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This week, we were supposed to tackle both cases 5 and 6 however, the week before was the ASEAN break, so as much as I’d like to be productive and finish the cases immediately, I admit that I procrastinated a little and started contributing the weekend before this week. To be quite honest, I didn’t understand the cases as much as I did the previous ones. Case 5 was more unclear to me, more than case 6 but case 6 was pretty unclear as well. I usually answer the alternative courses of action (ACAs) part of the case studies but then I didn’t really understand what the problem of the case was. Was is it directly linked to Kara, or was it about the industry itself? It wasn’t explicitly specified so I had a harder time giving alternatives (compared to the previous cases). For case 5, however, I didn’t understand the case itself. I had to ask my groupmates what it was and had to research about China’s social point system. I found a couple articles that gave me clarity about the whole deal but, like case 5, I didn’t know what the problem exactly was and who the alternatives should directly affect—was it the person who posted on Weibo against the government or China’s whole population? Joyce, my groupmate helped me get the gist of it. She told me it was like the Black Mirror episode about having to have enough ratings from other people to get access to certain things, like you only get to buy a lot in a certain subdivision if you were rated an average of 4 stars by the people around you. I guess I was lucky that I had to see that episode for another class because that made me get what the context was in the case. I, personally, wouldn’t prefer that kind of system in terms of handling who gets the privilege or not but according to some articles I’ve read, the Chinese population actually prefer this kind of justice system. It was said in the article that the Chinese are so used to their fellow countrymen being unjust toward each other so they prefer that in some way, this reduces the petty crimes committed. I also learned in my economics class that giving incentives has a way of changing or manipulating a person’s behavior. With what’s happening in the Philippines now, it makes you think if this kind of justice system would work in our country. I would like to think so but with our current administration, I think they will just end up favoring some people over the others. That has to change.  

This week, we were tasked to read up a case about a lawsuit against McDonald’s in the early 1980s for a debate. What happened was that Mrs. Liebeck (the complainer) ordered coffee from a McDonald’s drive thru and right before she left the order window, the coffee spilled on her. This caused third-degree burns and Mrs. Liebeck had to undergo skin grafting and was hospitalized for eight days. We were supposed debate on whether Mrs Liebeck was responsible for her own third-degree burns because she was the one who spilled her drink or that McDonald’s was responsible of whatever happened to Mrs. Liebeck and liable of paying everything that costed her because of the incident. My group was on Mrs. Liebeck’s side and basically what we argued was that the case is about the temperature of the coffee—because it was too hot and not because Mrs. Liebeck spilled on herself. However, the other side kept reiterating that Mrs. Liebeck was the one who should be liable of the accident because she was the one who spilled it on herself, and not a McDonald’s employee. It was also argued that the temperature should not be a valid argument because it was actually recommended by the American Coffee Association that the temperature should be the same temperature McDonald’s coffee was brewed. It was so frustrating because since we were the first to speak, the other side had the last say and they suddenly were saying so many things during their last rebuttal. Overall, I think that this case brought out each team’s competitive side, especially since there has been some kind of competitive spirit between a member of our team and a couple of people from the other team since the term has started. Since I wasn’t really going to be part of those who talked, I kind of just sat on the sidelines and honestly, I was very amused of what was happening especially when it was time for *those* members to talk. After the jury has decided that the McDonald’s side won, I realized that even if our side already originally won the case, it would still be a challenge to win against the other side. However, I just wanted to point out that most of the rebuttals of the winning team were irrelevant to what we were saying. They just kept focusing on the fact that Mrs. Liebeck spilled the coffee on herself. Nevertheless, I realized that from another point of view, this case could be a case of fraud in a way. Fraud because maybe Mrs. Liebeck purposefully spilled the coffee on herself to get to sue McDonald’s but realistically speaking, who in the right mind would purposefully spill coffee tempered to a 180 degrees and go through all the pain and skin grafting for money?

