Maverick Indonesia

When Eyes Talk

If you are giving a lecture, what can be more rewarding than getting critical questions and starry eyes of the students that actually indicate their brains are processing the information they receive from the lecturer?

My friend, who is an MBA lecturer in several top universities in Jakarta, called me couple of days ago. He said that he would like to invite me to speak about Corporate Social Leadership (CSL) in his Organizational Behavioural class at Tarumanegara University’s MBA program this Saturday.

I was so excited. This was actually a golden opportunity for me to have a discussion with MBA students about a new concept that all Mavericks believe it should go mainstream: CSL

This morning I went to the University and delivered the presentation – after circling around the university looking for a parking slot (gosh, the university is being renovated, and it was so difficult to find empty parking slot there!). During the presentation, I outlined the ‘history’ of social activities conducted by corporations throughout the time. It was all started long time ago when those rich people started to donate some of his/her money to social foundations. Afterwards, I continued to explain about the CSR and CSL. I also exemplified some CSR and CSL cases.

There were some interesting questions the students raised. For example, a student asked about how to avoid culture of dependency and how to shift into a new corporate-community relationship when such dependency occurs. Some students also raised his/her skepticism on a do-good company. How can a company be good if their intention is actually to get profit as high as they can! Other students posed a challenge to CSR as a voluntary activity and believed that government should regulate this domain.

We had this kind of discussion for about two hours. It was so rich and fruitful. At the end, students went out of the class with their own conclusion in mind. But it was so good to see them exchanging arguments about CSR, and see those starry eyes – their eyes talk!

SBY’s cutting edge website

Global Voices Online has reported that President SBY has a new innovative website, complete with RSS and Podcast feeds feeds as well.

It even has an English section and a section devoted to the First lady. Apparently it costs about Rp42 million a month to operate, a pittance really if it pays dividends. A quick search on Technorati shows that its been kept relatively updated: 19 oposts in the last 16 days.

What next for this technology-adopting president? SBY Blog next?

Story from the Gate of a Shopping Mall

I went to a famous shopping mall in Jakarta last weekend. Soon after I approached the gate, a security officer raised his hand, showed his palm, and asked me to open the door and the trunk for him to inspect the car.

I am always puzzled with the routine here: he was pushing his Garret metal detector half way in to the car underneath my chair and did the same in the trunk. Beep-beep. And that was it.

Of course, if you ask him, he would say that he was looking for a bomb. But the stupidest man on earth would know that he could not find a bomb in the car by only pushing in the stick into the car, beep-beep-ing it, open the trunk, and close it again. What if the bomb was planted inside the backseat of the car? Or what if the bomb was wired around my body?

Besides, I am not sure he knows what to do if he finds a car full of bombs. Will he shout? Will he ask for help? Will he call the police? Or will he be stunned there staring at the car?

There is a bigger issue actually at stake here. Long time ago, contractarian theorists, like Thomas Hobbes, let us know that to ensure your freedom you have to make concessions to the authority. You have to give some of your freedom to be exchanged with common goods, for example security.

What these people supposed to do at gate of the mall is exactly this: providing security. They receive legitimacy from us giving our freedom in exchange for this common good.

If they don’t do it properly, they are invading our privacy, instead. Our cars are private properties and they cannot just break in unless we have agreed to let them do so. We agree, following Hobbes, because we believe that they will take care of our security.

I am starting to think that if they can’t and don’t take care of our security properly, why would we want to have our privacy be invaded?