The United Nations is led by four purposes in order to make our world a better place. However, big vision can also be a disadvantage of the organization. Even if the United Nations get enough funding, it is still too hard to make consistent effort to resolve all kinds of problems from different places. Some big problems will get attention prior to small ones, due to their higher urgency and importance. That’s why the United Nations bring the its focus of budget into regular and peacekeeping. However, there is still hope for complex regional problems to be solved, becasue that is what social enterprise stand for. Social enterprises face more challenges than traditional business because they are aiming at generating social values. For example, in the story of the co-founders of Osei-Duro Clothing, they have to make great effort to educate their workers to do proper sewing to meet the challenging high-end fashion market. Although the process of running a social enterprise is tough, it is also a very rewarding path, because social enterprise can make real social impact besides traditional profit-making.  Social enterprise can drive real and positive change by focusing on one area, which fix the flaws of the United Nations.

Source of picture: Salesforce.com hypes social enterprise at cloud conference www.cnmeonline.com

After the preparation for class 19, I realized one key factor in HR management is good understanding between employees. The media of passing understanding between people are the culture and core values of a company. Take Zappo as an example, the core value of the company is building happiness among people, the company want both employees and customers be happy. How can the company fulfil this goal is to give employees training about happiness, and let them be motivated  and be driven to make positive changes. However, since employees are from different background, building understanding between a team can be hard. As the article “Like it or not, Millennials will change the workplace”mentioned, there are gaps between older generations and young generations because of the difference in societal background, experiences and more. In my opinion, each generation has their values to bring to their companies and teams. In order to maximize the potentials of all team members, it is important to foster such open, fair and active team spirit so that older workers can pass the valuable experience and skills they have and young workers can speak up and share their fresh perspectives with older workers. Only when team members can communicate openly and effectively, the good understanding can be formed between them.

Source of picture:Common challenges in HR management www.traningtampa.com

Recently I read a news article discussed the effect on drive-thru brought by mobile payment. Technology is changing the way we buy and pay, online and mobile payment are disruptive innovations that replace traditional way of purchase. As a consequence, the stores and food chains have to make adjustments to adapt to this trend brought by technology. It is unsurprising that restaurants like MacDonald begin accepting mobile orderings, which may replace drive-thru sooner or later. The mobile ordering is clearly a result of value propositions of target customers; since there are increasing urban population and young people are driving less and less. However, in my opinion, drive-thru still have its convenience for people on the street. Especially when you are on the way and need to grab some food. Drive thru satisfies urban people’s lifestyles to grab food on the go, but the waiting lines and congestion bring some problems. I think it will be better to replace drive-thru windows by several windows that people can grab their food that they ordered on their mobile apps so that there are no congestion concerns and people can still get their food quickly on the street. In addition, restaurants have to improve their time management and organization skills to make sure customers can get their orders in time.

Source of picture: “interstate drive-thru” nowiknow.com

After learning about the content and meaning of CSR and sustainability, we are all clear that both of them are beyond the primary profit-maxmizing goal of business. What if a company want to perform CSR and sustainability at the same time? In the business blog named “Don’t confuse sustainability with Corporate Social Responsibility”, the authors Tima Bansal and Mark DesJardine use critical thinking to point out that business should not call their social responsible behaviours sustainable if they borrow resources from future. This is an interesting and deep question for business to consider, because the companies should think about the future effect before they perform social responsibilities. In another word, the long term vision is the necessary quality that a social responsible corporation should have. This suggests that business should have ability to provide on going support to the community they want to benefit. In my opinion, the considerations of long term increases the difficulties of performing social responsibilities for a business, and the business need to have a good Chief Sustainable Officer to integrate the social responsible decisions with sustainability.

After reading Yue Huang’s blog “IPO BABA” about her understanding of Alibaba’s situation, I would like to add more analysis on incentives of Jack Ma’s decision. As she said, the rapid speed of  E-commerce development  in China brings Alibaba intensive domestic competition. As a result, Alibaba should exploit foreign market to bring the company to compete at a higher level. In addition, I think the IPO of Alibaba is more than market strategy and risk taking of financial market; it takes a risky step to test the potential of E-Commerce under Chinese prohibitions on several foreign investment, and the corporate structure becomes a risky variable interest entity. Although it is hard to estimate the space of foreign investment because Alibaba’s development are influenced by the macro-environment in Chinese foreign investment regulations, in my opinion, it is worthy to seek larger space of development and higher platform of competition despite the uncertainty in financial market, because Alibaba is the leading Chinese company in E-Commerce and Jack Ma should have the ambition to explore because that’s part of the spirit of an entrepreneur.
Source of picture: Alibaba increases IPO price range www.dw.de