We went back to Bahay Aruga this week with paint, yarn and pasta. Since the contact person in charge of us asked us to make several visits into one because of their unavailability due to the other visitors, we decided to do two simultaneous activities in one session. The first was a suggestion by Anna—finger knitting with yarn. It was something she did a lot so she was capable of teaching it for the parents’ livelihood though kids could join as well. The second, we figured, were for most of the kids (because we didn’t really think that yarn knitting would be a big hit for the kids) and that was finger painting. We brought paint and illustration boards which were pre-drawn on by Alexi. When we brought the two activities to them, we were surprised that a lot of the kids wanted to learn finger knitting more than they wanted to finger paint. So around 70% of the people in Bahay Aruga crowded around Anna, who was really trying to explain as much as she can in Filipino, and 30% with us, finger painting. It was actually a good thing we brought brushes because none of the kids wanted to use their fingers to paint. I realized that kids now were a lot different than we were as kids. This was because I remember taking every chance I could to get messy and create a mess. This visit made me very nostalgic about my childhood because the kids were really so unruly and I missed being able to be that gulo. My groupmates and I were actually the ones who painted with our fingers instead of using paintbrushes because I think all of us missed our childhood. Knowing that it was the last time we were  going to visit Bahay Aruga, I felt very emotional because despite the very short time we spent with these kids, we’ve still bonded through games and Trolls, the movie. One kid was hyperenergetic and he kept dancing and winking at us. It was so amusing to see, knowing that these kids were supposedly sickly and had little energy, how they were the ones who kept requesting really physically-draining games and activities. I’m very grateful to have had this experience of giving back because I, myself, have gone through at least some pain these parents have gone through because my niece got diagnosed with Leukemia as well and as I’ve said in my previous service learning journal, my family always had some kind of program for the cancer ward patients in my niece’s hospital but I was never available to join in because of school—so, in some way, this is my way of giving back.

Later onto the session, each group was asked to present an unethical ad and to identify what was unethical about each ad. When we were asked about this assignment, as a Marketing student, it dawned on me that about 90% of the ad campaigns that are being used right now were unethical in one way or another. This is because strategically speaking, it is ideal for products to be shown the way a consumer should want it to be shown—to make it more appealing to the market. This means the product had to follow a certain construct posed by society, regardless of whether it is ethical or not. This will also mean that the product should look at its prettiest and most presentable when it is being advertised, even if that isn’t what it looks like in real life. Most of the ads were about sexisms in the industry and how women are treated as objects or used to please men in the commercials. One of the ads that were shown even auctioned off a famous actress, saying that if they buy a bottle and check the cap, there might be a chance that the consumer will win a night with the actress. There was innuendo in the commercial because she was a sexy actress and at the end of the ad, the man in the video was seen holding the bikini top that the actress was wearing. I find this extremely disgusting because women should not be objectified and seen as something to entertain or pleasure men. One ad that caught my attention, however, was the Dove ad. It was very recent and I’ve seen a lot of conversations about it on the internet. The ad shows a black woman taking off her shirt and then it shows a lighter woman. A lot of people think that this ad was racist but I personally think that people are just oversensitive about everything. I think that maybe the order of the women was just off but I don’t think it was the company’s intention to imply that if you use their product, you get lighter skin. I didn’t find it like that at all—in fact, Dove is known for a lot of ads about women loving their own skin.  

For our Service Learning organization, we decided we should coordinate with Bahay Aruga, a halfway home for children diagnosed with cancer. Our groupmate, Nicole, had the contact to the home. When I learned that it was going to be a house for children with cancer, I was very glad because somehow, this was an opportunity for me to give back in my own way. My niece was diagnosed with Leukemia when she was 3 years old and I saw her go through all the treatments and extractions when she was sick. She was declared truly cancer-free in 2016 and it was the best news we’ve all received in the longest time. All throughout that, my family would host programs for the kids staying in the ward my niece was staying in as well but most of the time, I wasn’t able to attend because of school. So this term’s service learning program was my was of being able to give back. When we got the home, a handful of kids welcomed us and their parents were there as well. When we got there, we set up the TV and the food. We brought popcorn, fruits and cans of pineapple and carrot juices. Surprisingly, the kids preferred the carrot juice more. Before showing them a movie, we decided to break the ice and played Baby Shark in the background. We asked the kids and the moms to dance along. We then asked them if they wanted to watch Moana (because that was our original plan), they said they’ve already seen it. Luckily, we brought other movies with us and we ended up watching Trolls. Honestly, seeing the kids and their parents was kind of tough for me. I think it’s because my family has gone through what they’re going through now but their struggle is still different. For some these parents, they probably didn’t even know that it’s possible for kids to get diagnosed with cancer and they didn’t expect that the treatments would cost this much. Some of them came from Visayas and they travelled all the way to Manila looking for help and I think it is great that there’s a home like Bahay Aruga that welcomes them with open arms. I can’t wait for our next visit.

