Nike is the world’s leading supplier of athletic shows with about 36% of market share and $19.2 billions in revenue (2009). They are in charge of designing, marketing and selling, but not manufacturing their shoes.
The factories that are in charge of this are called sweatshops, given that employees often work long hours in poor conditions for a very low wage. About 800,000 people work on these, which are mainly located in China, Indonesia and Vietnam because of cheap labour.
In all of these countries, the minimum wage is not enough to survive. In China, workers make $1.75 a day; in Indonesia, $2.46 a day; and in Vietnam, $1.60 a day, even when three simple meals cost $2.10 a day. Workers usually need to work more than 100 overtime hours per month so that they can only survive.
Where are Nike’s values and ethics? They are always under great criticism because they are perfectly capable of increasing the wages of all their factory workers, but they refuse to do it. Other companies like Coca-Cola or Goodyear did not hesitate to do so when realizing minimum wages were not enough. Nike should follow their ethical example.
The first seems to change organizational ethical values. Just watch the following video to get an idea what of what Phil Knight, Nike’s Chairman, has to say about sweatshops (15:41 to 16:56):
Behind the Swoosh from Jim Keady on Vimeo.
Some facts about Nike sweatshops:
Nike Sweatshop Facts
More Nike Sweatshop Facts
Further reading:Detailed analysis of Nike’s sweatshops
Apple created the “Get A Mac” television advertising campaign, which run from 2006 to 2009, to directly highlight the aspects in which they were better than Windows. All of the ads followed a simple template, in which a two men (each one representing each company) talked about a certain feature. This campaign surely brought a lot of attention and even won an Effie Award in 2007 for its originality and effectiveness.
However, to what extent was Apple competing fairly. Most analysts state that most of the differences pointed out were not as huge as shown. Anyways, Apple’s strategy is understandable given that they are the second brand behind Windows. And one of the most effective ways of advertising in that position is pointing out the leader’s weaknesses. However, it can be said that it was not ethical to attack their main competitors in such a hard way.
Windows responded with the “I’m a PC” campaign, in which they did not attack Apple but rather defined their own strengths. This was the way to go, certainly, because if they had decided to attack Apple then consumers would have thought that Windows felt threatened by their competitors.
Further reading:
Differentiating between a Mac and a PC
“I’m a PC” campaign
* Funny fact: the “I’m a PC” commercials were done with Apple hardware and software.
Electronic voting proved to be effective in last week's Brazil elections.
On October 3rd, 2010, both Peru and Brazil held elections. Peru held mayoral elections, while Brazil held general elections. Despite Brazil having a much bigger population than Peru, they could determine the results that same Sunday night, whereas it is uncertain until now, one week later, who was chosen to be the Lima mayor (the most important one given Lima is the capital city).
The most obvious reason seems to be that Brazil used electronic voting, and Peru did not. It is true that Brazil is better economically to implement this type of voting, but Peru has been consistently growing in the last years, and was one of the few countries which was not really affected by the world economic crisis. Anyhow, Peru is a centralized country, with all the development concentrating in Lima.
In Brazil, more than 100 million people voted and it was determined that there had to be a run-off to select the ultimate president. In Peru, about 6 million people voted to choose Lima’s Mayor, who is not announced yet. Anyways, this is not really that long for Peru standards. The fact that there is less than 1% of difference within the two top candidates has been crucial. Additionally, some votes are under revision suspecting an electoral fraud. Considering these two factors, then it is clear why a winner cannot be determined yet.
Peruvian authorities say it will take some more days, and the people are anxious to know the final decision and somewhat angry to know that our geographical neighbours are much more effective.
Further reading: Lima closest elections in years
Can these devices be helpful in learning?
We can say that the main objective of technologic devices is to help humans be more effective in whatever they are use these for. In the case of academic learning, some Universities are trying to implement new devices, such as Amazon’s Kindle or Apple’s iPad, to some of their MBA programs. But, to what extent are these new devices useful for learning?
Our new generation is definitely technologically savvy, mainly given because personal computers already existed when we were born. However, in the case of reading, it is very different reading from a screen than from paper. Some people find it much easier using normal textbooks rather than laptops or computers, but this may be because the latter make it easier to get distracted (i.e. Internet).
One issue with technology is how fast it develops. Just consider that most companies in the world are still running Windows XP with Microsoft Office 2003. Keeping up with technological advance is certainly very difficult.
In any case, technology can certainly be used in learning. Using devices such as the iPad increases the variety of ways of learning. Animations, videos, podcasts, and so on, could help very much in learning.
Further reading: MBAs and technology
Google's Android is quickly becoming a threat for Apple's iOS.
The Mac vs PC war for the personal computers market has existed since the creation of these devices. Nowadays, with the development of smartphones, the new battle is between Apple and Google operating systems. Apple has had the iOS for some years now, and the iPhone is a worldwide success. Oppositely, Google’s Android is quite new, but has had an exponential growth. In the last 6 months, Android phones totaled 32%, while Apple phones reached 25% of market share.
In terms of the features each OS offers, these are basically the same. However, Android’s competitive advantage seems its versatility: it can be installed in any smartphone. On the other hand, Apple insists on exclusivity on their own hardware (iPhone) and one single carrier in the US (AT&T). Some may say Google should develop its own hardware, but that is not their strategy. In any case, Apple’s next tactic should be making their iPhone available for other carriers (i.e. Verizon) in order to keep market share.
It’s true that Google’s success has not meant Apple’s failure until this point, but if Apple does not respond to this aggressive competition, this might happen in the future.
Further reading: Apple and Google’s smartphone war
Executive Bonuses. Do they really deserve them?
The worldwide financial crisis of 2008 resulted in the collapse of many companies in the USA, some of which were helped financially by the government to prevent bankruptcy and probably massive unemployment. Due to the financial help, these companies could achieve extraordinary profits, which were distributed as bonuses for their senior executives. At the same time, lower-end workers did not receive bonuses and some were left unemployed. To what extent did these senior executives deserve those bonuses? Weren’t they responsible for the company going bankrupt or was the market system as a whole accountable for that?
On February 2009, President Obama attempted a solution by imposing a limit of $500,000 on these bonuses. Another possible solution in the long-term would be to encourage the development of more powerful companies and therefore have a more competitive market. There are skilled professionals out there that can do this but the barriers of entry are very high. In the short-term, the solution would be to increase the taxes on profits, which is reasonable given that the government itself helped these companies gain profits in the first place.
Further reading: Alternative Solutions
