I have since a long time ago always been interested, like so many other gezians, in the development of gezie and the world at large and my endevour to use “research” to help in a way with things started with my episode at Queen Mary, University of London. I thought I could use the research skills we were being taught to analyse gezie music. I listened to a lot of music but abandoned my idea to analyse music statistically. Later on I found a book which had a photo of the Abacus and that reminded me of my short course on computer history I had years back in Gezie. I felt if I could find a link between the Abacus and the Yoruba language I could begin to root up certain history of the yoruba language with a number perspective from these primitive media of communication. I thought the Abacus would work very much with a branch of mathematics called combinatorics and began “experimenting” with the link between the Abacus and yoruba numbers. It was not so easy as it seems as ejidinlogun is a single word. An alternative interpretation is ewa ole ogun. Breaking up and concatenating these yoruba numbers was with an understanding of mixed method research and in the process of transferring the quantitative data to qualitative data I arrived at the algorithm to translate numbers to words. It works for many different languages and it is as a matter of necessity, innovative. As simple the algorithm is it was not yet not discovered by the many websites which translate numbers to words. With a very limited amount of coding I was able to translate 1 million numbers to words. A small feat which hitherto will take a database to achieve. A small feat that has the potential to enhance trade and aid productivity. Another strand of its application is the word calculator. A lot of people find numbers cumbersome and a lot of people have limited understanding of numbers. My thoughts were that if the calculative aspect of the calculator is hidden and transformed into results which could free engagement efforts for other mentally stimulating endevours “we” could be in a win win scenario. Take an individual who has not been to school much and is been hindered by numbers, what stops him/her from engaging in trade with the word calculator. I was wrong though and it came as a mind buggling surprise that my dint of hard work will be copied/stolen and be accepted by all and sundry as the original while I get relegated as a busy-about-nothing.
Igbo Number/Language Translator
Culture,Religion and the Economy
I am not a preacher but the bible is one of the most enduring bodies of knowledge the people of the world subscribe to. To many people, Christianity is a journey and one of the bible
passages that support these ideas is a bible passage in Romans, chapter 12 verse 2 which says “be not conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind so you can discern the mind of God”. The bible also says ” Brethren, I wish you prosper and be in health even as your soul(your mind) prospers. The problem is that most of those who preach prosperity nowadays neglect the idea of the whole prosperity of the soul and have reduced the prosperity of the soul to “believing God for money and for good health”. Prosperity of the soul to me is one thing and prosperity in other dimensions including health is another thing even though these dimensions of prosperity are related. An engineer may be prosperous in the field of
engineering but poor in the field of medicine but if an engineer trades his skills for medical prosperity he becomes prosperous in health and engineering. All these because he understands a basic but enduring truth of God by renewing his mind and understanding the will of God when it comes to work. So God cannot be fooled into a prayer and collect God and this even makes a lot of unbelievers disillusioned by the way Christians practice Christianity. On the farm of God whatever a man sows, he reaps. The question is why it that some work and don’t eat and some eat and don’t work. It is because on the farm of God, some people plant weed. The essence of weed planting is to the make the crop unproductive and indeed in Gezie some plant a lot of weed.
Why would senators earn the much they earn (administrators) and the core producers can’t eat. In basic accounting administrator expenses take less precedence over production costs. Basic accounting. However we have administrators telling producers what to do. That is weed planting. There is something seriously wrong with our reward system in Gezie. The Harvard model, a model of Human Resource Management contends that “employees should be involved in determining the organisations reward system”. Certain researchers at the Tavistock Institute in the UK
came up with a work system that is not new to Yoruba farmers. They “developed” the socio-technical approach to work. They determined that the “idea of a business is an amalgamation of two interrelated systems: social and technological.” They came up with the idea that job redesign should not take place in a way that is totally removed from wider factors such as culture and group identity. The Aaro farmers of old would group and farm on subscribers’ farms for a small pay to handle the socio-technical problem involved in a capitalist/socialist system of work. This is because we need and therefore innovate to solve our need problems but there is always the problem between the haves and have nots as innovation even though can be fostered, it is not evenly distributed. You may have a small farm or big farm but the college of farmers still come and work on your farm and this solves a socio-technical problem as you may still benefit from the big farm. This does not stop you from working and it neither stops you from benefitting. Pure Capitalism is based on commodification. That is the increased accumulation of properties although there are checks and balances built into Western Capitalism. David Needle comes up with the definition of culture and he says “culture represents all human activity that is socially, as opposed to genetically, transmitted. It includes norms, values and beliefs that manifest themselves in behaviour, practices and institutions. My concern is an adaption from David Needles Business in context and it aims to study the extent to which we can learn from different cultures, both ours and foreign, transplant these