Variations on Capitalism Around the Globe – Linda Hill

Complete video at: fora.tv Harvard Business Professor Linda Hill examines variations on capitalism around the world, describing an example of a mortgage company in Dubai that has been successful while staying true to Islamic traditions. —– Professor of Business Administration Linda Hill, President of Boeing International Shephard Hill, and CEO of Talisman, Inc. John Manzoni address the future of the global corporation at the 2008 Aspen Ideas Festival. Linda A. Hill is the Wallace Brett Donham Professor of Business Administration in the organizational behavior area at the Harvard Business School, where she chairs the Leadership Initiative and serves on the faculty of the Leadership Best Practices program. Her publications include Becoming a Manager: How New Managers Master the Challenges of Leadership. She is also the author of e-college course modules on management as well as several multimedia management development programs. Her consulting and executive education activities are in the areas of managing change and cross-organizational relationships, globalization, career management, and leadership development. Her current projects focus on leading in emerging markets and leadership as collective genius. She serves on the advisory board of the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program.

25 Responses to “Variations on Capitalism Around the Globe – Linda Hill”

  1. JeanLouie1106 on July 11th, 2010 at 5:02 AM

    How is this an example of a different type of capitalism? Capitalism is going into business for the purpose of making profits, the Islamic mortgage company is still making profit, they are just as capitalist as the western world.

  2. Interesting video. However I fail to see how this “capitalism” is any different from western companies. What she described was a company who took courageous values and accepted the concequences of their choices. A sign of a succesful company – yes.

    Another ‘type’ of capitalism ?? Not even close.

  3. discrimination was eliminated by*

  4. One of Friedman’s arguments was that the civil rights act violated the employer’s freedom, and that discrimination was very expensive, so that a truly free market would have no discrimination. The problem with his idealistically simple statement is that discrimination by govt intervention. Forcing people legally to associate with those they don’t like makes them eventually realize they don’t have a good reason for this feeling and it goes away.

  5. The fact that you WANT tolive does nto put an obligation on me to sustain your existence. IF YOU want to live and exist in this words you have to figure out how that is done. You cant forceother people to do it for you.

  6. Property is essential to your life because how will you survive if you do not have a right to the products of your thought and actions? If you donot have a right to property you are a slave, no actions are possible without property. To say that people have a right to a house,food, or water, for example, would mean that other people would have a right to your food your water. These things have to be produced or processed by somebody. They are not free.

  7. First let me define what the “right to life” is and isnt. The right to life gives you the freedom to take the actions necessary to sustain YOUR OWN LIFE.That means you have the freedom to think and act and do whatever you want as long as you do not violate other peoples rights. A right to life does not mean a right to water, to food, to a house, to a vacation, it only means you have the right to produce a house, food, clean water,or whatever you need to make in order to sustain your life.

  8. In fact, your philosophy seems to be the opposite of a right to life philosophy. The only rights you have are to use your acquired wealth to acquire what you want however you want. You have no right to expect any of life’s essentials that you are unable to acquire for whatever reason. A human being, quite literally, has no right to expect to live if they fail to play the capitalist game in the correct way, right? I mean, your life is only worth as much as your purchasing power, right?

  9. Property rights are not necessarily congruous with the right to life. Water is an essential source of life. Private ownership of water allows personal control of water. While one could argue that profit motive would make the owner work harder to get his water clean and available to his customers, there is no right to life for those unable to pay whatever price the owner decides to charge (or perhaps are simply refused service for whatever reason).

  10. Again, they don’t have that right in your mind simply because your philosophy holds that this is a so. Its not a maxim. There is no reason to suggest that a business owner’s right to control my freedom of speech on property he has opened up to the public for profit generates more freedom than simply allowing me to speak my mind wherever I am regardless of whose property I am on. I’m not in any way denying the owner the right to respond to my speech with his own, so I’m not denying him anythin

  11. Strikingn workers do not have a right to spew their ideas on their employers property, that not only violates the emplyers property rights but it also violates their free speech! You would be forcing them to aloow thing that they donot a gree with to be said on their own property anddenying them the ability to say what they want on the land occuppied by the workers.

