Journal Entries Week 2: #2 - Corporate Culture

Part A: Evaluation of Corporate Culture

Part B: Alpina’s corporate culture is clearly seen in its motto “Alpina Alimenta tu Vida”, which means Alpina nourishes your life. Both, Fundación Alpina and Alpina, make sure that through this motto, a sense of collective well-being is felt from the inside of the company to the outside. The fact that Fundación Alpina was created, reflects that a fundamental part of the Corporate Culture of Alpina, consists on building positive relationships with the community and caring for their wellbeing as they work hand to hand with them to create socioeconomic development.

Fundación Alpina, shows that for them, the wellbeing of those who are part and are involved in the company in a way of another are extremely valuable. The board of directors, the supervisors and most of the Fundacion’s members act as equals, as a team and value everyone’s perspectives and opinions when evaluating a project. A situation that illustrates this happened to me this week, when my supervisor told me that Eduardo Diaz, the main manager and director of Fundacion Alpina was waiting for me in his office. He was extremely welcoming and asked me about my personal life, what were my career goals, what did I liked about the company, of the project that I was working on, some criticisms or things that could improve. I was also amazed that he was taking notes of things that I had to say to him, and that he seemed to enjoy the conversation.

The work environment is very enjoyable. The communication with other workers is constant due to the interconnectedness of the projects that are taking place right now in the company. For these reason, there is a lot of team work; starting from the project manager, to the graphic designer, then to the person in charge of budgeting. It seems that everyone enjoys working with each other and to communicate constantly in order to develop better ideas and avoid flaws.

The dress code is business casual. In some cases you see people wearing more casual outfits due to the amount of “on-the-field” amount of work that needs to be done. Up to the moment I feel very comfortable with the environment and with the people that I work with, they are willing to help and explain everything that I need. I also enjoy that they treat me as an equal, and that they make me feel that my job, although I am just an intern, is important for them, for Fundación Alpina, and for the community. 

Part A: Synthesizing research, continue with evaluation and suggestions about how to introduce productive projects in educative projects (for example the possibility of starting micro credits, larger dairy farms, financial and business education etc.)

Part B: I have advanced a lot in the project. I have been doing a lot of reading and analyzing a lot of documents and reports from previous years. My supervisor told me that it was a good idea to add a context to my project and provide background information about Alpina, the beginning of Fundacion Alpina, what are the main components of the educative and productive projects and a brief explanation of these. The idea is that this document can be read by analysts and people that are not familiar with the project, so they can get familiar with whatever needs to get done in a concrete way.  These has delayed the process of finding ways in which the productive and educative projects could be integrated, but I believe this will make my final document for them stronger as it can be read by any audience that is not familiar with the projects.

As of now, I find fascinating the work that Fundación does for people in the country. It is great to work for people that care not only about the success of the company but the impact that they can make in the communities where they are now. As I assumed, I have been doing a lot of research and reading for the reports that I have been working on. At this point is where I have been doing the most research since I need to evaluate what parts of the productive project can be added to the educative ones, which is a significant work load since the variables change significantly across the regions. Differently from the beginning, I believe that although the research process I have to do it by myself, the amount of work that has been put as a team in order to create the projects is amazing. In this way, I believe that I am working as part of the team and not just doing an individual research that they will use for the future. I feel part of Fundación, and this is one of the assumptions that I believed changed with time. At the beginning I thought I was going to be “just” an intern and that my work was not going to be appreciated but I was completely wrong. Alpina, as part of their corporate culture, have taken me as an equally important part of their puzzle. As explained before, this might come from their values based on creating a collective benefit where the work is done as a team and help is given and received in a reciprocal way.

Tomorrow I will have the opportunity to visit the project taking place in Sopó, this is going to help me to finish my report, interview a couple of people, if possible take pictures and see a different perspective from the one Alpina has shown in their reports. I believe this is going to be extremely beneficial for the evaluation of the projects and determining how some of the productive projects that I have analyzed in theory can fit in the project “Sopó, a Territory of Alimentary and Nutritional Security”. My plan is to finish the report by the end of the week and have the final week to do revisions, and take suggestions from my supervisor.