Independent Study Proposal

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Ancient Greece is regarded as the very place where western civilization began. It was the birthplace of coinage and currency exchange, the design of easily traversable cities, characterized by methodology and management practices still exhibited in modern times. As with all civilizations, geography played a critical role in the shaping of ancient Greece. Arid, mountainous terrain and easy access to water were the inherent factors that shaped ancient Greece as a dominant force in maritime commerce, warfare and colonization. In addition, the poverty of Greece’s soil forced them to become largely dependent on maritime commerce.

These geographical factors contributed to the establishment of Greek poleis. Separated by natural barriers, each developed independently and varied greatly from their counterparts. These poleis varied by culture, dialect, architecture, government and philosophy. Despite these differences, they shared a common necessity: maritime commerce.

The purpose of this study is to examine ethical (or unethical) practices of maritime commerce in ancient Greece, as trade was crucial to their development and advancement. Such practices include the procurement and control of strategic isthmuses and waterways for economic benefit, particularly in the unique case of the overland transport the Diolkos. In this study, I will explore some of the ethical contrasts within the ancient Greek conglomerate and determine the morality of various components that shaped ancient Greece and ultimately, the modern western world.

Please see my Culminating Video.

Reverse Attention Marketing

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I have been raised in a generation in which everyone gets a medal. If you place fifth in a contest of four, your trophy is the same size and the first-place contestant. In this age of entitlement, we’ve created a society of young people who have an enlarged sense of their own importance and insatiable desire for attention. Consequently, there has been a large shift in economic commodities: The Attention Economy.

The attention economy is a newly recognized economic commodity where consumers receive services in exchange for their attention. Web-based mediums like news feed and search engines illustrate the attention economy by asking for consumer attention by showing advertisements. Capturing, managing and keeping customer attention is critical to a company’s growth and sustenance. Consider this concept of attention economy, this concept of “asking” for attention from your consumers. There is an underlying problem. The problem is that while companies are using valuable time and resources seeking attention, consumers are seeking attention as well. Enter social media.

People are conditioned to project their best selves on social media. Though there are some exceptions, people on social media sites spend a great deal of time and effort to perfect and project their digital identities. It is virtually the same concept as “keeping up with the Joneses”. This notion of projecting the ideal self through social media stems from the “Me” generation. Now, consider the reverse concept of attention economy. As an entrepreneur, instead of seeking consumer attention through advertising, I aim to give attention to consumers, consequentially receiving their attention, as well as the attention of their networks.

Recall the last time you were scrolling through your Facebook or Twitter feed. Are you more likely to stop and read a lengthy promotion from an organization you follow, or are you more likely to stop read your old high school classmate’s article in the newspaper, which he so readily shared with his social media network? I know I would be far more likely to examine the latter. This is the marketing approach I aim to take with my business.

My partner and I have devised a tagline and a plan for implementing this reverse attention economy advertising strategy. As we target health-conscious, adventurous, outdoor enthusiasts to purchase our organic beef jerky, we came up with the tagline “Share The Adventure”. We aim to encourage our patrons to share their pictures and adventure stories with us, which we will refine and publish on our blog site, as well as our Twitter and Facebook. Our first blog will include a memoir of a patron’s account of the Boston Marathon bombing, and his emotional, surreal return to run the marathon in 2014. We also plan to tell the back story of the organic beef supplier from which we obtain our product. These blogs will be included on our Twitter, Facebook and WordPress in the following month, with links to follow.

In sharing these stories, we hope that our patrons will cherish this attention, and thereby eagerly share it with their social media networks. In doing so, our consumers will inadvertently advertise for us and build our brand identity. We feel that consumers will really embrace our attention to their stories, and help us to create a strong external culture and social media presence.

Blogging For My Business

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On April 7, 2014, my childhood friend and I took our very first step towards entrepreneurship by forming South Fork Jerky Company, LLC. Months in planning, our ambitions have finally begun to become realities. Our mission is to process and sell beef jerky made from grass fed, free range beef, free of hormones and preservatives, providing customers with naturally delicious health-conscious snack choices. For some time now, we have carefully researched the industry, devised a business plan, and established a long list of contacts in wholesale suppliers, organic growers associations, farmers markets and food processing professions.

As we move forward and slowly tackle the myriad of paperwork, permits, licensing and health standard requirements, we are beginning to explore the marketing and advertising opportunities in social media and other web-based communication channels. Writing 304 has opened my eyes to these opportunities within Twitter and Internet blogging. Recently, I have explored and considered the attractive advantages of blogging for my business.

