American Businessmen Research Articles

The Confucian Roots of Business Kyosei

Kyosei, a traditional Japanese concept, has been applied to a variety subjects, from biology to business. It has more recently become synonymous with the concepts of corporate responsibility, ethical decision making, stakeholder maximization, and responsible reciprocity. The purpose of this paper is to trace kyosei's modern business application back to ancient Confucian thought. The ideals associated with Confucianism were instrumental in the creation of Japanese business codes of ethics during the early part of the seventeenth century. A short history of this period is presented to provide a contextual framework for understanding these codes. A specific code of ethics, called the shuchu kiyaku, is presented for the first time in English and shown to have direct roots in Confucian writings. Statements from modern company codes and from modern Japanese and American businessmen are presented to reflect the philosophy of business embodied in that ancient code of ethics.

The Making of a Dream: The Sino-American Expedition to Mount Amne Machin in 1948

For centuries, China has remained as a place in many Americans' shadowy dreams where fortunes and careers could be made through commerce, industry, religion, education, and adventure. American businessmen and their domestic backers appreciated China's richly endowed natural resources and its untapped market of 400 million customers, looking forward to making immense profits from business investment and commercial establishments. Since the arrival of the first American merchant ship, Empress of China, in Canton in 1784, generation after generation of American businessmen and adventurers landed in the Middle Kingdom to begin their enterprises by foreseeing a promising future for mercantile advantage. In this China drive, individual businessmen outside the U.S. government played a significant role in linking the two countries and peoples through a variety of activities. Some of them were particularly responsible for conveying their ideas, directly or indirectly, to government policy makers in Washington, exerting profound influence on the U.S. foreign policy toward East Asia. Some of them made great efforts to assist in the modernization of China by devoting their lives and resources, turning themselves into friends of China. Some of them, however, played games as adventurers seeking power and wealth in a fraudulent way and creating unexpected occasions for political confrontations and diplomatic conflicts in Sino-American relations. In all of these multi-dimensional interactions, China, a country too weak to control its own affairs in the nineteenth-century and the first half of the twentieth-century, provided a fantastic place for Americans to range freely, exercising their talents for good or evil to the fullest.

Relações econômicas Brasil-África: a Câmara de Comércio Afro-Brasileira e a intermediação de negócios no mercado africano

Este artigo traz algumas reflexões acerca da presença empresarial brasileira no mercado africano, enfocando particularmente a experiência africana da Câmara de Comércio Afro-Brasileira. Objetiva responder a três questões principais: sob que motivações o comércio Brasil-África obteve um notável crescimento entre os anos 70 e 90? Quais as perspectivas que se apresentam para o empresário brasileiro que deseje iniciar negócios na África? Qual o estado atual de iniciativas que emergiram naqueles anos? Mediante pesquisa bibliográfica e entrevistas com executivos que atuaram na África, além de especialistas em comércio exterior, constatou que, nos anos mencionados, o governo brasileiro concedia generosos incentivos aos empreendimentos que se voltassem para o mercado africano, estimulando a criação de muitas empresas e o direcionamento de muitas operações para aquele Continente. Com o fim dessa política privilegiada, muitas empresas fracassaram, enquanto outras permanecem em atividade, a exemplo da Câmara, que evidencia dificuldades de prospectar novas oportunidades de negócios, exigindo a revisão de sua forma de gestão, ao mesmo tempo em que sua trajetória propicia importantes lições a empreendedores que desejem iniciar negócios no mercado africano. Conclui que, a despeito da redução do apoio estatal e das mudanças no ambiente econômico interno e externo brasileiro, as oportunidades comerciais no Continente africano existem e não podem ser ignoradas pelos homens de negócios, que tendem a julgar a África como um todo em função dos aspectos negativos ressaltados pela imprensa, da mesma forma que muitos empresários africanos desconhecem a qualidade dos nossos produtos e serviços.