For this week, we talked about case two, which is the case study about Google. From what I understand, it was about how a male software engineer released a note internally about the company having had inaccurate gender stereotypes after it was under observation by the public about gender discrimination in its employees. The thing about this case is that since it wasn’t said whether the engineer’s note was truthful, we do not know whether the note was written out of gender discrimination by the male engineer or whether Google itself employed female employees even if they were not fit for the company’s standards just to get rid of the observations from the public that Google HR has gender biases. While my group and I were answering the case study, I realized that the case itself really aggravated me because I immediately felt like it was another man being so sexist and the world (especially our country) was full of them. This was my immediate feeling even if wasn’t sure whether the note was truthful or not. I guess in some way I tend to be sexist sometimes especially when it comes to issues where men seem to stand out because they are the ones making an issue out of something. My immediate thought is always “what the fuck, man?” I think I really get triggered because I’m sick of the patriarchal system in the Philippines and whenever I hear something about this, it just makes my blood boil. That isn’t fair and I’m still really trying to work on not being so defensive all the time because not all men are assholes. This case made me think about how it is always the men getting heard and making sense but when women stand up to something, they are always thought of as bossy or mema. But then I thought about it again, the world is starting to not care about gender as much as they did before and for that I got so happy about it? Most of the world has drastically improved in terms of discrimination and they have little care for gender standards set by the generations before and that is something worth celebrating.

We then talked about the first case; it was about fake news. I found this very timely because of the Dutertards and Mocha Uson. I think they spread a lot of rumors against the other parties during campaign and election season and so now we have President-elect Duterte. The case was really interesting because the CEO of Facebook was involved and we were able to suggest in one of the alternatives to create a filtering program for Facebook so that unverified news sites don’t get to be shared or spread by Facebook users. In our real life, we really didn’t have the option except to ignore the fake news or unfriend the people sharing fake news. If only we can reprimand the people who start the sharing of fake news or even penalize them but then in our country, fake news supports our president so I don’t think the government will implement penalties for these news sources anytime soon.

For this week, we had to work on the Sadhu case. It was about a group of hikers whose dream was to climb the top of the Himalayas. On their way to the top, another group of hikers brought them an old man who was very sick. He was sick enough that he won’t last if the group brought him with them on the way to the top and because of the time limit that goes with climbing the Himalayas, the group will not be able to fulfill their dream if they bring the Sadhu down to the villages. The main character in the case wants to save the Sadhu and his friend will go wherever he will. However, the group does not want to bring the Sadhu down to the nearest village because they know that by this, they are giving up something that they have been dreaming of for so long. The dilemma was whether they save the Sadhu and give up their dream or go for their dream and leave the Sadhu to die. My group decided that the group should split and have half go to the top of the Himalayas and the other half goes to bring the Sadhu to the nearest village. Getting to this decision wasn’t easy. I think that it was really difficult to choose whether you get to live the dream you have always wanted and being the deciding factor of a man’s life. And whatever you choose, you still don’t win, knowing you’ve sacrificed something else very important.

This week we talked about the common unethical acts in the workplace and the moral compass. When we were discussing unethical acts in the workplace, again, the question is who gets to decide what is ethical or unethical. I think that with this, there is always a grey area. For theft, it is much clearer to see because it is illegal and is stated so in the Constitution but what if you lied to your boss because he wasn’t going to allow you to take a leave to see your parents or if you had a job interview with another company that you knew would treat you better that your current company has and you can’t just tell your current boss that. When we discussed the moral compass, it was also the same dilemma. There are around five different types of what someone usually considers his or her moral compass is. The thing is though, there is no common point between the five compasses. They all contradict each other in some way or another like how deontology contradicts the utilitarian view by saying that the individual need is more important that the majority’s. I think that the easiest way to deal with this is to let people have their own beliefs and it is our job to respect each belief but in a battle between two parties with different moral compasses, who will win?