  12. Freedom is not possible without property, but like I said, all rights including the right to property is derived from your right to your own life. Thats not an arbitrary opinion, its fact. Rights are not a list that you pick and choose which is your favorite, there is a hierarchy and certain rights are based and derived from other rights. ALL Rights are derived from your right to your own life, the right to property allows you to implement your rights. Speech is not possible without property.

  13. Because, again, you hold property rights to be the pinnacle of rights and freedom. Someone else holding free speech as the pinnacle of rights might feel that you have no right to deny me my free speech even if I am on your property (the classic example being striking workers marching in front of the place of their employment). Again, all I am saying is that your claim isn’t inherently true, its what you believe. You have to justify it, not just say it like its some kind of gospel.

  14. Im not sure I understand your question. You do not haver a right to violate another persons rights, if you go on another persons property to “say stuff” and the owner of that property kicks you off because he disagrees, that does not violate your rights. You were the one violating HIS rights by going on his property in the first place. You have a right to free speech, but that doesnot give you a right to use other peoples property to use a platform.

  15. There are always going to be cases where self-defense (or property ownership) is disputed. Where your rights are given up is in allowing the state to determine that. How is the state telling you that my first amendment rights extend to your property (if you open it up to the public for commercial use) different in anything but degree?

  16. You still have a right to self defence to the point of having to defend yourself before the policve can get there. But you cant form your own gang and go out and try to fight criminals. You do not lose any rights, you just delegate the right to self defence to the government.

  17. And who decides when they justly respond to force? Are you allowed the right of self-defense? To whom do you justify that your action was self-defense? All I am saying is that, in order for your rights to be defended by the neutral party (the govt), you must give up some rights to that party. The line you draw for that balance is arbitrary. Maybe its right, but its arbitrary, so someone else’s line is also justifiably arbitrary.

  18. I’m not arguing merit, just form. You believe that that is the govt’s ONLY job, that protecting property rights is the only way to protect freedom, just the same way a Marxist believes eliminating property is the only way to achieve equality.

  19. Opps, i meant to say, “The Police and the Army sure as hell ARE obstacles to violence,they are put their to respond to the initiation of force with force”

  20. Thats an inrisicist position, you just say”well violence has always been arround so it will always be arround” without looking at the nature or source or any causes. Who sais anything about removing obstacles to violance? The Police and the Army are sure as hell not obstacles to violence,they are put their to respond to the initiation of force with force.

  21. Im not advocating might makes right.The “neutral party” for resolving disputes is called the government through a court system. The government has only one purpose in the end,and that is to protect your rights, that is its ONLY job. This means no gang warfare or mob violence to resolve disputes. The only instituion that is allowed to use force in society should be the governemnt, and force is put under the control of Objective law this means that it can only use force to pretect peoples rights.

  22. Slavery wasn’t created by the govt, it was ended by the govt.

  23. Ayn Rand and Friedman are brilliant, but they’re only human. They wouldn’t be the first people to imagine a utopian version of human society, where everyone acts as Rand/Friedman thinks they should. People don’t work like that, though. Life is a struggle, and violence as a means to success has always existed. Removing obstacles to violence has never been an effective means of reducing violence.

  24. Okay, fine. Unless you’re advocating a might is right approach to property, there must be a neutral party to resolve real (and artificially created) disputes. If that neutral party doesn’t have complete power to decide disputes, that leaves individuals the right to resolve their own disputes, however they decide to (i.e. violence). Thus, unless you advocating personal violence as a legitimate means of social control, you must give up your rights to this unitary power.

  25. Simplistic? Please point out the essential factors missing from that definition.

    “how can the state simultaneously give you complete freedom of property rights and protect your rights from the rights of others?”

    There is no “right” to violate another persons rights. Rights do not impose anything on other people, except one thing, not to violate another persons rights.

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