Monthly Archives: September 2014

The idea of having unlimited vacation days from work may seem like a dream, but not for Virgin employees. Sir Richard Branson announced that his personal staff can take as many vacation days as they would like without prior notification. Mr. Branson believes that people should focus not on the number of hours worked, but the amount of work completed, which is why they also do not implement a nine-to-five policy. With this kind of thinking, he assumes that his employees would only take vacation time when they feel that they’re completely caught up to date with their work and their absence at that time will not hurt the company. The initial idea may have been to boost employee morale, but it has done much more for the Virgin brand. Not only does it boost company moral and gives the company a positive name, it doesn’t cost any more money. Because of the media coverage,  Sir Richard Branson and his Virgin brand is receiving a tremendous amount of positive publicity that is not costing them a single cent in advertising fees. From an employer’s point of view, I believe that Sir Richard Branson’s strategy is very clever. Giving employees freedom to have as many vacation days as they’d like may result in more employees choosing to stay and work in order to keep up and produce the highest quality work. Other employees may choose to forego some vacation time in order to stay to gain an advantage over their co-workers.

Source:

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-29356627

Image:

Cattermole, Gareth . Richard-Branson-boss-of-V-010. Web. 1 Jan. <http://www.theguardian.com/business/2012/dec/02/delta-singapore-airlines-virgin-atlantic>.

Facebook Inc. will be unveiling its new advertising product known as Atlas. Atlas’ main purpose is to create a better advertising platform to compete with Google, the digital advertising giant. It is supposed to help marketers target Facebook users by providing valuable information, so that the advertisements are specifically tailored to the consumer. The current method of obtaining consumer information and tracking its advertisement’s performance is through the use of cookies. However, this method has its major flaws, one of which is the inability to track the information of mobile device users. With Atlas, a consumer’s interactions with advertisements will be linked to his Facebook, whether it be on his desktop computer or his mobile device. This technology will also offer marketers to buy advertisements that will basically follow a Facebook user around the internet. The use of Atlas is an exciting innovation for advertising and marketing. The ability to retrieve a consumer’s preferences through their mobile device will result in more specific advertisements and will give Facebook a competitive advantage over Google since they will be tracking more information. However, with this new technology, many users may be very upset when they realize that they are having their information tracked and sold by Facebook and could result in negative publicity for Facebook. Nevertheless, some users may see this as a positive since they are being advertised products or services that they may actually use or need.

Source:

http://www.ibtimes.com/facebook-unveil-new-advertising-platform-next-week-take-google-report-says-1693348

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Bureau, Gizbot. “Facebook in Plans to Buy Microsoft’s Atlas Ad Platform .” Gizbot. Greynium Information Technologies Pvt. Ltd. , 13 Dec. 2012. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. <http://www.gizbot.com/social-media/facebook-buy-microsofts-atlas-ad-platform-009352.html>.

In the automotive industry, competition is fierce and saving money by cutting costs is crucial. This is best seen in the recent General Motors recall. On February 7th 2014, GM initially recalled about 800,000 Chevrolet Cobalt’s and the Pontiac G5’s because of their faulty ignition switches that could have prevented the airbags from inflating. In the months following the initial recall, GM has recalled nearly 28 million vehicles worldwide. It was reported that GM engineers knew about the faulty ignition switches, but it took them nearly a decade to begin recalling the vehicles. GM had a chance to fix the issue in 2005, but decided to forego the opportunity because they thought it would take too much time and would cost too much. The decision to not repair the faulty parts has led to the death of at least 13 people . GM basically did what the article, “The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profit” by Milton Friendman said about businesses. GM focused mainly on increasing their profit and not on what others may have considered as their social responsibility. Why it took so long for GM to begin the initial recall is uncertain, but it is speculated that GM didn’t want to spend the extra money to repair the costs, even though the parts to repair the ignition switches would only cost $3 – $5.  The lack in business ethics shown by GM initially saved them hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars, but in the long run, they’ve spent more money on lawsuits and repairing the millions of recalled vehicles and have also hurt their company’s image of providing reliable and safe vehicles.

Pollock, Lauren. “What You Need to Know About the GM Recalls.” The Wall Street Journal [New York City , NY] 2 Apr. 2014: n. pag. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. <http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304432604579474000940113892?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304432604579474000940113892.html>

Lienert, Paul, and Marilyn Thompson. “GM avoided defective switch redesign in 2005 to save a dollar each.” Reuters [Detroit/Washington, 2 Apr. 2014: n. pag. Web. 9 Sept. 2014. <http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/02/us-gm-recall-delphi-idUSBREA3105R20140402>.

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