Ching Him (Ivan) Kwok's Blog

As I stumbled across Rhiannon Wademan’s Blog, it echos the idea of corporate ethics as mentioned in my previous post.

First, it is recognised that Wall-Mart is in attempt to take action in its Corporate Social Responsibility by investing in green energy, solar panels in this case and also supporting green product, also known as organic product, which reduce the chemical harm or chemical deployed to the soil and air. These actions creates shared value. And as such, it should be able to improve its image and coporate reputation.

The fact that it has increased in carbon emission is alarming, which as far as I concern, the logistics of their goods from supplier to ware-house, ware-house to different stores, may have created those cumlative carbon emission. There are measures that can be applied to its supply chain in order to reduce carbon emission such as increasing inventory by transporting more, using bigger trucks for one delivery instead of having multiple deliveries by small vehicles. Or invest in a whole new fleet of trucks that gives less emissions. They may also consider getting local suppliers instead of crossing over the boarder. However, this will hugely impact one of the POD which is providing a variety of choices from different places.

Source:
http://www.news.com.au/travel/travel-updates/plane-crashes-off-coast-of-bali/story-fnizu68q-1226619817622

An air crash would certainly create PR pressure, harming a company’s reputation and costs financial lost too. However what it was interesting was near the end of the article. This low cost carrier signed a contract for 234 new Airbus, creating a historical record of aircraft sold in one order in Airbus history. A low cost carrier usually have a focus strategy in low cost, usually by providing lower service onboard, maximising number of seats on a flight.

It is rather unusual how a low cost carrier would have such liquidity (oxygen) to make such an order, where business ethics comes into a play. Did the airline cut-corner in maintence? Or did they cut the training cost? or promoting in-experience 2nd officers as captain? Another low cost carrier in Indonesia was forced to cease operation by government due to its poor quality of pilot training and maintence discovered as a result of this aircrash investigation.
It is reasonable to suspect that due to the low oxygen, current ratio, that the airline may have taken short-cuts to reduce their cost while maximising their revenue.

However, the government is also to blame for not enforcing the regulation strictly.

Source: http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/blogs/pay-day-/more-canadians-turn-online-holiday-shopping-165129938.html

In the past, people might spend a lot of time at a shopping mall comparing prices and different products, looking for the best gift for christmas. However, a recent survey stated that most people are shifting their shopping from physical to virtual – Online shopping. What does this means to the firm?

According to the business Canvas, it means that there is a shift in the channel reaching customers. From indirect to possibly direct sales. Customer Relationships also is closely related to Channel, if customers wish to be reached by internet, then they’d expect that they may recieve immidiate personal assistance before, during and after the process of purchasing.

This reminds me of the IT aspect. When the internet became major channel reaching customer, they will need have a good platform. The whole process cannot rely solely on IT department. Management team, marketing team, Customer relation team… they all have to communicate with IT department in relation to what data they need, how to read the data, creating contingency plan if system went wrong. The communication is essential and frequent to make sure the end product is functions as both the customer and firms wanted to be.

There creation of business is simply because there are wants or needs that consumers that are not fulfilled, that is, the productions are there to fill in the gap, attempt to create most value proposition that fits the need of the customers. When I was browsing through the blogs, I’ve found Victoria Yang’s Blog regarding lean-start up.

When we create value proposition, we attempt to fulfill the customer’s need as much as possible to add most value to the product

As Victoria had stated that “there will be major unknowns that the  company will have to learn about and then adapt to”. Indeed, customers mind are un-readable and not predictable, that is simply human kind. Thats why there is the existance of marketing in attempt to position the product into the customer’s mind. As such, it is impossible to have a clear idea if it fits the need of customer from the start. Indeed, a traditional 5 year plan would rarely succeed from the start, where as the lean start up, which uses the minimum cost to create prototypes, having constant feed back from customers, in order to generate a product that fulfill the customer’s need (value propostion), then hence, profitability.

As I stumbled across Anglea Lee’s Blog, how the social enterprise beings me back to the lesson we had about the CSR, which carries CSV out. The firm that was mentioned in her blog “Social Sister” have form the main goal of investing in women entrepreneurship while making some profit to a degree where it may continue to pursue CSV.

They have distinguished themselves from charity to for-profit organisation. A charity is where they have no intention for profit, whereby they may recieve public donation. As for Solar Sister in this case, they are for-profit, however its just that they do use the profit in re-investing for shared value, acting out Corporate’s Social responsibility.

Reconcieving Products and Markets
They have recongnise the need of equality in society, and they have aim at the segment of women entrepurenership, Equality plays a big part in an economy. If women were not recognised in work, its simply a waste of human resource – the skills and knbowledge they posses. Furthermore, they do promote enviornmental impact, which is the greatest unmet needs in the global economy.

During the govenrment shutdown, the market didn’t seem to be affected.

The impact of US government 2013 appeared not to affect too much of most citizen’s daily life. As For leaders in all industries, it creates an uncertainty and uncertianty is the last thing one wants when making decisions. Uncertainty usually will diminish the firm’s willingness to continue to expand their business or hire more people as they’re not sure if they’d have their expected return. In addition, as a lot of federal employees will recieve an un-paid leave, the willingness to spend for those people will decrease, and hence less sales for the companie, which might cause a chain effect of recession. However, on the contray, during the 3 weeks time, they have continued to hire more people and expand their business as stated in the article. This may be due to a steady demand from overseas, as the article also stated Manufacturing industry alone increased by a healthy 19,000 over the 3 weeks. As what Phebe Kwok have mentioned in her blog, that depreciating many external values may lead to world-wide recession, which occured in history, therefore, it may be in turn for the international community and firms to act themselves to prevent such happening, which reduced the impact of the government’s shutdown.

Source:http://www.theguardian.com/business/2013/nov/08/upbeat-us-jobs-data-december-tapering-federal-reserve