Touchy-feely business
“What’s the point?”
“What the heck is the point of taking political science classes in a business program?”
“Shouldn’t you be more focused on finance, microeconomics, and general business practices so that you can take those ideas to wherever you are going?”
These are all common questions an International Management student has to hear in an MBA program, like this one at Baylor. What is it about Political Science classes that freak some business students out? It is so necessary to understand cultures and the developing world, if you are going to do business there. Prime example: if you are going to do business in a theocratic-Islamic country like Iran, assuming you could do business there, or even a country that is heavily influenced by their Islamic faith like Turkey, you might look a little foolish taking standard American Finance practices with you. How so? As we learn in finance class, it is common place to make investments of about ½ cash and ½ borrowed money or a “leveraged” position. However, Muslims view any sort of debt as a bad thing, an unholy/unrighteous thing, if you will. Islam views being indebted to another man as sinful, and I can’t say I totally disagree with this idea. So, as an American businessperson, there are certain educational ideas would want to check at the door.
That’s one thing I like about Baylor, they seem to understand that context-specific business is incredibly important to successful business. What’s funny is that Poli-Sci professors are generally just as confused as to why some MBA students are taking poli-sci classes as my cohort. I’m studying Latin America, which means Mexico, Brazil, and Argentina are my main foci. If you think there are contextual clues to doing business in these countries, you are right. I’m about to go learn right now about Liberation Theology and the influence that the Catholic Church had on business, wish me luck; I’ll write more on this later.