ideas, using them in a different cultural setting. There is the culture free hypothesis in business which “argues that businesses in the same sector in all countries are converging on similar types of technology, strategies, products and forms of business organization. It also prevails in the political and social arena too because of globalization. However, from the culture specific point of view there are differences in the extent to which cultures are aligned from country to country. These key differences related to values. In whole, the six variables studied by Hofstede include power distance, individualism versus collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, Masculinity versus femininity. Long term versus short term orientation or Confucian dynamism. Power distance is the extent to which members of the society agree that power is distributed equally. He points out that in all societies there is inequality between people whether it is based on physical appearance, economic or social characteristics. For instance in societies where power distance is high like France, Mexico and Hong Kong, social relations are formed on the basis of inequality whereas in societies such as the USA, Germany and Sweden, the power distance was small and it is due to a direct initiative to reduce inequality. They reduced inequality by redistributing wealth through high rates of personal taxation. I want to point out that historically there has been a discord between the Egbas and Oyo because of taxation issues. The second variable I am discussing is the Individualism versus Collectivism variable. Hofstede realised that individualistic societies such as the USA and UK are characterised by a preference to look after yourself and your immediate family whereas collectivistic societies such as India, Singapore and Mexico have a tendency to cater for a wider group and emphasize belongingness. Uncertainty avoidance is the extent to which members of a society feels uncomfortable with uncertainty. In uncertainty avoidance societies such as Argentina, Switzerland and Japan, there is a display of anxiety concerning the future and they tend to be rigid when it comes to changing ideas. That is why the Japanese devote more time to planning a lot.
Less uncertainty avoidance societies such as Hong Kong, USA and Thailand are very open to accepting ideas from foreign places and they take risks. The Masculinity versus femininity societies such as Japan, USA and Germany tend to display an affinity for achievement, assertiveness, and material success and display a strong belief in different gender roles while Feminine societies, like Sweden and Holland, place more emphasis on the quality of life, care for others and equality between the sexes for instance Scandinavian countries were among the first to introduce paternity leave. With the fifth variable Hofstede and Bond found out that some societies oriented towards the Confucius philosophy were more future oriented, valued perseverance and were more adaptable than many Western societies. The implication of the culture free and culture specific approaches is that we may learn from other places but we must be very careful in the way we accept other cultural inclinations as some cultural trends will work in a different society but may not necessarily work in ours. For instance Gallagher et. al pointed out that, in the UK, 6 per cent of people lived on their own in 1971, whereas by 2005, this number had doubled to 12 per cent. This was as a result of the power distance getting lower as more people were becoming more financially capable and healthier and marriage becoming of lesser importance. To buttress this point, historically, from the words like Agbe, Egbe we would realise that Gezie societies are more collectivistic and “more long term oriented” in nature but by the time Hofstede and Bond were doing this research Gezie had become more individualistic and more short-term oriented. These are imported developments and the extent to which these have worked is the subject of research. So as noted by Derek Rollinson too, the attitudes we hold are strongly influenced by direct exposure to objects and the socialisation process, which tells us what to regard as normal and acceptable in our environment. These are very powerful sources of influence but because different societies have different ingrained value systems, we should not expect all societies to have similar positive or negative values towards the same thing. These issues are important for business because it is the people who make up the business and the cultural inputs which influence attitude and behaviour
come from the society. In a multicultural settings (business and polity) people should be prepared to adjust when “alien” cultures are encountered. Education is also important. One may get the leg and another the tail but education jointly tells you it is an elephant. This leads me to two important concepts in business called classical and operant conditioning which are behaviourist learning theories and the understanding of their applications is important in society and business as socialisation is the process by which a new comer learns and makes sense of the organisation in an unwritten and informal way.(Diane Preston) “Classical conditioning evolved from the work of Ivan Pavlov (1927), who uncovered the concept of the unconditional reflex. A reflex is a predictable, unlearned, involuntary response to a stimulus. However, it is not a conscious decision to do something but has the function of protecting the organism in some way. For example if you see a wave of hand in your face, you will naturally dodge. Ivan Pavlov showed that it is possible to condition a reflex so that it is elicited by a new and completely different stimulus. While classical conditioning can only explain reflective or passive learning, it has applications in everyday life and is sometimes used wrongly. I’ve seen an advert on a fizzy drink which made it appear as a strawberry. It is very possible for the unsavvy to come to accept a fizzy drink as strawberry like. While classical conditioning explains passive learning it does not explain behaviours built in into the nervous system. Skinner, the originator of operant conditioning, distinguishes between two types of behaviour: respondent and operant. Respondent corresponds to classical conditioning in which an organism learns to associate an innate, reflexive response with a new stimuli. In operant behaviour, however, the organism emits a new behaviour to deal with environmental conditions and the behaviour itself is strengthened by consequences. Take cigar marketing for instance. If you see a cigar smoker in a mansion (in an advert), the tendency is for you to be elicit a benign behaviour to cigar smoking and if you are rewarded with a good cigar odour you may eventually take up smoking and as these cycles continue you become a chain smoker.