Jennifer Chan's Blog

As an environmental enthusiast, I was quite excited to hear that we would have a class about sustainability in the business world. I felt that this class was very much connected to the topic of business ethics discussed back in class 3. Many companies are recognizing the benefits of becoming more sustainable and promoting a more eco-friendly image. This directly links the ideas of business ethics and corporate social responsibility.

A little while ago, while reading some online articles, I came across an article which talks about some big companies modifying their operations and facilities to become more sustainable. Fortune 500 companies like PepsiCo (check out i-crop!) and Procter and Gamble are taking the initiative with different plans and strategies to reduce, reuse and recycle! Seeing corporate giants like these two companies pledging to do their part to make the world more sustainable shows the importance of business ethics and corporate social responsibility; no matter how big a company is, it cannot survive in a society where the public disagrees with its morals and practices. I’m very glad to see that these mega companies are taking the step towards being more environmental and setting an example that will hopefully be followed by many others.

Related to this topic, I stumbled upon this video produced to promote and educate the public about sustainability within the UBC community. As the “green wave” hits the corporate world, I see the effects of it in my everyday life.

After reading the article in preparation for the class on People, Culture and Teams, I was astonished at the fact that Zappos not only offered a one year long return policy, but chose to handle the high volume of phone calls created by this flexible return policy internally instead of outsourcing the jobs to another country like most North American companies do to cut operating costs.

The outsourcing of jobs, especially call centres, has become a common practice for American and Canadian companies. The country most often associated with call centres is India, but the Philippines has emerged as a strong competitor in the call centre market in recent years claiming to offer higher quality service than Indian call centres are capable of. Kenya is also hoping to tap into the growing call centre market and fight for a piece of the market share. Of course, this globalization can potentially create problems regarding the organizational culture of a company; as call centre representatives are directly contacting customers, if they do not reflect the culture of the company, it will create confusion for customers. While growing popularity of outsourced jobs is generating great opportunities for globalization and cost-cutting, it is also simultaneously forming possible issues concerning the overall unity of a company.

This comedy series about a call centre operating in India, although fictional, accurately depicts some of the real problems of outsourcing jobs in a company.

A story that really caught my interest during class was the apartment deal that took place in France between Raffray and Jeanne. Raffray had agreed to pay 90 year old Jeanne $950 dollars per month for ownership of her apartment after her death. Although this seems like a well calculated arrangement, unfortunately for Raffray, Jeanne turned on to be the oldest person that ever lived; she outlived Raffray 30 years, passing away at age 122.

Raffray probably figured at the time that he would at most only have to pay Jeanne for another 10-15 years; his venture would have been quite clever if it were solely based on this fact. Like in management accounting, Raffray could only make the best decision possible with the information that was available at that time. This isn’t to say that management accounting is not effective, but its limits and what it is good for should also be taken into consideration; decisions should not be centred completely on numbers obtained from management accounting.

At the time, Raffray seemed to have made a good investment making this deal with a woman of 90 years, but despite the fact that Raffray had meticulously calculated his potential gain from this agreement, no one could have foreseen that not only would Jeanne outlive Raffray, he ended up paying her more than what the actual apartment cost!

This story was covered by a number of different news channels:

http://articles.cnn.com/1997-08-04/world/9708_04_obit.oldest_1_oldest-person-arles-olive-oil?_s=PM:WORLD

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/29/world/a-120-year-lease-on-life-outlasts-apartment-heir.html

http://www.nytimes.com/1995/12/31/weekinreview/december-24-30-his-lease-ran-out.html

The class on brand positioning and perceptual maps brought a particular industry to my mind: The fast food industry. A large number of fast food corporations exist in Canada, the most famous being of course, McDonald’s. In most consumers’ minds, McDonald’s appears to be the inexpensive choice for a fast meal. In comparison to McDonald’s, Wendy’s offers higher quality food at higher prices. Consumers relate the two restaurants in their mind, positioning Wendy’s as the more superior choice. I then thought about other fast food restaurants like Subway and Tim Horton’s, which have more obvious points of difference. Subway advertises itself as a health conscious, fresh alternative to the more common burger and fries fast food, creating an entirely new image for quick to-go meals. Although there are other fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and Wendy’s which started to offer healthy alternatives like salads and grilled sandwiches, because Subway was first to create and advertise a healthy image for their restaurant, they remain recognized as the healthy substitute for standard fast food. Tim Horton’s differentiates its restaurant by offering bakery goods and fresh coffee at all times of the day. Consumers see Tim Horton’s as the quick cup of coffee and a small snack which can also provide a light lunch or breakfast.

