Monthly Archives: November 2014

With an operating budget of over 5.5 billion dollar provided by 193 member states, the United Nations try to maintain and reestablish international peace and securitysecurity, promote human rights and provide humanitarian aid. Still, some economic and social development role ms cannot be tackled by the world’s most popular organization due to financial reasons and limited capacity. Thus, social enterprises dedicated to filling the gaps between the UN projects and the unsolved social and economic problems in certain areas evolved throughout the last decades.

Would the world need those social enterprises, tough, if the UN was fully funded and expanded their capacity?

The answer to this question is yes, in my opinion, as there will always be very specific problems that the international community is not aware of and that require specific solutions. Moreover, the bigger an organisation like the United Nations gets, the less flexible it is and the harder it gets to adjust to rapidly changing problems in developing countries. Therefore, it useful to found smaller and more efficient organisations like social enterprises that are tailored to tackle one problem and to support one specific group of people in order to improve the overall situation.

References:

http://www.un.org/en/aboutun/index.shtml

According to Bill Fotsch’s blog post from October 27^th, 2014, the business community is facing a new addictive trend comparable to the sudden popularity of quality in the 1990s: “the customer experience movement”. Although feedback from their clients is crucial for all kinds of improvements concerning marketing, product design or even operations, companies tend to take results of surveys and other opinion polling way to serious nowadays. Customer feedback has become so important that some firms even encourage their employees financially to implement suggestions of improvements in processes made by clients.

The problem is, tough, that companies run the risk of neglecting key financial indicators while trying to content every single customer, which leads to a conflict of the firm’s performance – customer satisfaction – and its very purpose – profit.
Therefore, the key is to relate these two seemingly opposite ideas and to attach a touch of finance to customer services.

Nonetheless, it is debateable if every employee should be involved in as serious decisions and processes as the implementation of improvements based on customer feedback, as Bill Fotsch thinks it is best, or if employees should just collect feedback and let management evaluate and decide align with the company’s principles, values and strategy.

References:

https://hbr.org/2014/10/track-customer-experience-but-dont-forget-the-financials/

http://www.axiall.com/uploadedImages/CustomerService.jpg?n=8038

Although Berlin Wall came down 25 years ago and the German government has invested billions in the economic and social transformation of Eastern Germany, the Eastern German economy can barely keep pace with the tremendous economic growth in Western Germany. Against the most logical assumption, the transformation from a communist market system into free-marketism is not the reason for the lack of growth and business infrastructure. Indeed, the economic strength of Western Germany causes businesses and skilled workers to move to the more industrialized and more popular venues in the West and therefore a lack of leading firms that stimulate innovation and growth.

Nevertheless, Eastern Germany has a lot of potential – not least because of the booming chemical and optical industry. Berlin is a ray of hope, too, as the buzzing German capital is known for disruptive innovation as well as uniquely new approaches to business problems considered as unsolvable and the problem of unequal growth can most likely be tackled with successful entrepreneurship.

Now the question arises, how it can be made more attractive for Eastern Germans to open up their own businesses or for Western entrepreneurs to move west. One factor is definitely the currently extremely low interest rate level in Europe, which forces savers (that Eastern Germans tend to be) to find new ways to invest their money and allows entrepreneurs to get cheap business loans. Still, the German government will have to create some form of (financial) incentive for Eastern German start-ups and try to move more state-owned corporations west as role models in order to bring the unequal German siblings to a common level again.

References:

http://www.economist.com/news/business/21631048-few-big-companies-have-headquarters-east-germanys-old-internal-border-still-not-over-wall

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5d/Berlinermauer.jpg

Recognizing problems, finding solutions and changing the world – although the key activities of Non-For-Profit organizations sound like the job description of any superhero, businesses in the non-for-profit sector often find themselves forced to stop after a successful search for a solution. The reason for this abrupt disruption of the world changing process usually is the confrontation of non-for-profit ideas with actually-for-profit business reality.

An example for a non-for-profit organization facing particularly disruptive confrontations with CFO on a daily basis is Greencare, an organization aiming at making health care environmentally friendlier through recycling clinical waste, reducing energy consumption in hospitals and introducing a more responsible handling of water. Greencare’s three main concerns directly affect the environment of health care facilities and play a crucial role regarding the population’s overall health. Moreover, Greencare’s propositions for hospitals are cheap to implement taking into account their benefits. Nevertheless, CFOs of hospitals reject Greencare’s offers more often than they take them, as the health care industry suffers from immense financial pressure and the reallocation of money that is spent on patient care often seems irrational in the short run. Unfortunately, CFOs often ignore the long run consequences of their decisions and accept environmental damage as well as negative effects on public health.

References:

https://www.colourbox.com/preview/2955355-170466-light-bulb-with-leaves-inside.jpg

While other clothing companies try to lure their (primarily female) customers into buying more and more clothes, the outdoor clothing brand Patagonia tries to convey a completely contradictory message: Their slogan “Don’t buy this jacket” combined with a picture of one of their own products relates to a new campaign aiming at reducing, repairing, reusing and recycling.

As Emily analyzed in her blog post from October 5^th, Patagonia tries to create shared value by broaching the environmental concerns of their target group, as customers are asked to think twice before buying clothes in order to reduce waste and environmentally unfriendly cloth production.

Besides the strong relationship that Patagonia builds with its target segment as Emily outlined, their campaign could also be seen as strategic marketing, since advertisements as bizarre and unconventional as Patagonia’s latest launch definitely win the “battle over customer’s mind” and therefore spreads brand awareness among potential customers.

Nevertheless, it is admirable how Patagonia connects taking over corporate social responsibility and creating shared value with increasing sales and building an even more reliable customer base.

References:

http://jaredlatigo.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/patagonia-ad.png