United States – Page 3 – understand-culture

What is business agility

Business agility refers to rapid, continuous, and systematic evolutionary adaptation and entrepreneurial innovation directed at gaining and maintaining competitive advantage. Business agility can be sustained by maintaining and adapting the goods and services offered to meet with customer demands, adjusting to the marketplace changes in a business environment, and taking advantage of available human resources.

In a business context, agility is the ability of an organization to rapidly adapt to market and environmental changes in productive and cost-effective ways. An extension of this concept is the agile enterprise, which refers to an organization that uses key principles of complex adaptive systems and complexity science to achieve success. Business agility is the outcome of organizational intelligence.

Willy Loman

In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, the character Willy Loman exemplifies the American salesman archetype who negotiates constantly, whether it is selling products or negotiating his own worth.

Zuckerberg

The Social Network (2010). Chronicling the creation of Facebook, this film shows Mark Zuckerberg’s shifting relationships and agreements with co-founders and early partners. The story is marked by frequent renegotiation, legal disputes, and Zuckerberg’s readiness to change or exit agreements as the business evolves, reflecting the American logic of flexibility and ongoing negotiation.

Willy asks Howard

In Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman, a struggling salesman, meets with his boss, Howard Wagner, to ask for a stable position in New York rather than continuing to travel. Willy tries to appeal to Howard’s sense of loyalty and decency, but Howard remains unmoved, focused solely on financial metrics.

Howard embodies a purely transactional, numbers-driven approach. He ignores Willy’s emotional appeals and repeatedly brings the conversation back to business metrics and profitability. Howard’s emphasis on facts, figures, and bottom-line results reflects the American business culture, where personal relationships and sentimentality are secondary to financial performance.

Winner-take-all

In Glengarry Glen Ross (1983), the salesmen at a real estate office are informed of a contest where the top salesman wins a Cadillac, the second-place gets steak knives, and the rest are fired. The announcement is delivered by Blake, a ruthless sales manager. Blake’s pitch is brutal, using fear, financial incentives, and aggressive language to motivate the sales team. The negotiation tactic is clear: produce results or face dire consequences. There is no room for negotiation—only compliance. The focus on competition, high stakes, and a clear winner-take-all mentality encapsulates the American approach to negotiation as a high-pressure, performance-driven endeavor.

Why Volunteerism Is an Essential American Value

The commitment to volunteerism has been a hallmark of American civic life since the country’s founding. It was Benjamin Franklin who formed the first volunteer fire department in 1736, and many American militias during the Revolutionary War were comprised of volunteers. Some of the most well-known American charitable organizations, such as the YMCA and the American Red Cross, were founded in the 19th century.

Many American youth today are exposed to volunteering through religious youth groups or scouting organizations, and many large companies arrange volunteering opportunities for their employees. Nearly every church, school, or local community center has volunteers who feed the poor, teach, tend to the sick and elderly, support political causes, coach kids, or rescue animals, among numerous other causes. Not only does volunteering allow people to help others through direct action, but it fosters an incredible sense of community as well.

Why the inequality gap is growing

For forty years, the U.S.-led global economy has produced an enormous improvement in human welfare. The percentage of the world’s population living on less than $1.90 per day fallings from 42% to 10%.

At the same time, income inequality has surged in countries with advanced economics. Nowhere has it surged more than the United States, where reliance on free-market forces magnifies rewards for those at the top while leaving others behind.

caveat emptor

caveat: may he/she beware. emptor: buyer. caveat emptor is Latin for “Let the buyer beware”. Generally, caveat emptor is the contract law principle that controls the sale of real property after the date of closing, but may also apply to sales of other goods.

The phrase caveat emptor and its use as a disclaimer of warranties arises from the fact that buyers typically have less information than the seller about the good or service they are purchasing. This quality of the situation is known as information asymmetry. Defects in the good or service may be hidden from the buyer, and only known to the seller.

caveat emptor is a short form of Caveat emptor, quia ignorare non debuit quod jus alienum emit: “Let a purchaser beware, for he ought not to be ignorant of the nature of the property which he is buying from another party.”

A common way that information asymmetry between seller and buyer has been addressed is through a legally binding warranty, such as a guarantee of satisfaction.

A Latin term

Protections

“Today, caveat emptor does not apply to as many situations as it once did. Due to the changing marketplace, government regulations were created to protect consumers’ interests. With the release of the Uniform Commercial Code (UCC)—a set of business laws that regulate financial transactions that occur across states—for example, warranty provisions are much more common. Additionally, some industries now require seller disclosures.”