Final Summary

Ethical Issues in My Profession:
For the most part, I found that many of the companies we visited in Chile had similar policies to those of companies in the United States regarding ethical issues. Working standards and safety policies seemed to be high and although we weren’t given any exact information on this, wages and benefits seemed good for the workers as well. I also found that the owners of the companies seemed to really respect and know who was working for them. For example, the owner of Conservas Centauro was the fourth generation in his family to own the company – his great grandfather actually founded the company about 100 years ago. Many of the workers there were also fourth generation and their great grandparents had started working at the company at the same time it was founded. The owner here also seemed to know a lot about all of the workers, including what they did in the off seasons. I think that in many companies in the United States, this kind of relationship between owner and worker is uncommon.

In terms of diversity, I did not find the workplaces to be as diverse as they are in the United States. However, I don’t think this is due to a lack of addressing diversity in the workplace, but rather a lack of diversity in the general population. The United States is a very diverse country with all kinds of ethnicities, while Chile has a population of mostly European and mestizo. Thus, this racial diversity is not really an ethical issue faced in the workplace in Chile. I do feel that gender diversity was addressed and that women and men are given equal opportunities in the workplace. With a liberal, woman president, I would imagine that there are regulations to prevent gender discrimination at work.


Educational Breath as Professional Development:
Understanding the impact of engineering and business solutions in a global and societal context is beyond important in today’s world, it is absolutely crucial. The world has become so interdependent that almost all business decisions made in our country affect someone, somewhere else in the world. As Americans, we often overlook the importance of the global economy and focus more on ourselves. However, as Thomas L. Friedman puts it in his book, The World is Flat, “the playing field is becoming leveled” and countries such as China and India are becoming major world players. The world is becoming smaller and smaller and individuals from most countries in the world are finding more opportunities to be a competitive force in the global economy. This is a huge thing for business owners and students to consider in both Chile and the United States as the global workplace is constantly evolving and creating new challenges.

For this reason, I am definitely a firm believer that students in both the United States and Chile need to expand the classroom experience to include learning about different cultures. For me, this means continuing my studies in language, looking into whatever classes Pitt offers on the global economy, and studying abroad as much as possible. Exposure to and knowledge about different cultures in this day and age can definitely give an individual a high competitive advantage. What’s more is that in four years, by the time we graduate, the global economy will have changed even more and we need to be prepared for whatever new challenges could come our way. In the "Did You Know?" video that Manuel Madrid showed us during lectures, we saw the importance of the Internet and being connected to people from all over the world. The one fact that has really stuck with me from that video is that in ten years, it is predicted that China will be the number one English speaking country in the world. This fact speaks for itself as it shows that we as Americans have to become more aware of others cultures and how the world is changing.

Lifelong Learning, Continuing Education as Professional Development:
All of life is a learning experience and no matter what you do to prepare for a job, there is always a certain amount of learning that occurs from day to day experiences. And as mentioned in the above section, the global economy is constantly evolving and changing. There is no way that a person can be completely prepared to compete in the future with just the knowledge he or she has of today. For example, in the Santiago Stock Exchange, brokers now do most of their work from their offices, on their computers. Five to ten years ago, the floor was bustling with brokers doing their jobs but when we visited the company, there were only two brokers going about with their work on the floor. These brokers had to learn an all new way of doing their job because of the Internet and computer phenomenon.

With all kinds of business, the search for process enhancement and product differentiation leads to new technologies that produce more efficient and different ways of doing business every day. Individuals in the work place need to be prepared to learn new technologies and new ways of performing their duties if they wish to compete in the future and even in today. Just as knowledge about the ever-changing global economy is crucial, so is the ability to embrace these changes and to learn new ways of utilizing the latest technologies. Doing so is the only way to maintain a competitive advantage in the global economy.

The Social Environment of Professional Life:
With the upcoming presidential election and our country currently in the midst of a heated race for the Democratic Party nomination, we were lucky to have been able to travel abroad and see what the rest of the world thinks about what is going on in our country. For many of us, I think it was an eye opening experience to find out just how much people around the world know about the current events in our country. In Chile, almost everyone with whom we talked knew about the upcoming election and had an individual opinion on the matter. I am ashamed to say that before I decided to apply to Plus 3 Chile, I had only a little bit of knowledge on what the political scheme of the country was and I was very unaware of any of the current events. With the world becoming more and more connected, it is unacceptable to be ignorant of what is happening in countries throughout the world. If an individual wishes to be a player in the global marketplace, there comes a responsibility to be aware of news not only close to home, but everywhere else in the world as well. Not only is it important to know the current events of a country, but also to know the customs and business routines when dealing with international clients. It would be very easy to offend an international client by simply being ignorant, but then again, it would also be very easy to do a little research and learn more about the world.

Functioning on Multi-Disciplinary Teams:
Being able to function in a diverse team with people of different race, gender, religion, values, knowledge, etc is a vital skill. Throughout an individual’s lifetime, he or she will probably have to work in numerous different groups and the ability to communicate effectively with people with different backgrounds is the only way to be able to get a project done. Having spent only two semesters in college, my teamwork skills have already improved significantly. I have learned that when working in groups, you have to learn how to get past differences. Even when you aren’t getting along with the other members of the group, you have to remember that each member in the group shares the common goal of finishing the project to a high standard. If nothing else, all members of a group share that common thread.

I found it interesting to see how business and engineering students separated themselves on this trip. In the beginning, many of the engineering students stayed with other engineering student, while the business students stayed with other business students. It is easy to see that this happened because each of us had built up comfort with other people from our majors just by having spent the past two semesters in classes with them. However, by the end of the trip, the separation between “engineering student” and “business student” was not as distinct. In fact, I think that everyone, including myself, had formed new friendships that are beyond the matter of major. There are of course differences between business and engineering students because we have all had different experiences and have learned different things in our classes. However, we are all students at Pitt and share more commonalities than we do differences because of this fact.