James Yue's Comm 101 Blog

Since the Toyota 2009 and 2010 recalls and the March 2011 Earthquakes in Japan, Toyota has still remained one of the largest producers of automobiles in the world. Toyota risky move during the 1997 to jump in on addressing environmental sustainability by moving towards the production of hybrid vehicles has fueled their sales.

Toyota’s very first mass produced hybrid automobile, the Toyota Prius, paved the way for other car companies such as Honda to enter into the market. Emerging out of this hybrid car realm, Toyota has continued to become the market leader and their continuation in the innovation process of their Prius and other hybrid vehicles has generated a lot of wealth. Toyota’s Prius has alone has sold over 2 million units since up until September 2011.

Furthermore, Toyota has been widely criticized for their lack of innovation on the appearance of most of its models on their cars, especially their Camry 2012.  However, just recently, the renowned corporation released a short teaser clip of their latest FT-86 to prove that the company has the ability to product differentiate and innovate. Toyota has definitely  gone great lengths into keeping up in the automotive industry with their inventive hybrid technology despite the bumps in the road.

As time was winding down on the United States debt ceiling settlement, I contemplated the origins of such a colossal-sized federal debt. High-status executives on Wall Street caused the sub-prime mortgage crisis which elicited an economic recession the U.S is still sluggishly recovering from today. This has dramatically increased federal spending by providing bailouts to “too big to fail” American banks and impractical stimulus bills.

Where do billions of dollars to bail out these corporations come from? The very pockets of the middle class. Tax-payer’s money is used to drag these insatiable banks that put many through the 2008 financial crisis out of the hole they dug themselves into. According to Joanna Lai’s opinion on Occupy Wall Street, it is a waste of people’s time, money and energy. I disagree because this is a step forward for society to be more aware of corporate greed and corporations’ influence in politics. The government should play a significant role in reducing the exploitative nature of the financial markets. Despite the lack of direction and demands the Occupy Movement is trying to employ, their purposes are collective. The demonstrators’ assertive stance especially on income equality, needs to be addressed and further scrutinized

In 2005, Kimberly-Clark, the company that owns the trademark Kleenex, obtained a reputation for being one of the largest contributors to the destruction of Canada’s boreal forests for the manufacturing and production of our daily use of products such as toilet paper, and paper towels.

As the brand Kleenex goes green, you’ll be indirectly supporting the conservation and preservation of forests. It is the first of its kind to acquire a FSC Certificate, which means that all the toiletry paper-based goods that it produces will be using fiber sources from its suppliers who will follow the “highest standards of forestry management”.

Blogger Angelina Chaplin indicates that consumers act as incentives for companies to shift towards more sustainable methods and procedures of carrying out business and to instill upon such a label. It may be the fact that Kimberly-Clark is only redeeming itself by being socially responsible for its ineffecient use of resources. However, FSC has been highly criticized for its credibility for the distribution of its certificates. It doesn’t come as a surprise that there are a strengthening number of suppliers for FSC products, but as always, the main goal is for corporations to gain that competitive edge by advocating sustainability.

South Korea’s shift towards digital textbooks began on March 8, 2007. This has gradually led to many, especially the United States to take a similar role in reforming and providing educational resources to students in a more technological and cost-efficient manner.  South Korea has already constructed well devised plans to distribute its curriculum materials into digital technology by 2015.

With the U.S. well aware of its decay of relative international education, they are seeking different ways to integrate better methods to deliver educational information. In doing so, President Barack Obama launched the “Digital Promise” which is a non-profit project designed to bring together technology with innovators and educators in researching software that will hopefully breed effective learning.

Technology has become an integral part of many teenagers and young adults’ lives. With laptops, computers and iPads becoming more prevalent in our technology driven world, business technology management has enhanced the availability of these resources to society. Although entrepreneurs will relish in the light of this opportunity, the real question comes down to who will navigate and control the distribution of the “information”? Teachers will still teach, innovators will innovate, but the question remains: could the government play the invisible hand?

The Hudson Bay Company’s prospective plan to go public with its shares through an IPO has halted due to the murky economic outlook and lack of consumer confidence. Richard Barker, who is the Governor and Chairman of HBC has already set an alternative in motion by leasing over 200 Zellers stores, HBC’s subsidiary, to Target. If you can’t see the irony there, it’s because Target has impending plans on revamping Zellers stores in Canada under the Target brand by 2013. In order to raise capital, HBC has delayed its IPO arrangements and increased its competition through the lease.

HBC’s $1.8 billion deal is purposed to reducing its debt as well as investing the rest into its other subsidiaries, the Bay and Lord & Taylor. Baker’s cost cutting plans will include focusing more attention on quality fashion for women as well as teaming up its chain stores with other retailers to cater its targeted consumers.

