As seen in the First Nations article, external factors heavily influence the way in which a business will operate. For example, a portion of the article is about how Taseko Mines found a large deposit of copper and gold on aboriginal lands and they wanted to destroy the entire lake. In order to fight this, First Nations got into a lengthy court preceding that enforced the protection of their lands. This serves to illustrate how First Nations was basically an external factor that influenced Taseko Mines and effectively halted their plans.

The article I have chosen revolves around how Chinese companies in the USA are urged to learn the country’s employment laws. Often times, foreign companies in the USA are targeted with lawsuits because they do not understand how it works in the USA, as the culture and ethical guidelines are different. This is similar to the case of First Nations because both parties had different agendas, and neither are necessarily wrong. The external factor in the case of the Chinese companies essentially forces them to adopt to a new way, which involves restructuring and educating. I believe that external factors can be a positive or negative. This ties in nicely to ethical guidelines of business and the grey line between what is or isn’t morally acceptable. In the case of Taseko Mines, I believe that the external factor (First Nations) was positive, because it allowed for the preservation of land and culture. In the case of the employment laws, I think it is one of those external factors that is inevitable, and it has less to do with personal agendas, and more to do with practicality.

Sources: http://thetyee.ca/Opinion/2014/07/26/Tsilhqotin-With-Gloves/

http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/us/2014-09/18/content_18622649.htm

Recently, Warehouse Retailer XS Cargo has decided to close 50 stores across Canada after a failed bid for reconstruction. The downfall of XS cargo occurred due to the emergence of new retailers in the industry.

In my opinion, XS Cargo had to close down because of its failure to adapt to competitors. This falls under financial accounting because they were unable to gain any new assets in time to execute a turn around strategy. As mentioned in the article, the assets of XS Cargo are $15.8 million, while the liabilities are $18.7 million. Furthermore, I feel that it was a poor decision to do a liquidation sale because that shows that the company is not confident in the quality of their product as they are willing to sell it for an incredibly low price. Combine that with the fact that XS Cargo’s liquidation sale was not even much lower than that of the competitor’s base prices, it was easy to see why this strategy did not work. In addition, a look at the company’s debts reveals that they owe money to unsecured creditors. This is a poor use of money as XS Cargo did not gain any assets as collateral and merely added to their growing list of liabilities.

Source: http://business.financialpost.com/2014/09/28/mississauga-warehouse-retailer-xs-cargo-to-close-its-50-stores-across-canada-after-failed-bid-to-restructure/

http://www.thestar.com/business/2014/08/07/xs_cargo_files_for_protection_from_creditors.html

Source: http://business.financialpost.com/2014/09/28/mississauga-warehouse-retailer-xs-cargo-to-close-its-50-stores-across-canada-after-failed-bid-to-restructure/

Canadian Tires has recently taken over as MLSE sports team sponsor, which represents a variety of Canadian sporting properties. Tim Leiweke (CEO of MLSE), chose Canadian Tires over US based retailers as he felt it would be the best option for representing Canada. This falls under managerial accounting, which can be defined as “the provision of financial data and advice to a company for use in the organization and development of its business”.

I feel that this was a great decision for Canadian Tires to take on the sponsorship as it will allow for increased publicity and support from the Canadian public. The fact that Canadian Tires won the sponsorship role over even bigger competitors represents a great victory. This was clearly a strategic move by Canadian Tires as it will be able to differentiate its products from other sports retailers, and they will also be able to place their logos at other MLSE owned outlets. This clearly benefits both parties as Canadian Tires also clearly has the money to give to MLSE over the next 10 years (owns huge portion of market share in Sports industry), unlike Rona (old sponsorship). Thus, it is clear that this managerial decision will be beneficial as combining two big names in the sports industry should be able to dominate market share.

Source: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/industry-news/marketing/canadian-tire-takes-over-as-mlse-sports-team-sponsor/article14207122/comments/

Often times in the world of business, ethics and maximizing profit do not go hand and hand. A prime example of this is the company Nestle. The article discusses how a multi billion dollar corporation is permitted to continually extract the ground water in B.C.

In my opinion, I feel that while it is easy to blame Nestle for abusing the groundwater in B.C., one also needs to deem the B.C. government as culpable for not putting any sort of limit or fee on the extraction of water. I think Nestle is actually moving in the right direction, due to the fact that it mentions in the article that “[Nestle is] largely supportive of what the government is trying to do”. I feel that Nestle should consider lowering the price of their water because people are not going to purchase as much bottled water, considering that the tap water is regarded as clean. Therefore, it is possible that Nestle is actually losing money. This will hopefully paint Nestle as a more ethically sound company, which will help improve their public perception.

Source: http://www.timescolonist.com/news/local/wild-west-of-groundwater-billion-dollar-nestl%C3%A9-extracting-b-c-s-drinking-water-for-free-1.587568