Wednesday, June 3, 2009

Today's schedule is D-C-Lunch-A-B

Today there is a tutorial to start the day. From 8:55 - 9:25 you need to go to whatever class you need assistance in. The morning schedule is altered so that D Block goes from 9:30 - 10:30 and C Block goes from 10:35 - 11:35. The schedule for the remainder of the day is unaffected.

C - Criminology 12 - Today we continue our look at White Collar crime. We will start the class with a discussion about business and corporate culture. What is it that makes a successful business person and what kind of ethical behaviour is valued by corporate culture? From the Business Ethics Forum blog site:

An outstanding in-depth article on the Value of Corporate Values can be found in an article by Reggie Van Lee, Lisa Fabish, and Nancy McGaw in this month's S+B. Based on a survey at 365 companies in 30 countries, the authors claim "increasingly, companies around the world have adopted formal statements of corporate values, and senior executives now routinely identify ethical behavior, honesty, integrity, and social concerns as top issues on their companies’ agendas". The highlights of the survey and article are:

1. A large number of companies are making their values explicit. That’s a change — quite a significant change — from corporate practices 10 years ago. The ramifications of this shift are just beginning to be understood.
2. Ethical behavior is a core component of company activities.
   Most companies believe values influence two important strategic areas — relationships and reputation — but do not see the direct link to growth.
3. Most companies are not measuring their “ROV.”
4. Top performers consciously connect values and operations.
5. Values practices vary significantly by (continental) region.
6. The CEO’s tone really matters.

The article provides quantitative data about these 7 findings and concludes with "A commitment to corporate values may be in vogue, but the public will remain suspicious until corporations both understand and can demonstrate that they are committed to using values to create value". What we are looking at is what makes people abuse the public trust in corporations. We will look at stings, swindles, and chiselling and discuss ImClone (Martha Stewart) and Bre-X.

Next, we'll quickly look at individual exploitation of an institutional position, influence peddling & bribery, theft and employee fraud, client fraud and corporate crime. You will need to work on the "Can Corporations Commit Murder" questions 1 & 2 from page 285 as well as question 1 from page 291 in your Criminology the Core textbook. Tomorrow you'll be working on gangs. For more on Corporations look at the website for the documentary The Corporation

Watch the documentary on You Tube here!

A - Social Studies 11 - Today in class we'll review yesterday's work on population issues. We'll then move into dependency ratio and China's One Child policy. We'll work through questions 1-4 on the Reading a Graph activity on page 327 and questions 2 & 3 on page 331 in the Counterpoints textbook together as a class. This work (along with the information on page 328) will help you with your Population activity. The remainder of the class will be spent on the Population Activity handout that you got yesterday in class. Tomorrow we'll look at population density, carrying capacity, and begin our look at living standards.
BBC News - Has China's One Child Policy Worked?
BBC News - China 'Steps Up' One Child Policy
China's One Child Family Policy
China's One Child Polict Enters New Phase

B- Social Studies 10 - Today we will start by going over the economy definitions you worked on yesterday. Next we'll focus on British Columbia by examining the resource based industries that have been the economic driver of the province for the last 150 years. We'll take a look at the way that resources are extracted and then focus our energy today on two activities. First you'll need to add two definitions to your glossary: sustainability and sustainable development. Next I'd like you to work on the graphing activities and sustainable development questions from the tenth page in from the beginning of the text handout (1 a, b, & c, 2, and 3).

NOTE: A great deal of what we will talk about in terms of the BC economy and sustainability will be supplemented with the work of Gerry Marten's book: Human Ecology - Basic Concepts for Sustainable Development.