Blogging can be an invaluable tool for engaging customers and building a stronger brand identity among our target market. Blogging can create a voice for my business and build customer relationships. It can help us solidify and sharpen our business focus and strategy, and broadcast our purpose. Additionally, blogging for our business will force us to think more about worthy topics in our industry or regarding our customers, and can inspire us to be more creative. What is most attractive to me is the fact that through blogging and social media, we can reach out to just as many people as a costly, professionally developed website, but for free. Our presence in social media and blogging will be indefinitely beneficial to creating a voice and brand personality. In an increasingly web-based business environment, I feel it is crucial to distinguish our business by transcending the static and impersonal modes of ecommerce by employing a more personal marketing strategy and creating easily accessible mediums of communication for our customers.

In addition to creating a voice for our business, a blog correlates to our niche market. We seek to take advantage of the relatively new and booming organic food craze. Our target market will be focused in adventurous, active and health-conscious adults aged 18-34. Granted our market is not limited to this age group, we feel it will be our most predominant. According to a recent survey, a staggering 90% of adults aged 18-29 use social media regularly. There is no denying the obvious presence of social media among this age group, and we will seek to take full advantage of it.

Globalizing Business Ethics

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Business ethics create the most basic of framework from which a company’s core values, corporate culture and decision-making stem. An individual’s ethics reflect their perceptions and moral judgments of right and wrong. When considering a business as it’s own entity, business ethics reflect its moral judgments of right and wrong, defining their corporate culture and affecting shareholder value. Much like each individual person’s ethics, business ethics vary by culture. I understand the importance of adapting to cultural or societal norms when interacting cross-culturally, but my question is this: Assuming that the ultimate goal of all business ethics is to present and maintain a publicly acceptable moral compass while maximizing profits, why can’t ethics in business be universal?

In one month, I will be studying abroad in Athens, Greece, where I will be taking an International Business course and to conduct an independent study on cross-cultural business ethics. My goal is to research and observe first-hand the corporate protocol practiced in Greece, and try to draw connections to North American business practices. In making such connections, I aim to explore ways in which similar or dissimilar practices can be integrated, consolidated or compensated for in order to universalize business practices and ethics.

Granted, most business ethics practices are guided by local law, which obviously differs greatly across the globe. This can be problematic when considering the consolidation of “ethical” business practices. Due to the cultural variance in laws and social norms, many businesses have adopted the “when in Rome” approach, strictly adhering to the ethical practices of businesses locale. No doubt, this is an understandable approach regarding the social aspects of cross-cultural communication, but I cannot understand how a business can operate on one set of principles in its parent country, then adhere to the distinctly different practices of a host country.

In recent years, given the rapid growth of technology facilitating instantaneous global transactions and interactions, the business world is in fact a business world. This rapid globalization of commerce calls for a globalization of ethical practices. For instance, giving and accepting bribes to procure contracts and obtain business is legal and morally acceptable in much of the Eastern world. This places the globally competitive counterparts in the West at a disadvantage. North American companies are enticed to commit bribery overseas, where it is acceptable, in order to stay competitive with their international counterparts. Western organizations must weigh the risks of committing bribery to maintain  competitive equality, versus permanently damaging their reputation in their host country. In this particular situation, organizations on either side of the globe are caught between a rock and a hard place, in assessing the importance of remaining globally competitive increasingly global business world while also maintaining their local integrity.

My belief is that a universal, yet transparent standard of business ethics, properly communicated and sanctioned within each global company, will facilitate the growth of global companies and ultimately global economy. While it is important to consider the social sensitivity of all shareholders while operating in foreign countries, I feel it is equally important for a global company to strictly enforce some set of ethical standards. Consider the traditional “when in Rome” approach. Now, consider the company itself as a country, as its own entity with its own set of practices, independent of the host or parent country. It only makes sense for all shareholders to adhere to a standard of ethics at the company’s discretion.

Intellectual Entrepreneurship

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Take, for example, the textbook definition of entrepreneur: A person who organizes and manages any enterprise, especially a business, usually with considerable initiative and risk. Now, switch out the words “enterprise” and “business” with words such as “research” or “education”. This is the concept of intellectual entrepreneurship. It is the concept of taking risk, seizing opportunity, discovering and creating knowledge and employing ones own innovation and strategies, with the ultimate goal of solving problems in corporate, societal or governmental environments. An intellectual entrepreneur knows more about his or her self than about their discipline, and thus, actively seeks out their own education, knowing that it cannot be handed to them. Intellectual entrepreneurs “own” their education, and consequentially, control their future. A true entrepreneur embodies synergy beyond the conception of a traditional scholar, understanding that real-world problems can’t be categorized by single disciplines. The philosophy of IE embodies four core values: vision and discovery, ownership and accountability, integrative thinking and action, and collaboration and teamwork. These core values are of equal importance when considering IE. However, relevant to my own professional development, I found integrative thinking and action to be the most  influential.

