The paper discusses about the lessons learned from the World War 2 that are applicable in overcoming obstacles and challenges. These applications can be political, environmental, social or economic.
According to history, the World War II (WW2) started in 1939 when Adolf Hitler invaded Poland and ended in 1945 with the historical Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombing causing the Japanese to surrender to the United States. It is noticeable that the war happened due to resistance to invasion and search for democracy or social equality.
The search for social equality brought about by the WW2 is evident on the attitude of the workers today which led to the formation of workers’ union. Employees and workers nowadays seek to work on democratic companies where they can enjoy benefits and enhance their careers and not on horizontally hierarchical organizational structure where the management is very dominating to its workers. The people have learned from the WW2 how to fight for democracy.
Moreover, the WW2 was actually a war between two allies, the Allied Party and the Axis Party. Both parties were composed of different countries; the Allied party included the United Kingdom, France, Soviet Union, China, the US and others which aim was to help and support each other against the invaders by providing each other military support and weapons while the Axis Power was composed primarily by Germany, Italy and Japan which aim to invade countries in Europe, and in Asia in order to expand their territories.
From this concept, companies today also formed alliances with other companies which is called strategic alliances in order to strengthen both companies involved and to expand its market due to the challenges brought about by globalization. Strategic alliances are also done for a company to utilize other company’s resources.
For example, Sony Corporation was aware of its weak sales performance on mobile phones while Ericsson is known for its excellent mobile phones. Sony then formed alliance with Ericsson which is now known as Sony Ericsson, with the combination of Ericsson’s ability to produce good mobile phones and the ability of Sony to produce quality Walkman and video cam, the two companies developed mobile phones with new features which include camera and music player.
Another significance of the concept of alliances is favorable for the economy. Countries today formed regional trade blocs such as the ASEAN, NAFTA, and MERCOSUR. Regional trade blocs are trade agreements between countries to establish a common market or to lift tariffs for a more convenient trade of goods or services between the member countries. These trade blocs, like the alliances during the WW2 aims to protect their members, other countries even provided some privileges to its co-member.
Furthermore, it is written in history that the reason why China joined the Allied Forces was because Japan invaded China during the 1930s to boost its economy by utilizing China’s natural resources (2006). The USA then provided military assistance to China as asked by Chiang Kai-shek, China’s political leader that time, because China then has poor fighting materials.
The lessons learned from situation boosted the idea of offshore outsourcing by companies today. Dell, Intel and others outsourced some of their operations to countries like China, India, the Philippines and others in order to take advantage of the resources in these countries, to address high labor cost and shortage of human resources. The Philippines has abundant of electronics graduates needed by Intel while India is a primary choice of companies like Dell where they can hire several IT skilled employees. Companies outsourced to China basically because of its low labor cost.
During the World War 2, Americans contribution to the Allied forces were limited to war materials and financial support and its military troops were less experienced compared to the troops of Germany and Japan (2006). Because of this, American men including the fathers volunteered to the combat in the war.
This cause women to work for their families to support financial needs since the fathers were out in the war. This raised the idea that women can work too which somehow started the working mother trend. Today, even women who have no family yet works as professionals which change the notion of the society that women are for household chores only, which increased the status of women in the society.
Another lesson learned from the World War 2 is the concept of teamwork to obtain the desired objectives. In the war, the desired freedom and peace of the Allied Forces will never be achieved if the members do not work as a team. If China fought Japan on its own without its teaming up with the US, China would have been totally invaded by Japan and the rich culture it has today would have been not that intact. This is applied to many organizations today like the United Nations (UN). If not for the teamwork of most of the nations in the world, UN will never be capable of formulating agreements and creating projects such as poverty alleviation, fight for aids campaign and so on.
The war also taught people to be cooperative and helpful to the needy. Countries today have the tendency to always help countries in crisis. In the Philippines, US military teaches the Philippine military on how to fight terrorism; in an event of calamity, countries are willing to donate financially like in the Tsunami incidence in Thailand in 2005, and in the recent earthquake in India.
After the war, people from every country almost became peace-loving due to the death and poverty caused by war. From the Preamble to the United Nations Charter which stated that “we the peoples of the United Nations determined to save the succeeding generations from scourge of war…” (2006), it is noticeable that people never want to happen another deadly war again.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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