Frederick Wong's Blog

As I’m sure many of my classmates understand, I’ve been thinking a lot about the research we’ve had to do about BC Hydro’s Smart Meter program. BC residents are resisting the mandatory installation of smart meters across the province, and the general opinion of the program is not very good. What with health concerns and privacy issues all arising in heated discussion, the discussion about the Power Tab in lecture really tied the material of Business Fundamentals and Organizational Behaviour together.

Ignoring the validity of public concerns about the smart meters, the fact remains that people are not happy about them. And if people, for whatever reason, don’t want smart meters installed outside their homes, the market for a device that communicates directly with a smart meter seems limited.

Smart meters. Smart meters as far as the eye can see.

The Power Tab’s popularity and success in other countries is encouraging, but the differences in attitudes between BC and the rest of the world seem to make our province an nonviable  market. The day may come when BC Hydro either manages to convince the public of the virtues of the smart meter, or the public manages to overturn the law that provides for mandatory smart meter installation, but until then, it may be wise for Energy Aware to steer clear of British Columbia.

It’s been four years since the BC Liberals implemented the carbon tax, and a couple months since it was raised. What has it done for the province? Yadullah Hussain of the Financial Post writes of four primary benefits that BC has received since the carbon tax came into effect: a significant decrease in fuel consumption, a stronger than average economic growth (in comparison to the rest of Canada), a shift away from personal and corporate taxes, and a decrease in greenhouse gas emissions. British Columbians are far more accepting of the tax now, but why is the federal government so fearful of it? During the 2008 federal election, the Liberals under Stephane Dion campaigned on the ‘Green Shift’ platform, championing their carbon neutral carbon tax. By reducing the income tax to balance the carbon tax, taxpayers would shoulder no additional burden. That sounds great!

The Conservative Campaign managed to paint Dion in a horrendously negative light.

It lost them the election.

Sure, we hated the carbon tax as much as the rest of Canada did back in 2008, but maybe attitudes have changed. A quick survey of comments on various articles indicates that many across Canada are ready, even excited for a revenue-neutral carbon tax. Admittedly, the internet is notorious for its progressive Liberal bias, but they have a voice, just like everyone else, and it seems to be telling the government to implement the carbon tax.

This blog post is in response to Richard Leblanc‘s blog post on Canadian Business.

After reading Leblanc’s post, I have begun to think more about the composition of an organization’s board of directors, rather than just it’s actions as a whole. With regards to the financial crisis, it may not have been the case that they were corrupt, or particularly greedy as the Occupy Wall Street movement may suggest, but rather, they were unequipped to deal with the crisis.

We could, and should, argue that the constituent members of any board should be the people that are the most qualified, and experienced people for the position. As markets grow and dynamically evolve, the directors must also be able to adapt their policies and positions to do their job properly and effectively.

However, I was surprised to learn that some of Leblanc’s proposed board reform issues weren’t already commonplace, specifically, the “[appointment of] directors with relevant financial services experience”. I had always assumed that even if the directors did not particularly specialize in the field their company was in, they at least had relevant experience in similar fields, but evidently, this was not the case.

With the Eurozone crisis in Europe, and the fiscal cliff looming in the United States, banks across the world will need to be more careful with their actions, and their directors must be able to adapt quickly to rapid change.

This post is a reply to “Re: Apple’s Legal Troubles” on Jonathan Bickford’s blog.

Reading Jonathan’s response to my post about Apple’s legal woes caused me to rethink some of my positions and my stance on the issue. Given the negative public image and controversy surrounding Apple’s legal actions, my earlier statement that “a negative corporate image is never good for profits” seems to be on less solid ground.

As Jonathan pointed out with his Nike example, even though negative publicity and media attention surfaced about its conduct, it remained a very popular company. Likewise, the same can be said about Apple. It’s iPods, iPads, iPhones, and Macs are still extremely popular (one could prove this just by looking around the room in our lecture), even with the negative media.

So what causes consumers to buy products? Sure, the company’s image might factor in, but clearly, it’s not the major factor, and it may not even be a significant one for most people. I’ve come to the fairly simpler conclusion that people purchase products for their functionality, a seemingly obvious statement.

Then what are the implications with respect to the Apple’s legal issues? I’ve opened up to the possibility that since consumers purchase products because of functionality, especially technological products, for a large company like Apple, publicity is still publicity, no matter how negative it is. And if Apple is devoting so much of its time pursuing what many see as trivial cases, could this all be some twisted, evil marketing scheme? These issues are getting us to talk about Apple, and thus, the company and their products are still in our consciousness.

An amusing take on Apple’s ‘evil empire’.

Coming out of the late 2000’s recession, it seems like the economy only has room to grow. Many experts agree, and Slate’s Matthew Iglesias claimed that whoever won the American election would look like a genius, as they would be presiding over a growing economy. However, the threat of the impending “fiscal cliff” is casting a gloomy shadow over the forecasts.