Brand positioning and perceptual maps are valuable tools for a business student. I hope I can achieve a deeper understanding of the ideas and put them to good use!

At the mention of a class regarding social media, many of my classmates expressed interest and excitement. I, however, experienced a sense of intimidation. As the class progressed, a question arose in my mind: Should I be brushing up my knowledge and skills on social media? I was never drawn into the MySpace (<– is that even supposed to be capitalized? =S) hype, nor did I ever think about the idea of creating my own blog. The only two sources of social networking in my life are Facebook and Youtube. The first time that I ever experienced Twitter is for the purposes of COMM 101 and I’m still constantly confused about how it works!

In a society where social media has such a great magnitude of power and influence over the way people think and their lives in general, I feel that I need to catch up on how to use the different types of media in order to communicate with other people. This class, especially the video on the social media revolution, has proved to me that social media is most definitely not a fad. It has actually taken over much of the lives many people and altered the means of communication between them. In order to keep up with this mighty revolution, I have set a goal to learn the ways of social networking and become an active member!

The power of social media websites can unquestionably be seen with this video. This is the trailer of the brand new movie The Social Network which tells the story of the creation of the all-powerful Facebook.

After the class on finance last week, I feel like I’ve been opened up to a new area of opportunities. I guess I’ve always shied away from the topic of finance because the only component I knew it included was the stock market. But last week’s class has really shown me that there is much more than what I know, and I do have a possibility of venturing further into the world of finance.

From what I took away from the class, it is evident to me that finance is not only for those who want to engage in the stock market; knowledge of finance can in fact be very beneficial to everyone. I was particularly intrigued by the close tie between finance and accounting. At the very beginning of the class, finance was defined to be about processing information for the future in order to make good investments or decisions; accounting provides the current situation of the firm and the tools for the basis of those future investments and decisions.

I’ve always considered accounting the “simplest” element of a business because of the relatively mechanical process of crunching the numbers. This class has proved to me that not only marketing and accounting are related, finance should be added to the mix as well!

Tomorrow’s class is about Strategy in business. Although I don’t have a clear definition of what Strategy Management is yet, the articles seem to describe it as how a company can stay in a desirable position in its market. It appears to me that this topic heavily involves the concepts of economics, I don’t recall much from economics in high school, so hopefully I’ll be able to understand.

After reading these articles, I’m actually pretty eager to get to class and see what all of this is about. In the Michael Porter article, Strategy includes factors like competition, market shares, the concept of substitutes, buyer and supplier power, and entry and exit barriers among many others. I’m really looking forward to learning what each one is and how to analyze them in real examples.

Michael Porter looks like an extremely knowledgeable professor; I can’t wait to learn more from him!

It seems to me that Strategy Management will be a very useful tool for a business student in the future; hopefully I will be able to take away some important ideas and apply them in my studies.

Two days ago, The Communications Energy and Paperworkers Union of Canada (CEP) filed an unfair practices complaint against Bell Mobility, accusing Bell of pressuring their workers into revoking their union  memebership. The CEP wants to protect workers’ rights by allowing Bell employees to have the choice to unionize, but the company has been violating its employees rights by theatening them with “lock outs” or loss of jobs. Bell spokesperson Julie Smithers says the company respects their employees rights in joining a union, but the CEP feels that Bell has scared many of its workers away from the idea.

 I think Bell is demostrating unethical business practices in this situation. The employees of Bell Mobility have the right to engage in collective bargaining, but because unionization is not beneficial to the company, Bell has resorted to intimidating its workers in order to keep them from joining the union. Ethics is a complex topic in the world of business, but in the eyes of most people, the ethical issue in this case is giving the employees the freedom of joining the union and it can be seen that Bell has done exactly the opposite.

Links:

http://www.cep.ca/mediarelease/union-accuses-bell-violating-employees-right-unionize http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/Business/2010/09/14/15349941.html