Zappos is a company that believes that a healthy, positive organizational culture will increase the productivity of workers and therefore lead to a raise in customer satisfaction of the products and services. In order to achieve such values within the company, Zappos considers their employees as a very important asset by regularly hosting parties for their employees, offering free snacks during breaks, and treating each of their employees equally and fairly through not having job titles and managers. From my analysis, I do not agree with the fact that a healthy, positive organizational culture will lead to increase in productivity of workers. Instead, I believe that without a certain extent of negative discipline and punishment, there will not be growth for the company because since employees know that no matter how hard they try in work, there will not be promotion to higher ranking and that the benefits they receive are still the same as if they do not work as hard. This type of workforce is comparable to the system of working in a communist state because in a communist state, everyone gets the same pay regardless of the different work load and professions. This encourages people to become unwilling to innovate due to the fact that there is no potential increase in status and ranking in society. In short, it is ineffective to increase productivity of workers through having a healthy, positive organizational culture in a company.

Reference:

http://qz.com/161210/zappos-is-going-holacratic-no-job-titles-no-managers-no-hierarchy/

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2009/09/14/happy-feet

Even if the United Nations was fully funded, there is still a definite need for social enterprise and programs, such as Arc Initiative. This is due to the fact that social enterprise in more focused on the smaller details of the problems and would concern more about the citizens, while United Nations would attempt to implement plans to assist countries as a whole and the ideas would be diversified since there are multiple issues for the United Nations to address on. For example, United Nations would be assigned to implement plans on solving poverty in Africa, so one of the way would be to lend money to countries in Africa and hope that poverty issue would be lessened. On the other hand, social enterprise would be more localized and understand the situation more thoroughly, such that it is easier for them to get legal permission to take action by offering money, supplies, and moral support. This shows that there is no conflict between the two organizations. Furthermore, United Nations tend to have a delay in action after recognizing issues due to the fact that they need to first pass the legislation with the majority agreements from countries, while social enterprise is a smaller entity and therefore can perform the action at a more efficient rate. In short, United Nations and social enterprise are both essential and important entities that serve similar services at different approaches.

References:

http://skollworldforum.org/about/what-is-social-entrepreneurship/

Regardless of what I have been introduced to about sustainability in business, or business ethical numerous times, I feel like it is easier said than being done. From my own interpretation of the course content, there are businesses that are being sustainable and business ethical for the sake of the environment and society. However, based on my analysis, I discover that most businesses are doing this for a marketing reason, such as building a “greener” image for the company, or attracting customers that support sustainable actions. Ultimately, businesses are trying to be sustainable and business ethical, such that it will yield a maximized profit in the forms of money, brand image, or long-term marketing effects. Furthermore, if companies focus too much on doing business ethical activities, doesn’t investor , or lender feel like that companies are wasting money on activities that doesn’t generate profit, nor benefit both the investor, or lender and the company financially? Therefore, I am more supportive on Milton Friedman’s theory about corporate ethics, which suggests that the business should maximize profit while following social responsible customs. In short, a business without a solid foundation will not follow business ethics as they cannot stay competitive against rival companies , nor to last long enough for the financial effect of business ethics to be apparent.

Reference:

http://site.ebrary.com/lib/ubc/reader.action?docID=10187339&ppg=171

In Seth Godin’s blog post, “No such thing as business ethics”, the speaker suggests that business ethics is equivalent to doing right things in such a way that the business will maximize its long-term profit. He also states that business ethics does not actually exist and “only people can have ethics”. This is an interesting blog post because instead of thinking about the topic from a point of view that businesses are being business ethical for the good of society and environment, the speaker looks at the topic of business ethics from a more realistic, convincing perspective in which businesses are trying to maximize profit in short-term and long-term. From my analysis, I agree with the fact that business ethics is performed by corporation for the reason of generating more profit in forms, such as brand image, brand loyalty, or money. Since profit-maximizing is the only incentive for corporation to stay in business due to the fact that in order for corporation to stay competitive, they must be making significant profits as well, yet being able to use that profit to grow their corporation in a long-term period. As to whether business ethics actually exists, I believe that it only exists if the organizational culture of the company promotes such values and beliefs. In short, this blog post criticizes the existence of “business ethics” and the true reasons behind business ethical actions.

Reference:

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2011/07/no-such-thing-as-business-ethics.html

In Peter Kelly-Detwiler’s “IKEA’s Aggressive Approach To Sustainability Creates Enormous Business Opportunities”, IKEA demonstrates the concept of sustainability by “[following] its commitment to develop and own renewable electricity supplies”. By doing this, IKEA is able to balance the importance of three basic elements of sustainability, environmentally responsible, socially responsible, and economically responsible. Through such implementation, IKEA will “reduce CO2 emission by 10% over 5 years”. At the same time, IKEA is also moving towards socially responsible by selling more environmental-friendly products, such as LEDs and water efficient taps and attempting to take on the leadership role in sustainability. Moreover, IKEA considers this as a long-term investment that will decrease the overall cost and provide “good returns with manageable risks”.

Even though the effects of IKEA’s action may not seem apparent, but if every stakeholder is willing to do their parts in sustainability, it would be make a huge difference in the big picture. While as a household, one can support sustainability by growing their own fruits and vegetable at their backyards, or regularly recycling plastic bottles. Firms can further choose to use renewable resources similar to IKEA, or even by turning the light off whenever there is no one in the office. By implementing such routines in the daily basis, the Earth will be sincerely thankful.

