Monthly Archives: November 2014

“If the United Nations was fully funded why would we need the Arc or social enterprise?”

The UN is represented by a cluster of individual leaders, all of which have their own goals and ambitions. Collectively, they represent a democratic society in which they make decisions that are supposed to benefit all those associated for the amelioration of society, but individually, they are only aiming to succeed in their personal areas of interest. Although the UN directs sustainability programs and involves itself with philanthropy projects, their underlying goal is the opposite of “generat[ing] social value – not wealth”. Naturally, the large population of members in the UN causes inefficiency to take immediate action due to the lengthy process of first generating a feasible solution to a potential problem, then proposing a bill, then voting on it, and at last, if all (or most) members are in agreement with the proposal, finally the bill is passed.

Due to this inefficiency, social enterprise must exist to effectively find the rightful approaches to solving issues in global communities. Compared to the population of the UN, social entrepreneurs only make up a fraction of that population, and with a lower number of objecting voices, it is easier for them to agree on a resolution – thus, productivity levels will increase. Social entrepreneurs are genuinely passionate about their work, and they are self-driven to give help wherever help is needed. A crucial factor to the importance of social enterprises, like The Arc Initiative, is that all the social entrepreneurs are selfless and only seek to improve the lives of other people.

Even if the UN was fully funded, I believe that many important social issues would still be overlooked unless social entrepreneurs are available to tackle those matters. Social enterprises significantly support the well-being of global communities, and their importance is recognized by the lives that they have helped change for the better.

At the University of Yale’s School of Management, researchers have found that labeling products as “green” has negatively impacted consumers’ preferences on those products. The verdict to this unpredictable behaviour is due to consumers’ belief that modifying an original product to be more “green” causes the product to suffer from its original quality.

This is an unexpected turn of events for marketers who had the intention of attracting environmentally-conscious consumers to purchase “green” label products, but instead this strategy backfired. I agree with the consumers on this point: if a product were to change its formula to adapt to become more environmentally friendly, I would also believe that the original quality of that trusted product has been tweaked and pampered with, resulting in my decision to choose the next best alternative (probably a non-green alternative). If a product was first introduced on the market as a green-label product, I think that the results would be different. If consumers are satisfied with the originally-green product, they would view that product as a better, greener option to perform the same tasks with the benefit of contributing to a greener community and a smaller ecological footprint. This article brings about the importance of how to effectively market environmentally-friendly products so that consumers will choose the greener option as opposed to the original, more harmful alternative. Further research and application of this topic could influence many new consumers to make better choices with their preference of products with environmental sensitivity in mind.

Resources:

Slapping ‘Green’ on Your Products Makes Shoppers Think It Sucks

When Going Green Backfires: How Firm Intentions Shape the Evaluation of Socially Beneficial
Product Enhancements

Starbucks Workers: a blog post by Michael Sky

Michael has addressed in his blog post a revolutionary change in employee standards in the workforce of Starbucks. In the past, Starbucks employees were obligated to follow a dress code and rules to keep body ink hidden from view when working. Recently, Starbucks has changed its policies regarding the issue of dress codes and is now encouraging employees to self-express with their fashion and/or tattoos.

I like how Michael mentioned that the standard of employees is “very important to the business world as many customers consider how the employees are treated before purchasing their products”. This is very true in many cases, because often times companies are exploited by their mistreatment of employees and are publicly shunned as irresponsible businesses. Restricting employees to dress in their preference could potentially cause controversy over working rights and freedom of expression. Due to the growing importance of social values and social rights, Starbucks has joined the movement of freedom fighters and eliminated its dress code. I feel that this is an important step to obtaining necessary freedom in the workplace because with this new change in policy, Starbucks could perhaps start a movement of eliminating unnecessary rules that restrict workers from being themselves without decreasing productivity.

Not long ago, UBC announced that starting in 2015, the newly accepted international undergraduates would be paying a 10% increase in tuition fees and a 20% increase in housing and food services. There is little evidence as to why increases in fees are necessary, but the proposed reasons are as follows:

1. University of Toronto and McGill University has increased its international tuition fees by an average of 64% and 49% respectively by degree program, and
2. To invest in residence growth and student experience.

UBC’s reasoning behind why increases in fees are deemed necessary is, in my opinion, unjustifiable. UBC refuses to release its concrete intentions of increasing tuition fees, and basically says, “since UofT and McGill are doing it, we should do it too to ‘stay competitive'”. It is extremely unfair for the international students to have to pay more on top of what they are already paying, especially without any good reasoning.

International students are already obligated to pay three-to-five times more in terms of tuition and housing fees than Canadian students, and increasing those amounts by 10% and 20% is going to make studying abroad in Vancouver a lesser option. I believe that until UBC generates a plan on what the money is going to be used for and how it will benefit students, I will not agree with the school’s unfair actions.

Resources:

BREAKING: UBC to Increase International Tuition by 10% and Residence Fees by 20%