(Derek Rollinson). It is not helped by what is known as the concept of social status. Max Weber described social status as a a person’s position in the society based on the level of authority/prestige that they hold in the eyes of others. ” Income like status is unevenly distributed and while it is common for people with higher income to have a higher status, with differences in culture, it is not always so. In many societies ministers of religion with modest incomes can carry a high level of status because of the kind of values they exude. In Hindu societies, status is more likely to be achieved through non-material achievements. In the UK, the status of teachers often does not reflect their income. but considering the historical trajectory there has been a serious change in status because of what people can buy. In traditional societies, status is symbolically displayed in ways such as body marks, clothing, and crowns, jewels and other objects which are often passed down from generations but in a consumer society status is based on consumption. This leads me to symbolic consumption. Symbolic consumption suggests that people care about what others think about them and the things they buy are reflective of this as the opinion people hold of them (the buyers) is partly due to what they own. Thorstein Veblen, an influential writer on this topic decries these kind of “purchasing” because when achievers buy because of the way they would like to be seen rather than the function of the products, others will copy and this will lead to, increasingly, a culture of waste in ostentatiousness and this he called Conspicuous Consumption. (Gallagher et al). These are what we have swallowed, hook, line, and sinker in Gezie including religious individuals with its concomitant effects in the economy and society as a whole. Whether a conditioning technique used is for beneficial purposes or not is a question of ethics as ethics is defined as “dealing with moral issues and choices and concerning an individuals beliefs about what is right or wrong and good or bad”(Derek Rollinson). Factors affecting the kind of ethics we uphold include individual factors such as personality, intelligence and values as these have a bearing on what individuals with these characteristics consider to be acceptable limits of behaviour. As pointed out earlier, socialisation has a strong effect on a persons ethical standards and what he or she learns from early family experiences, at school, in church and peer groups and more increasingly nowadays, on TV and the social media do have a dramatic effects later in life. (Freud 1940) stresses that conscience is acquired as part of upbringing. Other writers such as Kohlberg(1968) and Wright(1971) show that moral responsibility is strongly influenced by early social experience. Another influencer of ethics is the work role. A work role where there is pressure from bosses, peers and subordinates to act in a certain way whether positive or negative can exert a strong influence on individuals. Organisational factors can also affect ethics. An example is a culture in which senior figures clearly have high ethical standards and act as role models can help an individual to be ethical, whereas one in which the individuals own ethical code is subject to constant ridicule makes it much harder for him or her to behave ethically. The last factor I want to touch on concerning ethics are wider social factors. Certain factors that affect an individual ethical behaviour in the society is the Law and basic values of the society.
I have got something to say on the NNXC. I don’t know how. I am seeing “88%” write offs. Do they have irrecoverable receivables expense accounts? This applies to the clientele without the administrative area and also private clientele within the administrative area. Let’s take the NHS for instance the administrative which is the administration area is England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. A market can be anywhere other than a physical location. Do they have credit control procedures? Those write-offs are large. Serious mismanagement?
In the past. If you are selling assets and it is worth mentioning in the consolidated statements what about the effects. For £1?
If you are selling entities and these companies and the level of ownership is above 20% that is not a non-controlling interest entity. They are associate companies and an elaborate treatment of the sales is required in the consolidated statements. Why just a single line of entry?
Why weren’t goodwill entries in the consolidated statements. Companies often reduce their goodwill to minimise impairment values and overstate profit. That is understandable. What I don’t understand is how you present statements with goodwill outrightly absent.
(In Non-supply organizations like the NNXC they don’t write off bad debts within the “administrative area” as expenses. Bad debts are used to reduce the revenue figure in the statement of comprehensive income. The reason being that debt within the administrative area doesn’t go bad. /They produce company style statements.)
(found some other nasty things on the event but I’m a loner on this/ The government shouldn’t dabble into the finances of NNXC. “Non-supply organizations bear the risks and rewards of their financial operations. They produce a statement of comprehensive income showing retained surplus or deficit for the year. They may retain their surpluses but in return they are responsible for managing their deficits.” “They can borrow on their own account and can retain and invest their surpluses.” The only item relating to the government is the public dividend capital which is the amount invested in the organization by the parent department, retained earnings and the revaluation reserve.)