The Role of Philippine–American Relations in the Global Campaign Against Terrorism: Implications for Regional Security

Introduction When the United States called for global support to combat terrorism in the light of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks (hereafter referred to as 9/11), the Philippines immediately responded by granting the United States over-flight rights for its military aircraft. (1) The Philippines also offered Clark Air Field and Subic Bay Naval Base for use by the International Coalition Against Terrorism as transit points or staging areas for troops fighting the war against terrorism in Afghanistan. Philippine President, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, even expressed a willingness to deploy Philippine troops to Afghanistan, contingent upon approval by the Philippine Congress. American officials have praised the Philippine Government's support in the global campaign against terrorism and have described the Philippine initiative as outstanding. The Americans even commended President Arroyo for being quick to speak up, very quick to take action to help the United States fight international terrorists. (2) During the six-month anniversary of 9/11, President George W. Bush in his twenty-minute speech singled out President Arroyo for courageously opposing the threat of terror. (3) President Arroyo was the only head of state mentioned by President Bush in this speech. To recognize Philippine support in combating terrorism, the Bush Administration promised President Arroyo that the United States would give the Philippines US$92.3 million in military equipment to bolster not only its ability to counter terrorism but also to increase its wherewithal to fight local insurgents. (4) This exchange of mutual support is a landmark in Philippine-American relations as it revives the once ailing security alliance between the two countries. When the Americans closed their bases in the Philippines as a result of the termination of the Military Bases Agreement (MBA) in 1991, Philippine-American relations hit their lowest point, with the security relationship being practically moribund. President Arroyo's full support for the U.S.-led war on terrorism and strong commitment to the United States in combating the terrorist network in Southeast Asia reinvigorated Philippine-American ties. This prompted one American security analyst to describe the Philippines as an American front-line state in the war on terrorism. (5) What are the implications of reinvigorated Philippine-American relations for regional security? This article will examine the role of Philippine-American relations in the global campaign against terrorism and its implications for the security of Southeast Asia. A Historical Background to Relations Philippine relations with the United States have played an important role in the security of not only Southeast Asia but also the entire Asia-Pacific region. Those relations began as early as 1898 when Filipino and American troops collaborated against Spain, which had been the colonial master of the Philippines for 333 years. Then President Emilio Aguinaldo responded to the request of Commodore George Dewey to provide Filipino assistance against a common enemy. Dewey provided arms and supplies to Filipino forces while Aguinaldo sent manpower to fight Spanish forces. (6) In the aftermath of the Spanish--American War, a vanquished Spain ceded the Philippines to the Americans in the Treaty of Paris. That Treaty became the basis of American rule in the Philippines. With the Treaty of Paris, the United States established colonial control of the Philippines based on the American perception that the Philippines was an important strategic outpost in the Asia-Pacific. (7) Even then, U.S. President William McKinley viewed the Philippines as a strategic country with strong potential in servicing the United States' commercial and naval needs. (8) American businessmen also saw the Philippines as a strategic gateway to the rich markets of Asia, and a hub for American trading activity in the Asia-Pacific region. …

Torpedoed: An American Businessman's True Story of Secrets, Betrayal, Imprisonment in Russia, and the Battle to Set Him Free

Torpedoed: An American Businessman's True Story of Secrets, Betrayal, Imprisonment in Russia, and the Battle to Set Him Free

Puff, bluff et humbug : de Barnum à Jules Vernes

In a posthumous Jules Verne's short story, «Le Humbug», an American businessman called Hopkins claims to have found the skeleton of a giant man near Albany. This character recalls Barnum's outstanding features (presented in Pierre Larousse's dictionary): the art of displaying invented rather than genuine freaks, the diversion of the scientific langage, the use of the «puff». Written after a visit in the U.S.A. in 1867, «Le Humbug» is also an echo of other discoveries (the remains of a mammoth found in 1866 near Albany, collections of prehistoric bones exhibited by Henry Augustus Ward). Curiously, the subject of this story is very close to the Giant of Cardiff, a false fossil «discovered» in 1869 near Albany. This may be the reason why Verne seems to have given up publishing this short story.