Reference:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterdetwiler/2014/02/07/ikeas-aggressive-approach-to-sustainability-creates-enormous-business-opportunities/

The conflict between the Canadian government and aboriginal people has been ongoing for decades, but has yet to be resolved. Even though Stephen Harper “made a formal apology in 2008 to Canada’s Aboriginal Peoples” on behalf of Canada, the pain and suffering from the assimilation in residential schools, and discrimination towards aboriginal people, are still deeply marked in the hearts of the aboriginal people. In September, 2014, the B.C premier Christy Clark suggested to improve the relationship between the government and aboriginals.

By establishing partnership between the government and the aboriginal people, the government wants to make decisions on projects that require the support and agreement from aboriginal groups. For example, the ongoing Northern Gateway Pipeline that crosses though First Nations’ traditional lands are currently opposed by the majority of First Nations. This is a huge project that would generate a big sum of money for the government and the support from the First Nations is a final requirement for this project to begin. My analysis shows that the purpose of negotiating and cooperating with aboriginal people is to gain their support for both the Liberal party, which Christy Clark represents, and the projects that the party is involved in.

Links of reference:

– http://www.theglobeandmail.com/globe-debate/first-nations-hold-the-key-to-the-northern-gateway-pipeline/article19213035/

– http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/background-the-indian-act-1.1056988

– http://www.vancouversun.com/life/Premier+urges+cooperation+more+litigation+government+natives+reach+fork+road/10194776/story.html

With its differentiated keyboard style, BlackBerry has grown from less than 550,000 subscribers in 2003 to 85,000,000 in 2014 globally. However, ever since the introduction of Apple’s iPhone and other smartphones, BlackBerry phones are considered as “outdated” and in need of reinventing itself with more unique features and functions. According to Ziran Wang’s article, “BlackBerry’s New ‘Unconventional’ Smartphone to be Revealed at MWC 2015”, BlackBerry decides to change their strategy from the differentiation for broad industry to the differentiation for focused market segments. BlackBerry will continue with its newest keyboard patents and “focus on only a few of its production” lines by getting rid of other production lines. Subsequently, BlackBerry is able to reintroduce its products with a more focused target market and create a fresher image.

Personally, I am not a fan of BlackBerry smartphones, but based on what I know from other BlackBerry users, most of them are besotted with the keyboard that requires pressing the actual keys, rather than a touch screen keyboard on most other smartphones. Therefore, my analysis shows that BlackBerry would be able to continue growing by focusing on promoting its original keyboard design, yet, at a much slower rate due to the existing competitors.

Link of References:

https://blogs.ubc.ca/ziranwang/2014/10/02/blackberrys-new-unconventional-smartphone-to-be-revealed-at-mwc-2015/

Cus Lubin and Mamta Badkar state that “McDonald’s serves 1% of the world’s population every day”. That is equivalent to over 70 million people in the world. As most of us know, the traditional McDonald’s food tends to be unhealthy due to its excess amount of calories, fat, saturated fat, sugar, and salt. These may increase the chance of obesity and can potentially lead to illnesses such as heart diseases, stroke, and diabetes. Even though many people are attracted to McDonald’s food because of its convenience and reasonably pricing, many people argues that it is not business ethical for McDonald’s to sell such unhealthy products.

As the trend of dieting and healthy lifestyles are growing in recent years, McDonald’s, as the leader of the fast food chains, has introduced many new, healthy products, such as Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken, with their nutritional facts available online. McDonald’s is attempting to expand its original market to also include people who are health-conscious. Now consumers have options to choose whether they would like to eat healthy, or unhealthy. Through changing its strategy from cost leadership to focus strategy (differentiation) by adding new alternatives for consumers, McDonald’s is able to build up a better brand image.

Link of references:

– http://www.quickmba.com/strategy/generic.shtml

– http://www.sparkpeople.com/resource/sparkdining-eatery.asp?id=3

– http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/fast-food-is-the-unhealthy-choice-mcdonalds-tells-its-own-staff-9025364.html

It may seem like the construction of Rana Plaza is unethical as their workers “suffered from long working hours, [and were abused by their] employees”. However, through analyzing from a different perspective, I discover that most workers may rather have a job with “comparatively higher salary” than having no jobs, or jobs with low pays. Even though following social customs and business ethics may seem to be beneficial for workers of the company from a third person’s point of view, this may not necessarily be true for the workers. Most workers have a family to feed and relies mainly from the income they earned by building the Rana Plaza. In such harsh and realistic society, they may rather choose to be abused in long working hours than starving their families.

According to the article, Return of the graveyard shift; Night working, it states that “in many rich, highly unionised countries, workers regard night shifts as a good thing, since they provide jobs”. Night working may be consider as unethical as people normally sleeps at night and working during nighttime is against the regular sleeping schedule for most people. In this case, employees would rather night working than not working. Therefore, when evaluating whether a business is ethical or unethical, it is important to judge from multiple perspectives and the advantages and disadvantages for each stakeholders.

Links of references:
– https://blogs.ubc.ca/yi1996/2014/09/09/business-ethics/
– http://search.proquest.com.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/docview/1040403926

On June 7, 2013, the information from a top secret document was leaked into the public, in which it suggested that the National Security Agency had been operating an undisclosed program called Prism. NSA claimed to have direct access to the online personal materials that are supposed to be “private” to search engines, social media, and electronics retailers. Companies, such as Google, Facebook, Apple and  Verizon, were revealed that they had joined the Prism since the earliest date of December 2007. NSA claimed that the purpose of operating such program was to track suspected foreign terrorists under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

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Does this suggest that business ethics and users’ privacy should be ignored when confronting government enforcement? When the government enforces law against social privacy, a company must weigh the importance between protecting the users’ privacy and maintaining its business ethics, or damaging the relationship between the company and the government. If the decision was done by myself, I would allow the government to track my users’ data but only under the full acknowledgement and consent of my clients. What would be your thoughts if you are the CEO of the company and has to make the same decision?