The concept of employing integrative thinking strategies and actions embodies a sense of open mindedness, realizing the necessity to transcend partial or individual knowledge. This concept realizes that it is essential to move beyond conventional knowledge, and accept that real-world problems don’t always fit into one single discipline. In thinking beyond academic discretion and predisposed truths, the concept of integrative thinking allows an intellectual entrepreneur to get a better sense of self. There is no question of the individuality of every scholar or professional, however, when knowledge is spread or shared in a vacuum, such as most conventional learning, this individuality is masked by aggregated “expertise” and inherent “truths”, particularly within a specific discipline.  In discovering more about self, the intellectual entrepreneur can, in turn, discover more about their discipline. In my opinion, the ultimate understanding of a discipline is defined by what you, as an individual, can contribute to that discipline.  In order to discover what we as individuals have to offer, we must first discover ourselves as intellectual individuals.

In a society where critical thinking is becoming increasingly secondary to the discrete and inherent or empirical “truths” of the disciplines, it is imperative that we maintain this sense of integrative thinking and action. I feel that the ability and the opportunity to transcend this vacuum of conventional knowledge-gaining will be critical to discovering myself, and what I can contribute to my discipline. Ultimately, a better sense of self and sense of purpose, I hope, will result in my advancement, academically and professionally.

Proactive Observation

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Proactive Observation

I take great pleasure in listening to my grandfather, and his brother, my great uncle, talk amongst each other. Their personalities are contrasting. My grandfather, whom I call “Gramps”, is the older of the two, and much more serious and well reserved. For his calm and gentlemanly demeanor, I have always respected Gramps and regarded him as the wisest man I know. Uncle Tom, on the other hand, is the whimsical and quick-witted one with a data bank of crude jokes that would shock even the raunchiest of comedians. Their contrasting personalities gracefully clash and form a “Yin and Yang” of compelling eloquence. Together they provide one hundred and eighty-two collective years of experience, sitting right at my kitchen table, each with their own lowball glass of scotch or vodka. They’ve seen it all, from the worst nationwide economic crisis, a world war and world travel, a successful business venture, love and loss, and the creation of a wide and burgeoning family tree to boot. Their conversation is infinitely interesting to me, and if I could recall every last story or dialogue I could create a novel. Though I can’t recall all the stories or the countless consultations, there is one piece of advice I heeded and heeded well.

It happened at my kitchen table a few years back. Upon discussing some of my lecture while I was studying at SUNY Albany, my grandfather told me to always remember this: “He who speaks least has the most valuable perception”. At first this wasn’t very clear to me. I thought it was just some old, common adage, so I looked it up online. My searches yielded some similar results, but nothing too striking. I tried changing the syntax, changing the words, and still I could not find a citation. Finally it occurred to me that this “proverb” was a genuine representation of my grandfather’s character. These words were a tangible embodiment of his ideals and of his perceptions. These words epitomized his modest and reserved demeanor, which I had always admired and aspired to achieve. Needless to say, I interpreted these words and heeded his advice, reading, looking, listening.

With the help of this elderly advice, I aim to advance my career and ultimately achieve a sense of fulfillment. Socially, academically, emotionally, physically, spiritually or mentally, there is no limit to the amount or degree of observation that one can make. It is based on this notion of limitless observation and perceptual knowledge that I carry out all of my endeavors, listening and watching, constantly formulating and changing my opinions and perceptions. This notion of proactive observation has almost become involuntary. It has become a habit of mine. I can’t help but look at or listen to everything within sight of earshot. Some might call it snooping or eavesdropping. I feel that I am simply being inquisitive. The act of listening is harmless until the outside party offers some unsolicited input. As per my grandfather’s adage, I always hold my tongue.

It is foolish to dismiss the value of anyone’s conversation, whether they are young, old, educated or otherwise, I think everyone and everything has something valuable to offer. It’s up to me to discern that value through keen and unrelenting observance. This self-proclaimed sense of duty, which I call proactive observation, resonates within my character. This quality has shaped me and my learning style in recent years.