playing styles to match that of their visiting artist, while the visiting artist has to accommodate the style of his hosts. A great match leads to a great conversation between artists, resulting in a great performance for the audience. Jazz recordings cannot capture this element of spontaneity that characterizes the genre, and is akin to a movie glimpsed through individual photographs.

The move to downloading and listening to music on our computers has accelerated the decline of the Jazz genre. People are less likely to attend such performances to listen to music, and have less chances of encountering the beauty of the Jazz community.

(Bangkok, Thailand) Should business have have broader societal concerns or should they just maximize shareholder value?

Dear Prof. Perlmutter,

I just returned from my conference in Germany. The theme of this year’s 11th World Business Dialogue was Ageing Societies and Megacities. What struck me most from hearing the discussions between the many business leaders present was how the factors driving a firm’s economic success is interwoven into the larger social space that the firms inhibit. When we discussed the ageing society, the Global Head for Human Capital of IBM emphasized how this was going to impact hiring practices in her firm. When discussing the growing urban population, many corporate leaders cited examples of how the lagging physical and social infrastructure is affecting their business and employees.

I find it heartening to business discussions have expanded to include these social issues – issues once thought of as residing purely in the public domain. I think it reflects the awareness that the corporation is part of a larger system. System-wide changes can affect the corporation’s profitability, and the corporation must in turn contribute to changing this system.

I also had the opportunity to talk to someone heavily involved in corporate social responsibility in China. She had been involved in environmental and CSR campaigns in China since her university days in 2000. I found it interesting when she talked about how in 2001, foreign companies started introducing CSR platforms in their Chinese operations, with 2005 having a huge surge in such activities. She believes that these CSR movements are starting to trickle down to affect domestic enterprises. I intend to follow-up with her on this paradigm shift. I am considering several explanations:

1. Shift to CSR locally could be part of ongoing paradigm shift in corporate thinking world-wide
2. Shift could reflect internal politics as Hu Jintao consolidates power. Hu has been a proponent of balanced economic growth and foreign companies could be reading the political winds
3. Environmental issues have been dominating news headline in recent years. Shift could reflect local consumer interests and priorities.

Just some thoughts on the event.