When capitalism is to be talked about, this image appears in people’s mind that capitalists suck every blood out of every opportunity with their claws waving. The tone of this image is dark and ruthless, which reflects the fact that the core of capitalism is profit-centered.

No matter whether this conception is right or not, it can’t go on like this forever. The image of business should be “friendly” to be sustainable. By “friendly”, I mean, business is a tool that has power to make a better world via connecting all stakeholders’ interest rather than just shareholders’, according to Ed Freeman’s stakeholder theory.

However, where should we start? How about starting from within an enterprise, particularly, employees? Without doubt, employees are also, in a way, primary stakeholders. By asking what they need and how these needs can be achieved, HR managers can gradually structure sort of blueprint in their minds. This mind-project will finally be put into practice, for example, a reward system.

As we all know, investments in human capital are highly uncertain. Nevertheless, as long as can you make the efforts worth it, the return is a promising future for your corporation, more than just manpower competitive advantage in the short term. It’s a long-term vision with high risk and high return. On the whole, it’s worth it to spend your money on HR.

Sources:

http://business.financialpost.com/2013/09/16/like-it-or-not-millennials-will-change-the-workplace/

http://raywilliams.ca/

Image:

http://www.google.com

When we talk about brand, there are many relevant concepts that jumps out, particularly, brand awareness.

What is it? Well, it is brand awareness that makes your products stand out and promotes your products-related commodities, such as T-shirts. Once your brand takes root in consumers’ minds, it can invisibly help you to broaden your company’s revenue streams.

Let’s say, a sports company has a really good reputation; they plan to produce some awesome energetic drink. On every bottle, there will be their famous logo. Since they already own a strong brand, how can customers not give it a try? In this case, how can brand not be deemed as a competitive advantage? Realistic examples, in the soft drink industry, the brands Pepsi and Coca Cola, sell their featured derivatives well, thanks to customers’ loyalty to their logos.

Briefly, the value of a brand is invisible when internally generated, but is revealed when another company wishes to acquire it.This means the value of a brand can be estimated and may appear on the balance sheet. In a word, brand has intangible value that can be transferred into tangible profits. Therefore, logo matters!

Linked with Teddy’s blog:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/teddybusinessblog/2014/10/05/the-power-of-branding/

Sources:

http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/ehost/detail/detail?sid=21677f42-dc6e-4c60-b88f-24b5fc092640%40sessionmgr4001&vid=0&hid=4201&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZSZzY29wZT1zaXRl#db=bth&AN=96695134

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21614153-sometimes-you-see-brands-balance-sheet-sometimes-you-dont-untouchable-intangibles

http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/swot/

http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/1034345684

http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/pest/

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21614153-sometimes-you-see-brands-balance-sheet-sometimes-you-dont-untouchable-intangibles

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brand-recognition.asp

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brandawareness.asp

http://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/brandequity.asp

Images:

www.google.com

 “ Social entrepreneurs are not content just to give a fish or teach how to fish. They will not rest until they have revolutionized the fishing industry.”

－Bill Brayton, Ashoka

In 2006, TOMS founder, Blake Mycoskie, saw children in a village in Argentina who didn’t have adequate shoes to protect their feet. Wanting to help, he created TOMS Shoes.
This is a for-profit company, but driven primarily by a social objective. At the same time that the company was born, a program named One for One® also came into existence. In the beginning, they matched every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes for a child in need. As TOMS has grown, the One for One® program has expanded from only providing shoes to also sight restorations and water to the need. With every bag of coffee purchased, TOMS provides one week of clean water to a person in need. Also, TOMS has helped restore sight to over 250,000 people and created jobs for communities in Haiti. The map below shows the communities being served by the program in the world so far:

For social entrepreneurships such as TOMS, profit is the means to sustain in both economic and social ways.All the facts mentioned above tell a truth that social entrepreneurships produce a good result: to make a better world. Undoubtedly, this approach has more influential power to expand the total pool of both economic and social value compared with traditional charity delivered by non-profits. In fact, social entrepreneurship creates shared value. At the same time, the social efforts it makes will result in keeping this kind of business sustainable. In a word, what’s most important is that social entrepreneurship can make this world better.

Sources:

http://www.waterhealth.com/sites/default/files/Harvard_Buiness_Review_Shared_Value.pdf

http://www.toms.ca/one-for-one-en

Images:

http://www.toms.ca/one-for-one-en

http://www.google.com

－The cooperation between business managers and IT

The importance of managers in a business doesn’t need to be emphasized, because we all know that clearly as crystal. However, what needs to be stressed is the significance of IT to a business and why it matters for managers to communicate effectively with the IT division.

As time goes by, IT grows faster and larger. Its influence is expanding far beyond the IT industry. Nearly all the large-scale institutions have their own independent IT department. Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Sloan economist and digital-business expert, once said“ IT is revolutionizing innovation. ” Undoubtedly, innovation is a key factor leading to success in business. In this way, IT plays an undeniably crucial role, especially, as the global economy develops, contemporary business is dealing with enormous numbers that couldn’t be imagined in the past when business was limited within certain regions. What’s more, IT not only can help a business to deal with mass statistics, but also to get access into insights if you know how to analyze numbers.

 “Data integration was the real challenge.”

－ Mr. Isson, Monster Worldwide Inc.’s global vice-president of predictive analytics and business intelligence

Now I come down to the relationship between managers and IT. The standard of evaluating a manager’s success is how well they do to encourage all employees to cooperate as a team.The motivation of a good manager is power, the influence of stimulating staff to realize the whole organizational objectives. Hence, it’s managers’ responsibility to communicate effectively with the IT division. After all, what produces perfect performance is seamless collaboration, which needs efforts from both directions.

Sources:

http://hbr.org/2003/01/power-is-the-great-motivator/ar/1

http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/it-innovation-brynjolfsson-article/

http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/10-things/10-questions-non-techie-managers-should-ask-about-it-projects/

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_technology

Image:

https://www.google.ca/