Elizabeth Hall

06/02/2022

Out of all the islands I have visited here so far (Aegina, Mykonos, and Hydra), Hydra is by far my favorite of the three. When we arrived, we went straight to the cliffs to go swimming. The water was beautiful, blue, and clear. After I took a short dip, I realized there was a small cliff you could jump off where I had set my towel. I introduced the idea to everyone, but I was only 95% sure that the water was deep enough. Thankfully, Kevin wanted to be our guinea pig and he jumped off first. After we realized Kevin could do it, we all jumped off the cliff into the water. After cliff jumping, we went to lunch. I ate the moussaka, and it was very yummy. Once our bellies were full, a few of us went to ride the donkeys (although I only saw horses and mules). We were led as a group around the tight winding roads on the island, my horse was sweet, and the views were beautiful.

Kelly and I then walked around the town while looking into local shops. I had been searching for a pair of sunglasses and I found a pair of ray bans in a shop named Studio Hydra. I also conducted my interview with a worker at the shop who helped me named Vesna. Vesna was very helpful in the store and during the interview. I discuss my interview in depth in my Hydra Interview post on OAKS.

Elizabeth Hall

05/31/2022

Blog 2

I really enjoyed the tour we took to Poseidon’s temple today. The location on the cliff where the temple was built is stunning. My favorite part of the excursion was the beach we visited after the tour of the temple. While swimming in the water you could see Poseidon’s temple on the cliff which was a cool experience. It was like we were “swimming in his pool”. After swimming we ate lunch at an authentic Greek restaurant by the water. The food was delicious, but I really enjoyed the octopus since I had never tried it before.

I found the reading about eco-innovation in Greece to be particularly interesting. Eco-innovation is a challenge in Greece mainly because of their poor economy, which slows down introducing further innovations. Most companies must take their own initiatives to build energy efficiency. But the Greece government does support the integration of sustainable technologies such as building energy efficiency and their energy savings at home program.

Elizabeth Hall

05/30/22

This picture is from a beach club we visited for lunch in Mykonos.

Last weekend most of our class went on a short trip to Mykonos. Lila and I booked an air bnb to stay in together; we also had to book our transportation. We decided to buy ferry tickets because they were cheaper than airline tickets and they offered a student discount. When booking the tickets, I accidentally booked them for the weekend of June 17^th; and we only realized this mistake at 1am the night before we were leaving. Although we fixed the mistake, it was very stressful. Making my own transportation arrangements here is stressful because I am unfamiliar with public transportation and I am in a foreign country where I do not understand the language. 

The company I researched in class was Nike. Nike has been known to produce their sneakers and activewear in unethical sweatshops since the 1970s, but it was only in 1991 that activist Jeff Ballinger published a report describing the low wages and poor working conditions in Nike’s sweatshops. There most common in developing countries like India, Indonesia, and Thailand where labor laws are rarely enforced. These factories are often hosted in decomposing building which are overcrowded with underpaid employees and pose fire dangers. Under pressure to make changes to improve the wages and conditions of their workers, Nike worked to become a member of the sustainable apparel coalition. Nike has claimed to use reduce greenhouse gas emissions generated from their operations and supply chains; but there is no evidence to support this.

Between chapter one and two my favorite reading was chapter one. It was interesting to discover all the different resources that business ethics includes. Such as psychology, business management, organizational behavior, leadership studies, and sociology. The chapter gives you the tools to investigate ethical questions that arise at individual, organizational, and social/political levels. The chapter also lays out the clear goals of our business ethics class: creating ethical organizations, thinking through social, economic, and political policies that we should support as citizens; developing our knowledge base and skills that we need to identify ethical issues, understanding how and why people behave unethically, and deciding then how we should act, what we should do, and the kind of person we should be individually.