Despite HBC’s timely move by increasing its focus on women fashion and leasing Zellers to Target, it still needs to consider the consequences by doing so. The rather risky move in the deal with Target Corporation may have only increased the imminent downfall of HBC

Payments being made through the usage of cellular devices (smartphones) are becoming prevalent in our daily lives. Who would really want to carry around their phone in one pocket and a heavy wallet with all their credit cards, receipts, and cash in the other? MasterCard Inc has just recently announced that Subway restaurants will be equipped with this “contactless” payment feature, easing out the conventional use of cash, credit and debit cards.

Google has already begun the implementation of this technology with one of their exclusive smartphones, the Nexus S 4G. The Google Wallet is an app on the phone which allows the registration of a credit card thereby allowing the app to have access into money. Once that is complete, a mere swipe of the smartphone near a ‘reader’ will enable the mobile payment to be made.

Although you also have to take into consideration the possibility of losing your phone. How prone will the security system be in the hands of a hacker? Despite the conspicuous convenience, accessibility and resourcefulness of this technology, one also has to realize the costs for the payment terminals.

Political scandals, corporate scandals and celebrity scandals; we’ve heard them all. Surely, you would expect a corporation designed to invest their resources into green energy for the betterment of society would be void of these reputation-tainting claims.

The federal-backed loan of a whopping $535 million to Solyndra, a solar energy company that manufactures solar panels and other products, is now being held under investigation for partaking in accounting fraud. On top of being probed by the FBI, Solyndra filed for bankruptcy on September 6, 2011 while also slashing 1000 jobs after promising the Obama Administration that it would be generating about 4000 more.

The authorization of the loan by the Obama Administration’s  will now prompt much inquiries and harsh criticisms by the GOP. As well, one of the major investors of the solar company was Obama’s prime contributors in his 2008 election, George Kaiser. One could stir up political controversy by merely saying that Kaiser played a role in influencing and speeding up the process of the federal loan to take place. But who is really to say? The public of course has every right to be concerned now that their very own tax dollars have gone to the waste of a seemingly prospective renewable energy company

Speaking of airport security and the deprivation of freedom of privacy, Oscar Lai discussed about the Obama’s Administration implementation of the “Pre-Check” program in order to lessen the hassle for traveling passengers. However, the catch is that this ‘benefit’ only applies to U.S. citizens who are willing to give up their personal information which may include background to previous flights

From the flier’s perspective, providing this information impulsively means that their personal data is being handed over to the government at the expense of getting to their planes quicker. Just recently at the International Air Transport Association Aviation Security conference held in Amsterdam, the “checkpoint of the future”, is a new form of security that will soon remove the pat-down altogether. There are three passageways categorized in terms of the level of risk the passengers according to their background information

Although still faced with technology-based difficulties and financial obscurities, this is a pressing step forward to allow swifter security checks and avoid personal conflicts between security personnel and fliers. Despite the attractive emergence of technology to ease troubles in our daily lives, this security protocol may insinuate that each distinct tunnel labels people which brings forth the issue of profiling

Netflix’s shift in dividing its usual DVD mail services and streaming services has garnered much attention from consumers and critics as to why this decision was set in stone. Many inquisitive Americans are now trying to figure out why they must pay two different bills and access streaming services and DVD-by-mail through two different websites creating inconvenience. CEO of Netflix, Reed Hastings, had a simple good humoured answer: “It’s all the Canadians’ fault”.

Canada’s Netflix is only restricted to streaming services, which was the company’s initial plan to observe how well the market for streaming services were in the North. However, placing the burden on Canada for its feasible success in streaming only services seems to place a negative connotation for the fact that Canada has helped the company realize that the demand for streaming is superior to its counterparts.

The spin off subsidiary of Netflix, Qwikster is now being adopted as a rather smart accounting decision to try and dismiss itself from the DVD niche altogether. Understanding that the demand for DVDs were decreasing, Qwikster serves as a company purposed to herald the downfall of this service in a cost-efficient manner without largely harming the brand image of Netflix.

Known for their impressive stance in the information technology industry, IBM also has an ulterior motive in maximizing profits while handing corporate executives that extra bonus they ever so deserve. According to many speculations, the multinational tech firm has reportedly laid off an estimate of 10,000 employees in the year of 2009. The company has been blamed incessantly because of its offshore hiring in locations such as India, China and Brazil. The man heavily responsible for these unfortunate self-interested employment losses in North America is the CEO of IBM, Samuel J. Palmisano. While employment in IBM is dwindling, Palmisano’s is gladly enjoying his whopping $21 million in compensation with $4 million in bonus.

Is it even just for the CEO of an infamous IT company to receive a large sum of money while only driving revenues up by  a mere 5% from 2007 to 2008? Where’s the appreciation to the employees who aided in creating IBM’s stature and success today? They were the framework to the corporation’s current status, yet now the hands are being dealt over to foreign workers who are being paid as little as possible. But save the empathy and feelings for another time because to them its just “business as usual”