This week we talked about values—terminal and instrumental. We talked about this in my majors class. So my basic understanding for these values had to do with consumer behavior—how we can market a product or produce a product that a consumer would want to buy in relation to their terminal and instrumental values. Terminal values are the values that people want to achieve and so we use those to incorporate with the product we’re trying to market to a certain group of consumers with the same values. The product can be something the consumer can see that would lead to or would be identified with the certain value. The same goes for instrumental values, the values people prefer to have in achieving their terminal values. That was what I learned in my majors class—how to use these to get to consumers and nothing else. However, in CSRGOV, we were asked to come up with a list of our own terminal and instrumental values and then share it to the group. That was when I realized how different my thinking was from my groupmates. While we were discussing, it was evident that we all want security of some sort (whether family security or national security) because of what is happening in our country right now. And a comfortable life, seeing that it what we are used to and so it made sense that we wanted to achieve this in our future. Those were the only two terminal values the majority of my groupmates had in common with mine. I put happiness as my number one value and I was actually surprised not everyone in my group wanted to achieve this. I always thought that this was something everyone was striving to achieve but apparently not. Among the choices, there was salvation and I was really surprised that a majority of my groupmates wanted this and it went on our masterlist. When I saw that choice, I had to admit, I rolled my eyes. I’m not very religious but I was raised Catholic and studied in a very Catholic private school but then even with all the lectures and Christian Living classes I’ve taken, I realized that when I only had to choose 5 terminal values, salvation wouldn’t be anywhere near my list and I don’t know why. For our instrumental values, I only had ‘independent’ in common with my groupmates. I realized that my list really says a lot about who I am and what I really prioritized. Number one on my list was ‘intellectual’ and ‘logical’ was fourth. My groupmates valued truth and forgiveness more than these and I found that very amusing at first. Because to me, these are very petty values that everyone should have from the start. I actually wanted to argue my points because I thought that prioritizing those values was wrong. And then I realized that I was acting like whatever I think was right and that was wrong. The activity was actually very eye-opening, to me, at least. I learned that we shouldn’t assume that people value the same things as we do because people are very different and this means that we should respect other’s value as well, even if their values look unimportant and irrelevant to you.

I only took CSRGOVE this term because I didn’t get the other classes I was supposed to get on my flowchart. I was supposed to take this on my last term, before I graduate. I thought it was going to be a chill class because its prerequisite was MANAORG and my MANAORG class wasn’t a heavy, hassle class at all. Honestly, I’ve been taking management classes for granted (from MANAORG to HUMANBE to SHURMAN) because I think it should be common sense to come up with the right decisions (especially if it is your own company) and as a Marketing major, I didn’t find it appealing that we had to discuss almost the same things for three different courses. So I thought CSRGOVE was just another general course the Commission on Higher Education required for the sake of it because Corporate Social Responsibility, to me, should depend on the person running the company. I knew that companies take this concept for granted and only using it for tax refunds and because it was good public relations. During the first week of classes, for CSRGOV, we defined the term Corporate Social Responsibility. It is basically proactive strategic planning that involves ethical and sustainable development for the company. It was also mentioned in the lecture that corporate social responsibility, despite what many believe, does not equal to philanthropy but it is part of it and CSR is so much more than just that. We were also shown the pyramid of CSR and I think that it makes sense why this should be given importance by the businesses in all industries. Besides legal and economic responsibilities, companies should also be able to fulfill ethical and philanthropic responsibilities. Although companies are not required to be philanthropic, they are required to be socially responsible and I think this should include being environmentally sustainable. Companies should be mindful of the amount of carbon footprint they are using or they have used and should reduce it to the most efficient they can. Companies should also mind the people around them—some companies only care for their customers but the responsibility should be beyond that. The care should be extended to everyone surrounding them, regardless of whether they can contribute to the company’s income statement or not. However, this is a really a relative topic. Like beauty, ethics is defined by the person sole point of view. At least in a country, whatever is lawful should be considered ethical but there are so many loopholes in state law that people can use to do “unethical” acts and still make it seem ethical because it’s allowed by the Constitution. I think it is going to be hard to give a concrete definition of what ethical is and what can be ethical or not ethical.