On 11th May 2022, it was our honor to have Mr. Michael Lin, the vice president of Esmond Nutrition as our guest speaker of Organizational Culture and Change which is instructed by Professor Francois Bouchetoux. At the beginning, Mr. Lin first opened the session with a question for the students “Apart from a good salary, which benefits would you most like to receive in a job?” We discussed a lot of perks, such as insurance and yearly bonus. Since we are in an organizational culture class, some of the students also mentioned that values conveyed by one company are also very important to attract and to retain talents. The non-monetary elements are essential. "Culture" with respect to the set of values people share and believe in.

Then Mr. Lin shared his 20-year work experience in different companies and countries. He focused on the “Nepotism” and the Asian business culture. He mentioned one example from his friends, who worked in a big bank and had difficulties at first, but through the hard work and “some relationships’ help”, he got a good opportunity.

One of the students from South America also shared her view of nepotism,” Nepotism is extremely political. In my country, even if the government realizes you are a normal citizen that voted for the other side, they would remove you from your position to put someone that supports them instead.” But there are also some advantages of Nepotism, in family business it might be good if the person is already trained or at least familiar with the business. It can save costs of recruiting, and the family pressure might result in better work ethics. To sum up, we could say nepotism is generally always there, to varying degrees, if we see it as a political aspect of any organization.

In addition, we also discussed the working hours and overtime culture in Asia. Not only Mr. Lin shared his experience, but one of the students shared an academic research with us.

“In the past, many academics have argued that by reducing the work week to four days, employees would be more productive and studies have shown that 78% of employees are happier and less stressed as a result. The Icelandic government previously spent four years testing this idea by having more than 2,500 workers reduce their work week to four days between 2015 and 2019 and observing the results.”

Due to the COVID-19, this session was conducted virtually. But all the students enthusiastically participated in the discussion and shared a lot of their viewpoints. Mr. Lin was very happy that everyone put forward their own ideas to make this speech more exciting and interesting.

At the end, Mr. Lin emphasized the importance of “Cultural Intelligence, CQ.” If you want to join any organization, you must first understand the culture of the organization, whether you like it or not. He said “Respect is very important. When I’m negotiating with foreign customers, I always feel I need to be a role model for my partners.”