Twitter logo.

Beware, people who tweet, your company can be using your recent tweets to decipher what kind of personality you have and it might determine whether you get the job or not! In the article, it is said that a people will be sorted into one of the Big Five personality traits and the words people use in their tweets will be used to determine the type of person they are.

The Big Five Personality Traits table.

For example, if someone uses the words “we”, “friends” and “family” frequently, then it is likely they are caring. <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2508757/Employers-use-personality-profiling-technology-analyse-tweets.html> Using this technique to screen potential employees could be very beneficial to the Human Resources sector as it can save time from extra interviews and it will allow employers to potentially do a “personality check” to see if the person will fit into the company’s culture.

Meryl Streep’s character interviews Anne Hathaway’s character in the movie “The Devil Wears Prada”.

However, while this can benefit companies to hire better fitting employees, would opportunities be missed if a potential employee’s social media persona does not appear to match the company’s ideal employee persona? Granted nothing posted on social media is private, is it really ethical to sort through the employee’s private tweets? Utilizing this software can also help the company determine how to retain talents or appeal to potential employees; by understanding their personalities, the companies can ensure valency with their offered intrinsic and extrinsic rewards.

All in all, with the MIS and BTM sector becoming more prevalent in the business field, everyone should be careful about what they post on social media; anything we say or show “casually” on these sites might determine our future!

A Target shop posing with a Canadian flag to signify it opening in Canada.

As Rachel Chan mentioned in her “”Target”-ing the right thing”, Target has not been satisfying Canadian customers as much as expected. Rachel has noted that one of the dissatisfying issues that customers have with Target is their “noncompetitive pricing”. However, a spokesperson from Target has declared that their prices will “be very comparable” against Walmart, their biggest big box store competitor. <http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/01/24/target-in-canada-clothing_n_2541766.html> Therefore, we must ask, is Target lacking points of parity with other big box competitors such as Walmart and Costco, or is this wave of customer dissatisfaction due to it being an American company entering a Canadian market?

One of Target’s biggest big box competitor- Walmart.

We must also consider that Target isn’t the first American company to receive resistance in establishing its brand in the market on Canadian soil. Walmart is a great example to illustrate this point. In fact, the Vancouver council originally voted against allowing Walmart to open store in 2005! <http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/no-wal-mart-for-vancouver-1.543224> Despite the rough beginning, Walmart is now a successful company as well in Canada and is one of the reasons Target is experiencing a barrier to entry due to how successful Walmart is. To increase its presence in the market against Target, Walmart is opening “at least 37 additional supercentres” in Canada by the end of next January. <http://www.ctvnews.ca/business/walmart-to-open-37-supercentres-in-canada-as-target-enters-market-1.1124643> Against all this competition, Target does have its own points of differences, such as offering products that have never been on the Canadian soil, including: Nate Berkus’ decor line, designer collaborations, and their own Archer Farms food line.

The interior of a Canadian Target store.

Time will tell whether Target can prevail against all these obstacles posed by Canadian consumers and market and be as big of a competitor as Walmart Canada deems it to be.

Picture from posters of the Broadway-hit turned movie “Chicago”. The intention of this photo shoot is to imitate the red light district where women display themselves in windows.

As Justin Uyeno mentions in his blog post “Sex sells, but is it ethical?”, he has said that the prostitution industry can be ethical if “[sex workers] exercise their own free will to join the industry”. <https://blogs.ubc.ca/justinuyeno/2013/09/11/sex-sells-but-is-it-ethical/> However, it should be questioned whether that statement is true, if the majority of sex workers truly do join the profession in their own will.

Globally, there are many “red light districts” located around popular cities, such as France and Amsterdam. Women sell their body to make a living. In a way, this is not an “untapped market” as Justin Uyeno has said, but it is true that prostitution is illegal in many parts of the world as well.

Women posing in windows in Amsterdam’s Red Light District.

In a recent event, a campaign group against modern slavery (and human trafficking) pretended to be sex workers in Amsterdam’s red light district and brought on a performance in the windows that shocked many onlookers. The audience at first thought it was a nice treat, but were stunned when a projected message that reads “Every year, thousands of women were promised a dance career in Western Europe. Sadly, they end up here” appeared. The article and video can be found here <http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2411812/Men-cheer-dancing-half-naked-women-Amsterdams-red-light-district-shocked-anti-trafficking-ad.html>. This brings us to ponder about whether prostitution can truly be ethical. How many “willing” women enter this industry due to their own free will without having reached an unpleasant ultimatum or without deceit? The demand will always be high since sex is “one of the oldest professions” as stated by Justin, but we have to consider many factors of why the supply is remaining high as well.

Here is a video clip from the movie “Moulin Rouge” that was filmed in the actual Moulin Rouge in Paris’ popular red light district. Can Can From Movie “Moulin Rouge”

A western black rhino photographed with her calf. A picture that can never be taken again.

Due to poaching over many years, the population of rhinos have been declining drastically, with numerous species now extinct or near the brink of extinction. One of the most recently extinct species is the Western Black Rhinos. This specie was heavily hunted in the early 20th century for their horns (ivory).

<http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2490777/Western-Black-rhino-officially-extinct-Northern-White-Javan-rhinos-follow-unless-conservationists-warn.html>

A dead Western Black Rhino with its horn removed.

It has been said that if more effort were put in for conservation, perhaps the fate of these extinct/near extinction species could be very different. However, the root cause is due to poaching. As business people who believe in creating shared value, there are things that we can do to help animals who are poached for their ivory. For example, ivory are mainly used for jewelry, medicine, ointment, or simply decoration. (http://www.savetherhino.org/rhino_info/threats_to_rhino/poaching_for_traditional_chinese_medicine) Those are things that can be substituted with a multitude of other products that contain similar “ingredients”! Entrepreneurs can see this as a “painkiller” start up idea and come up with ways to replace the use of ivory in the aforementioned products; this is an issue that is bugging the world right now, and horns will be missing in the future if the extinction of rhinos keep increasing. If entrepreneurs can provide a commendable solution to this issue with products that will satisfy the same customer needs, the market can become more sustainable and ethical.

Walt Disney’s logo, picture version.

In a public article that gained the attention of many over the summer, a female Disney employee told her story where she was blamed for being raped by a male employee by a certified counselor and a personnel in Employee Relations from the company.

<http://www.xojane.com/it-happened-to-me/disney-rape>

As a company who prizes its culture to provide a rewarding, inclusive, and supportive work environment (http://disneycareers.com/en/working-here/culture-diversity/), Disney’s treatment of this incident certainly causes controversy. With the company’s Human Resources division appearing to trivialize sexual harassment towards the female employees, this can lead to the reduction of employee’s affective commitment, job satisfaction, and lead to the creation of employee deviation and unethical practices in the workplace. On another angle, such dismissive actions by the counselors and personnel from Employee Relations may not reflect the overall attitude of Disney’s treatment of such cases. Their actions could have been influenced by their own cultural background, beliefs, values, and experiences. However, it is disappointing that Disney did not take more measures to help this victim.

Additionally, this blogger commented on the above case and also compiled other situations where it shows that Disney does have a tendency to put sexual harassment blames on victims. Her input is useful as it validates the original article I found and adds more insight into the situation. <http://bellejarblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/19/disneys-rape-problem/>