This blog is a comment on Cindy Li’s blog “Lulu-lama? New Lululemon partnership faces social outcry”. In her blog, she expressed that the company was attempting to rebuild their image through association with Dalai Lama, who fought against poverty and spread mindfulness, which marketing decision was ineffective. I agree with her that this partnership was not clear in terms of purpose, which occurred to be misleading to the public. In my opinion, the company may also trying to create shared values of helping against poverty, however, it will not be successful unless the company can lower the prices of their products to open to general public or perform some sort of  donations; it is not influential enough to only partner with a public figure. In my opinion, Lululemon should make decisions to against poverty or stop partnership with Dalai-lama; otherwise it would be ironic for a company who sells high price products to perform marketing promotions by partnering with people who against poverty. In addition, since Lululemon has successful experience in sustainability practice like people-powered projects to reduce negative environmental impact, I believe the company have ability to do CSR practices as well.

The news article about Detroit bankruptcy catches my eye because I am surprised that like a corporation, a city can be exhausted by liabilities and go to bankruptcy. As one of America’s biggest cities, Detroit has $18 billion of liability mountain. According to the news article, there are mainly two causes for this result. The first one is mismanagement, as the article mentioned, the funds raised are given priority to retirees rather than creditors, and the large amount of retirees pension and health-care to be paid are underestimated. Moreover, the ridiculous spending on art protection is another factor. In my opinion, what Detroit case teaches us is like corporations, government are responsible to use the funds raised from investors wisely by making budget based on moderate projections before implement fiscal policies or adding public benefit. The government should add good managerial accounting  practices into their budget calculations so that both the development of  the city and creditors can be benefited. Since creditors and citizens are stakeholders of municipal government, government should be cautious and responsible when make decisions about budget.

Citation: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-11-07/detroit-bankruptcy-taught-muni-investors-painful-lessons.html

Source of picture: “Detroit bankruptcy just what doctor ordered” freedom works.com

In the news article “First Nation chiefs to stage Cite C showdown”, BC hydro has difficulty to build their Site C hydroelectric megaproject because of the impact on First Nations’ traditional practices. The project falls down to the land ownership, which goes a bit extreme.

Instead of comparing the benefits and loss of both sides which is hard to move on, both of First Nations and BC hydro should communicate more about the stewardship of the nature for the interests of both. It’s about collaboration and partnership. To illustrate, BC hydro should think about how to minimize the influence of the hydro project on First Nations’ lives, for the respect to their traditions; then generate environmental friendly solutions and talk about them with First Nations’ band leaders. Besides, BC hydro should increase First Nations’ engagement in various areas in their business as well, like take part in employment and management which can promote the positive business interactions among both sides. After the project starts, both sides should take environmental stewardship to protect the nature, for examples, protect the wild lives and plants.

To conclude, hydro business need to build consistent communications and understanding with First Nations in order to create more space for the development of the business.

Photo credit: BC Hydro submits information on impact of Site C Dam. cbc.ca. Web. Oct. 5th 2014.

Customer is definitely one of the most important component of a business model, the success of a business rely on great customer relationship. It is important for companies to evaluate their customer services in different angles in order to improve their customer relationships.

Dave Brock clarifies customer service and customer experience in his blog that describes his experience with troublesome phone plan services. His story is a great example to illustrate that good customer services should not only mean a nice representative with clear instructions but also effective services that can provide customers great experience. In another word, the companies should deliver their services effectively to customers through their customer representatives. The effectiveness of customer services is especially important for technology product companies because customers will easily lose their patience and are tired of repeating contacting the companies overtime. For an example, if your phone has continuous problems and you don’t know how to solve them, you may want to switch to a new phone rather than being stuck on the phone. This is why companies should be familiar with how to solve customers’ different problems effectively. Companies can also provide customers with self-assistance options through online instructions like FAQ, social networking sites and video tutorials. These options are all channels to assistant customers.

The key points for the customer services are effectiveness, helpfulness and easiness. Companies should value the quality of customer services over quantity of representatives they provide.

Photo Credit: customer service issues. shutterstock.com.Web. Oct 4th 2014.