A Tale of Two Cities

This article experiments with the use of popular novels to study the meanings of money and property in two important Asian nations, Mainland China and Taiwan. From important dictionaries of Chinese literature, we selected eight mid-length novels published in the respective countries from 1974 to 1982. Our reading of these 16 novels reveals that Taiwanese novels depict a more capitalistic culture and higher socioeconomic level than the Mainland novels do, whereas the Mainland novels place party leaders and intellectuals on a higher level than the Taiwan novels do, higher than businessmen. In both cultures, wealth is fundamentally evil. On the Mainland, wealth is said to destroy families, interfere with serious thinking, and lead to superficiality. In Taiwan, it brings tribulation, and it is far less important than simplicity, deep thinking, conformity, and responsibility. Finally, the Mainland novels blame government bureaucrats for all the troubles, whereas the Taiwan novels blame the meddling capitalists, especially American businessmen.

The Mexican Herald: Outpost of Empire, 1895-1915

In the globalization of our economy, scant attention has been paid by scholars to the proliferation of English-language newspapers around the world designed to attract or protect American or British investments. This is a study of one such newspaper, the Mexican Herald (1895-1915), one of the early handmaidens of business that presaged the multinational corporations of today. Founded by an American, Frederick J. Guernsey, the Mexican Herald served an enclave of 25,000 American businessmen in Mexico City. The newspaper was dismayed by the outbreak of the Mexican Revolution in 1910, which threatened to wipe out foreign holdings. In particular, the Herald targeted Emiliano Zapata, the agrarian reform leader, for his unremitting attack on the large landowners and therefore private property in general. The Herald supported two reactionary regimes and sent a delegation to Washington, DC before being closed in 1915 by the Revolution which it never understood.

Between Communion and Renunciation: Revising The American

In the space between the two endings of Henry James's novel The American--the first completed in 1877 for the final installation of a serial publication in The Atlantic Monthly and the second completed in 1905 for publication in Volume 2 of the 1907 New York Edition of James's collected works--James traces a path from the archaic blood ritual of communion sacrifice to the allegedly modern spiritualization of religious renunciation to the secular "crisis" of a more ethical mode of relationality. James's novel tells the story of an American businessman, Christopher Newman--"a powerful specimen" of the "national type" (18, 17)--who has come to Europe, and finally Paris, in 1868 "to pick up aesthetic entertainment" (AM1 301). 1 Newman becomes engaged to the widowed daughter of an old, aristocratic French family, Claire de Cintré, née Bellegarde, only to lose her to the Carmelite convent when the family turns against the marriage and Claire proves too faithful to the family "religion" to resist its law. As James explains in his 1907 preface to the New York Edition of the novel, the story turns for him on how Newman, who has been characterized by the novel's [End Page 286] narrator as exceedingly "good natured," will respond to this wrong. Having become privy to a Bellegarde family secret--a letter written by the deceased Bellegarde patriarch charging his own wife with his death so that his daughter may be married to a man of whom he disapproves (M. de Cintré)--Newman first contemplates revenge, but at the very end "give[s] it up," and "let[s] the Bellegardes go," by burning the damning document in the fire (AM1 308, 306).

African American Social Work Pioneers' Response to Need

African American pioneer social workers of the Progressive Era (1898-1918) were at once concerned about the private troubles of individuals and the larger public issues that affected them. They also were acutely aware of their relationship to the community residents they served. There was very little physical, social, and economic distance between the workers and their clients. They lived in the same and by virtue of shared many of the same societal problems and issues of concern. Their work at the beginning of this century reflects contemporary community practice. For these African American pioneers, community practice had both a macro- and a micro-orientation. These individuals directed intervention designed to bring about planned change in organizations and communities - macropractice (Netting, Kettner, & McMurtry, 1993, p. 3) while developing, locating, linking with and managing community resources in a way that helped to improve individual social functioning - micropractice (Hardcastle, Wenocur, & Powers, 1997, p. 2). Progressive-Era African American social workers' community practice was essentially race which personalized problems to alleviate human suffering and concurrently organized and developed private organizations to change the system. The race and race women who engaged in the emerging social work profession were among the talented tenth, the educated elite of the African American community (DuBois, 1908). Self-help, pride, mutual aid, and social debt became part of the underpinning that guided their practice. These principles and values were neither exclusive nor sequential. Instead they were each part of the foundation on which social work and social welfare services were developed to meet the needs of the African American community. This article will briefly discuss these fundamental values as they were reflected in African American social work at the beginning of the century. The elements and dimensions that were a significant part of their practice repertoire are also discussed. As African Americans claimed their place among social work pioneers, the primacy of their mission to improve the collective social functioning of their racially segregated became clear. For these pioneers social work was both cause and function. Values and Principles Self-Help and Mutual Aid As noted the values and principles fundamental to African American social work practice were self-help, mutual aid, pride, and social debt. The focus on self-help and mutual aid became an institutionalized part of the African American community. Overwhelmingly excluded from full participation in the U.S. social system and at the same time receiving limited responses to individual and social problems from white social workers, African Americans developed a dogged determination to take care of their own. A review of the Proceedings of the National Conference on Charities and Corrections from 1874 through 1945 revealed only brief and infrequent expressions of concern about the many social problems and inadequate social conditions that were the lot of African Americans during the early decades of the 20th century (Lide, 1973). On the other hand, the Southern Workman, the literary organ published by Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute for Negroes and Indians (now Hampton University), was devoted entirely to improving the economic, social, and political conditions of African Americans. The journal's mission was to expose problems and to suggest and examine strategies for planned change. During the early part of the century, the journal provided a publishing outlet for many African American social work pioneers, artists, business men and women, and others. Like many others, Sarah Collins Fernandis, a settlement house leader and pioneer in the public health movement, relied heavily on the Southern Workman as a tool for communicating information about settlement work, interracial activities, health, housing, child care issues, and the need for African Americans to help each other. …

