Social Entrepreneurship, it is not just about money, it is about ideas.

In response to the question: “If the United Nations was fully funded why would we need the Arc or social enterprise?”

Picture from: http://pamlawhorne.com/

While I am doing research about social entrepreneurs, a woman named Pam Lawhorne’s blog Don’t Just Teach Attraction Marketing… I Built My Business With It! caught my eyes. Apart from being the owner of Empower U, she is also an online business mentor that gives advices on marketing strategies for online companies to earn profit. Although she literally went broke and was indebted in 2006, she soon recovered from this strike and decided to share her experience by providing online suggestion to those new start-ups. Therefore, ambitious and resourceful entrepreneurs can make contribution to the society while fully deploy their talents and ideas.

When I participated in the model UN three years before, I gained some knowledge about how UN actually works. Ranging from human right to world health, issues around the world and corresponding solutions were proposed and selected by the committee, which are formed by us in this case. In spite of its endeavor, the issues we discussed were very broad because it involved the whole world. That is also why we need other social enterprises or organizations (like Arc) to handle more detailed issues.

To sum up, social entrepreneurship is not just about money, it is about ideas that are ample enough to meet people’s needs and solve their issues. No matter how well funded the UN is, the united effort of UN and the social enterprises is definitely stronger than UN working alone, because there will more ideas coming up and more smart people working in different areas to help people with different needs.

References:

Pam LawhorneI (2014) Don’t Just Teach Attraction Marketing… I Built My Business With It! [online]. Available at: http://pamlawhorne.com/ [Accessed 09 November 2014]

current news story

UBC Tuition Rise, is it fair or not? (Re: Greger Allan’s blog)

Picture from: the Ubyssey Around 400 people attended the sit-in.

Picture from: the Ubyssey
Around 400 students attended the sit-in.

In Greger Allan’s blog The Price of an Education, he presented his support of raising tuition on international students mainly because one Ivy league university costs higher but provides same quality, and because university needs funds to enhance its academic facility.

As an international student myself, I believe my voice represents most international students’ opinion.

Certainly, universities need to raise funds to maintain and improve its academic quality, but the question is how? Although there is no doubt that increasing tuition is the safest and fastest way, there are also many other ways to achieve that goal too.

Just like how a company raises funds by love money from friends and family, crowd-fund, or IPO as Alibaba just did, UBC can establish an endowment to raise money from successful alumni (build monuments with alumni’s names on it while decorating the campus), or open other study programs with excellent facilities and job opportunities that charges additional fees.

Even if tuition is set to increase, who should bear the burden? Greger said international students are “not on the ground to complain”, but if that is true, then why did UBC give the international students a right to protest? I believe that is because we are stakeholders of the university’s decisions so they would like to hear our voices.

In a word, there is no doubt that universities should protect local’s interests, but not at the expense of the international students. This will make our already tough life even tougher, and may deter some excellent international students from going to UBC due to its increasingly exorbitant tuition.

Reference:

The price of an education (09 November,2014) Available at:https://blogs.ubc.ca/gregorallan/2014/11/09/the-price-of-an-education/ Accessed 10 November, 2014]

Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate social responsibility, a magic to a company. (Re: Bogdan’s blog)

The facade of R.H.Thomas Deluxe Grill, a photo from: www.rthomasdeluxegrill.net

In one of my classmate Bogdan’s blog How social responsibility helped in the creation of a successful restaurant, he elaborated on how R.H.Thomas Deluxe Grill’s founder Richard Thomas’s social responsibility brings the company a huge success, which I firmly agree with. Nonetheless, I also found it a fabulous example of how CRS contributes to a sustaining innovation.

An innovation can be two-fold: disruptive or sustaining, which I got confused in the class but figure out now. One typical example of a disruptive innovation is E-commerce, which makes a breakthrough in the way people purchase things, from in-store shopping to more convenient online shopping.

R.H.Thomas Deluxe Grill Logo, a picture from: www.peachfullychic.com

Nonetheless, Richard Thomas’s idea is not a disruptive idea because it doesn’t transform the basis of competition in the market or almost replace the original industry-fast food industry still exists. Instead, it is an improvement on the current product and services.

Similar to David Cohen’s idea of coming up with a great startup idea, which is to “look at what’s bugging you”. Driven by his strong social responsibility, “the pure entrepreneur” Richard Thomas found flaws in his existing business and thought up an innovative idea that benefits customers. His initiative adds a new, healthier type of food that continues to be served now.

In short, CSR not only plays a role in better operating the company, it helps build up a company with great innovation as well.