What is the “fiscal cliff” then? Essentially, the cliff is a combination of expiring Bush-era tax cuts, and decrease in social services (spending cutbacks to reduce the deficit), which would increase the burden on Americans across the country. Sure, the government will generate more tax revenue, but the decrease in spending money for the average citizen may be far too large a burden to bear.

As the Canadian economy is undoubtedly closely tied with the American economy, we have many a reason to be extremely concerned. Any decrease in demand from the American market would shock our export-driven economy, and as always, a threat to the American economy is a threat to the Canadian.

It seems that all possible alternatives to preventing the American economy from falling off the “fiscal cliff” involves increasing the still growing American deficit. Recalling the previous debt ceiling crisis, and the threat of another debt ceiling imminent, the United States are in financial hell.

Torn between increasing the deficit or burdening the average citizen with higher taxes, President Obama seems at a loss to fulfill his campaign promises, but all we can really do is to wait and see what the next move is.

Over the past months, Apple made headlines over its numerous lawsuits and legal disputes with tech companies; Samsung, HTC, and Amazon. In the patent world, HTC and Apple managed to settle their dispute, at least for another 10 years.  With Samsung being forced to pay $1.05 billion in damages, Apple seems to be in good legal shape, but looks can be deceiving.  Firstly, the British courts ruled that some of Apple’s claims were invalid, and the company was forced to issue a formal apology.

That doesn’t sound too bad, but Apple was first forced to reword the apology to be more sincere. After that, Apple was forced to stop hiding the aforementioned apology on their website, and display it more publicly. As if that were not enough. Apple was forced again, for their lack of integrity, to pay Samsung’s legal fees.

As well, Apple failed in another dispute with Amazon over their usage of the term, “App Store” which Apple claims to be their intellectual property.

But what does this all add up to? Looking at Apple’s attitude towards these legal disputes, it seems to have built up a sense of legal immunity, almost arrogance when dealing with other companies. No matter how successful the company is, and no matter how good their products are, a negative corporate image is never good for profits. If these legal battles continue, and if Apple continues with its lack of integrity and arrogance when it comes to these disputes, Apple could face a lot more trouble than just patent disputes.

Read more »

In response to Janice Leung’s blog post, I find myself at odds with her analysis of LinkedIn’s new feature; the ability to “Follow Thought Leaders“.

Janice proposes that the ability to follow influential business leaders will lead to an abuse of this new system, with leaders promoting themselves, their businesses, and their own points of view instead of, as their own professional knowledge and insights.

Presidential candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney are two of the many influential figures that you can follow

In my opinion, the ability to follow business leaders would be a incredible addition to the professional website. By looking at the viewpoints, opinions and advice of business leaders, we would experience greater growth. These influential business leaders are clearly very successful, accomplished people, and we could stand to gain much from their insight.

I do agree with Janice that these leaders may use LinkedIn to promote their own businesses and campaigns, but I see little problem with this. Perhaps this self promotion would lead to greater opportunities for business professionals, and it may not. It would be impossible to judge the effects of increased promotion on LinkedIn by influential leaders, as anything we think of now would be mere speculation, and potentially, far from reality.

Essentially, it is my view that the addition of the ability to follow business leaders and their opinions/advice would enrich the LinkedIn community, rather than detract from it.

In a purely economic sense, there is no doubt in the minds of many businessmen that tapping into the vast resources of the oil sands is a sound investment. What is holding them back, however, is the public resistance to the idea, and their advocacy of environmental care. Natural resources are the backbone of the Canadian economy, and it seems only logical to use them for Canadian economic prosperity.

Location of the oil sands in Alberta

It is the concept of a National Energy Strategy that is central to Herle and Swann’s article. With the lack of an official, government policy, companies are reluctant to undertake ventures regarding the oil sands, and possibly even worse, the sale of Canada-based oil sands company Nexen to the Chinese oil corporation, CNOOC. This would, to some degree, place control of Canadian resources in foreign hands, an idea few would embrace.

It’s also important to note the divisive opinions of Canadians. Primarily, Albertans resent the attempts to redistribute oil-sands generated wealth, while citizens in the rest of Canada, to some degree, feel that a redistribution of wealth is justified, as it is a Canadian resource.

Canadians are divided on the oil sands, and without a National Energy Strategy, and official policy on oil sands development, companies too, will be divided.

For the article referenced by Herle and Swann, see here.

Prison labour is a topic that many people choose to avoid, possibly due to the fact that many find it uncomfortable to discuss. Is it right and fair to pay prison workers a miniscule amount to cut costs? Is it right and fair to deprive law-abiding, honest, hard-working members of society of jobs that they could do just as well? How is prison labour different from controversial outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries such as India or China?

The answer? It’s not.

Sure, prison labour is a cheap and efficient way of saving money, but that doesn’t make it right. It’s not fair to either the prisoner, or the regular worker. The prisoner is being paid next to nothing for work that would pay higher, if it was anyone else doing the work. The regular working sees jobs that they could do vanish because companies want to save money by cheating the prisoners. Prison labour, and outsourcing, is in my opinion, unethical, immoral, and should not be tolerated. More information can be found at the Canadian Business website.