The Higher Jazz

Edmund Wilson, preeminent American literary critic of first half of twentieth century, often fretted that he was not taken seriously as a creative writer. Though he completed in draft this short novel, now entitled The Higher Jazz, it was never published. In mid-career, in 1939, Wilson planned a novel in three parts that would carry a man through fifteen years as a stockbroker, a Russian diplomat, and a writer. When he started on first section of this book, set in 1920s, it carried him away from his original project. His hero was instead transformed into a German American businessman who, aspiring to become a composer, seeks spirit of America in music that combined contemporary popular and modern classical, in what Wilson called elsewhere the higher jazz. This portrayal of 1920s provides a sense of elusive glories of Boom Era. Neale Reintz has edited The Higher Jazz for general reader. His introduction sets novel in historical context of Wilson's life and writings, and his annotations explain topical references and, more important, illustrate Wilson's method of composition.

Mapping the Terrain of Whiteness: Richard Wright's Savage Holiday

Richard Wright's Holiday, which focuses on how the white male protagonist Erskine Fowler deals with his guilt, has been ignored by critics until recently. Yoshinobu Hakutani maintains the reason why Holiday has not received popularity among the critics is Wright's exclusive treatment of white characters and his concern with nonracial matters (15). J.F. Gounard and Beverley Roberts Gounard claim that Savage Holiday is Richard Wright's only nonracial (344), and they read the novel from Freudian perspective in relationship to the Oedipal conflict between Fowler and his mother. John Vassilowitch also focuses on the paradoxical connection between male sexual desire ... and female degradation ... [that] has its counterpart in Erskine's Oedipal fantasies about (207). John M. Reilly analyzes the novel as thriller and feels that it omits racial conflict because its narrative scope is ... restricted to the singular pattern of one man's Oedipal complex (218). What all these critics have in common is psychoanalytic exploration of Fowler's Oedipal conflict with his mother which draws him to the point of murdering Mabel. Michel Fabre is the only critic who gives an extensive study of the novel and of Fowler's profile as a psychopathic murderer (376). The plot of the novel is simple. The 43-year-old Erskine Fowler is forced into early retirement from his job as insurance agent after 30 years of long service. As he picks up his Sunday paper, he is locked out of his apartment, fully naked, when the door slams shut. In panic to avoid being seen by anyone, he decides to climb through his bathroom window just above the balcony on which his neighbor Mabel Blake's son Tony is playing. Seeing Fowler nude, Tony is shocked and falls from the balcony ten floors down to his death. Believing that Mabel may be aware he is indirectly responsible for Tony's death, Fowler becomes involved with Mabel, although she is just whore in his eyes. Failing to deal with his own fear and guilt, he tries to make Mabel, widow, feel guilty for being mother, for Tony got terribly scared whenever he saw his mother have sex with men, associating the sexual relationship with in his mind. The naked body of Fowler apparently represented the war of which he has been deadly afraid. In order to buy Mabel's silence, Fowler makes proposal to her, but Mabel is too clever for that. When she eventually discovers what Fowler had been up to, he kills her and turns himself in to the police. Before he confesses his murder to the police, he remembers his childhood memory of beating the doll's head with brick because it is bad woman--a replica of his mother, who was prostitute. We realize that Fowler's revengeful act of crushing the doll and drawing the doll with his colored pencils to represent his mother's promiscuity is the reason why Mabel replaces his mother in his mind. All along he has failed to resolve the Oedipal conflict with his mother, who has deprived him of maternal affection, twisting his drive to love at an early age. He resolves the Oedipal conflict in killing in Mabel the mother that he has repudiated. In an interview with Raymond Barthes on Holiday, Wright himself states: `Having left America and having been living for some time in France, have become concerned about the historical roots and the emotional problems of western whites which make them aggressive toward colored peoples.... was looking for explanations of the psychological reactions of whites.... In this novel, have attempted to deal with what consider as the most important problem white people have to face: their moral dilemma' (167). Later, in an interview with Georges Charbonnier, Wright delves into the depth of the problem: I picked white American businessman to attempt demonstration about universal problem ... the problem of freedom (236). Given the overview of the limited body of critical works on the novel, we need to remember Wright's intention in writing it. …