References:

Bogdan Proskurnia (November,7,2014) How social responsibility helped in the creation of a successful restaurant. [online]. Available at:https://blogs.ubc.ca/nadgobp/2014/11/07/how-social-responsibility-helped-in-the-creation-of-a-successful-restaurant/ [Accessed 08, November 2014]

Corporate Social Responsibility, Organization culture

Haidilao, a place of love, trust and respect.

Picture from: 365jia.cn

Last week, while watching the video about the Zappos’ company, its novel organizational culture kept reminding me of the other Chinese restaurant, which is “Haidilao”, a legendary hotpot chain restaurant in China.

As learned from Com 101, an organizational culture is “a pattern of shared values, beliefs, and assumptions considered to be the appropriate way to think and act within an organization.” Haidilao’s company culture is best demonstrated by its three core values: “equality, effort, and expansion”. In accordance to its unique corporate culture, Haidilao creates following novel human resource policies and practices.

First, it employs a large number of people from underdeveloped suburban areas and also graduates since 2006. This initiative helps the poor and students to get a job, where their abilities can be fully applied because being nice and friendly does not require a high level of education or work experience, which are what these two groups of people lack of.

picture from: goods.jc001.cn

Once workers are hired, a general coach is given to equip them with basic knowledge or common sense, followed by a more specific and personalized one-one-one training to cultivate workers’ skills and explore their full potential. To motivate employees to perform better, the company decides to give “salary” to its workers parents. That is, the better its workers do, the larger amount of money will their parents receive. To improve its working conditions, the company gives its workers great employee welfare like dormitories with free cleaning, and it empowers all of its employees to make decisions.

All of these distinguish Haidilao from other normal restaurants. To make it more clear, Haidilao has a horizontal organizational culture, while others have vertical ones. Zhang Yong, the founder of Haidilao, once said that in a normal company, the company-founder is the only owner and employees work for the owner; but here in Haidilao, everyone is the owner of the company and everyone works for their own companies. Obviously, Haidilao’s commitment to build a family-like environment creates a sense of belonging for its workers, which reinforces employees’ loyalty and their work enthusiasm.

Picture from Class 17 slides: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND BTM

Long story short, Haidilao’s corporate culture is the pivot that leads to its special HR management, which can also be called as a disruptive innovation because it works totally different from other hierarchical companies. This whole distinct human resource management explains why its customer service is always so high quality and considerate, and also shows companies high social responsibility (in helping weak group people).

References:

Case study: The Haidilao Company(04 November, 2011)[online]. Available at: https://hbr.org/product/the-haidilao-company/an/TU0021-PDF-ENG [Accessed 09 November 2014]

Corporate Social Responsibility

CSR, more than just what it is.

A photo in Starbuck at UBC bookstore “For every bottle of Ethos water you buy, Starbucks will donate 10 cents to supports humanitarian programs in coffee-growing communities, providing clean, safe water to those in need.”

Although some companies take CSR as an obstacle that hinder the company from gaining huge profit, successful companies carry out CSR while earns profit from it. On Forbes, Microsoft is ranked as one of the top 10 CSR companies, followed by Sony, BMW, Apple, etc. All these companies earn “big bucks”, which enables them to further improve their CSR reputation. Therefore, it is not hard to deduce that companies that have higher CSR normally earns more as well.

Starbuck logo from wannadrinkcoffee.blogspot.com

Take Starbuck for example, it was listed as one of the 50 companies with best social responsibility reputation and has achieved a great success in business. One day, while queuing up in Starbucks, I noticed that there is a basket with bottle waters and a sigh saying that “for every 1 bottle water you buy here, we will donate 10 cents to humanitarian programs in coffee-growing communities” In this way, consumers will feel that they are not only buying a bottle water but also making some contributions to the society. So why not? Especially when the price is reasonable, people may buy a bottle water except just a cup of coffee. Therefore, Starbucks promotes its CSR while gaining extra revenue.

Additionally, by doing this, it positions its product in a higher level, that is, not only a bottle of water but also a part of funds to be donated, and will impress it s customers with its highly socially-conscious brand image. Hence, If deployed efficiently, the CSR can be a bliss rather than a hassle.

References:

The 10 Companies With the Best CSR Reputations (2014) Available at: http://www.forbes.com/pictures/efkk45mmlm/no-6-daimler-mercedes-benz/ [Accessed 10 November, 2014]

Recycling & Reducing Waste. Available at: http://www.starbucks.ca/responsibility/environment/recycling [Accessed 10 November, 2014]

Jodie Gong's Blog

Monthly Archives: November 2014

UBC Tuition Rise, is it fair or not? (Re: Greger Allan’s blog)