Father Frank Lynch and the Shaping of Philippine Social Science

Although the United States granted the Philippines formal independence in 1946, American influence in the former colony did not disappear overnight. In the decades following independence, American policymakers continued to play key roles in Philippine politics; American businessmen, presidents, legislators, and bureaucrats and US-based international money lending agencies continued to have a considerable impact on the Philippine economy; and American popular culture continued to penetrate Philippine society and culture (as it did elsewhere). But perhaps no sector of Philippine society was as profoundly influenced by Americans as the academic one, and no subdivision of the Philippine academy bore the American imprint as visibly as Philippine social science. This paper examines the academic career, writings, institution-building efforts, and scholarly agenda of the US-born scholar who arguably had the greatest impact on post-war Philip- pine social science: Father Frank Lynch, a Jesuit professor of anthropology and sociology at Ateneo de Manila University.

Narrative Style in Oscar Micheaux's Within Our Gates

Within Our Gates is the title of Oscar Micheaux’s rediscovered 1919 feature film. Restored in 1993 from a single known surviving print from Spain, the film adds new insight into the workings of Oscar Micheaux, an incredibly prolific African American filmmaker, writer, producer, novelist, and businessman. Since so few of Micheaux’s estimated forty-eight feature films survive, it is difficult to generalize about the entire oeuvre. However, Within Our Gates is a stunning film, the first surviving feature by an African American director, and an example of his silent-era work. I wish to concentrate exclusively on Within Our Gates not as a fragment from an elusive career, but as a complex, self-sufficient text that stands alone.

Should we teach women to interrupt? Cultural variables in management communication courses

The “universal” principles of effective communication taught in most management communication courses ‐ directness, simplicity, forcefulness ‐ are, from an inter‐cultural perspective, American and male. Should women students of business be taught to imitate the speech behaviour stereotypically associated with American businessmen? Or is the behaviour stereotypically associated with women equally, or even more, effective in business situations? Because there is little research to support the masculine model of business speech, because coercing women to change their speech produces pedagogically unwarranted stress, and because the feminine stereotype is actually better suited to global business communication, this paper argues that business and management communication should be taught from a gender‐independent postmodern approach.

High-Speed Network Will Link Russia's Far-Flung Universities

Moscow—On 10 June, Russia's far-flung scientific enterprise suddenly seemed a little less dispersed. At a new university computer center in Yaroslavl, northeast of Moscow, science education officials and journalists celebrated the opening of a new Internet center, complete with high-speed links and dozens of workstations. It is one of 30 to be set up all across Russia over the next 5 years in a $130 million initiative jointly financed by George Soros, the American businessman and philanthropist, and the Russian government. Computers/Math

Taking the Low Road to Sino-American Relations: "Open Door" Expansionists and the Two China Markets

Why do historians of Sino-American relations study missionaries but not prostitutes? If contemporary reports from early-twentieth-century treaty port China are to be believed, female United States nationals operating and staffing brothels Shanghai and Tientsin (Tianjin) enjoyed greater proximity to indigenous elites than did most missionaries. According to a 1908 account, American female bawdy house owners Shanghai had their fingers all the concerns of the city and on terms of closest intimacy with Shanghai's men of affairs, foreign as well as native, certainly an accomplishment eluding all but a few missionaries. So too, some of these women found greater personal success the China market than did many American businessmen. By this same account, they led extravagantly prodigal lives and could be seen during the afternoon riding hour parading their success down Bubbling Well Road, the main street the American area of Shanghai, seated in crest-emblazoned carriages, heralded by runners and drawn by blooded horses with jingling, silver-mounted harness.' Images of American madams flaunting their entrepreneurial success late imperial China should stir historians to look beyond the conventional narrative of the rise of an Open Door coalition of big policy advocates, who were driven by the turmoil, social distress, and labor unrest of the 1890s into the pursuit of commercial

Current issues in second language acquisition and development

This book provides the most updated discussion of the most important issues facing students, scholars, and researchers in second language acquisition research and development. Contents: Current Issues in Second Language Acquisition and Development: An Introduction, Carol A. Blackshire-Belay; Section 1: Language Development and Transfer. Native Language Transfer and Universal Simplification, Robin Sabino; Aspect Transferability (Or: What Gets Lost in the Translation-and Why?), Terence Odlin; Creole Verb Serialization: Transfer or Spontaneity? Frank Byrne; Section 2: Learner Variables in Second Language Acquisition. Contexts for Second Language Acquisition, Elsa Lattey; Language Acquisition, Biography and Bilingualism, Ulrich Steinmuller; Acquisition of Japanese by American Businessmen in Tokyo: How Much and Why? Yoshiko Matsumoto; Section 3: Issues in Interlanguage Development. Abrupt Restructuring Versus Gradual Acquisition, Hanna Pishwa; Variability in Grammatical Analysis: On Recognizing Verbal Markers in Foreign Workers' German, Carol A. Blackshire-Belay; Sketch of an Interlanguage Rule System: Advanced Nonnative German Gender Assignment, Joe Salmons.

Made to Play House: Dolls and the Commercialization of American Girlhood, 1830-1930.

Dolls have long been perceived as symbols of domesticity, maternity, and materialism, designed by men and loved by girls who wanted to 'play house.' In this engagingly written and illustrated social history of the American doll industry, Miriam Formanek-Brunell shows that this has not always been the case. Drawing on a wide variety of contemporary sources -- including popular magazines advertising, autobiographies, juvenile literature, patents, photographs, and the dolls themselves -- Formanek-Brunell traces the history of the doll industry back to its beginnings, a time when American men, women, and girls each claimed the right to construct dolls and gender. Formanek-Brunell describes how dolls and doll play changed over time: antebellum rag dolls taught sewing skills; Gilded Age fashion dolls inculcated formal social rituals; Progressive Era dolls promoted health and active play; and the realistic baby dolls of the 1920s fostered girls' maternal impulses. She discusses how the aesthetic values and business methods of women dollmakers differed from those of their male counterpart, and she describes, for example, Martha Chase, who made America's first soft, sanitary cloth dolls, and Rose O'Neill, inventor of the kewpie doll. According to Formanek-Brunell, although American businessmen ultimately dominated the industry with dolls they marketed as symbols of an idealized feminine domesticity, businesswomen presented an alternative vision of gender for both girls and boys through a variety of dolls they manufactured themselves.

Profile: Henry Grinnell

AbstractHenry Grinnell (1799–1874), a wealthy American businessman, was a leading protagonist of 19th century American Arctic exploration. Despite his considerable influence, little has been written about his life. He never visited the Arctic, but sponsored important expeditions of the Franklin search, financing expeditions under Edwin De Haven 1850–51, Elisha Kent Kane 1853–55 and Charles Francis Hall 1860–62 and 1865–69. He supported also American attempts on the North Pole by Isaac Israel Hayes in 1860–61 and Hall in 1871–73. This article deals mainly with Grinnell's influence on polar affairs other than Franklin search expeditions, which were discussed in an earlier article.