Taylor Apsouris's

Social Entrepreneurship

The social entrepreneurship lesson really inspired me. I felt like i wanted to go out that day and start something to help society, may it be a social enterprise or a charity, i am just excited to do some good. What got me so excited was the mentioning of the me-to-we conference. Last year, in my leadership class, i had the opportunity to attend this conference. Last year it was so amazing. At the conference the dahlia lama came to speak. He was very different then what you would have expected, trying to tell jokes and stuff on stage.

After the dahlia lama spoke, the conference coordinators suggested that we take the 10 by 10 challenge. This is write 10 things you would like to change and then donate 10 dollars to the free the children foundation. I was very excited about his but soon forgot after i came back. This class we just had reminded me and really inspired me.

Maybe i could go and make a social enterprise based on this 10 by 10 concept. I could make merchandise for the 10 by 10 challenge, sell it, and then donate it to  freethechildren.com.

I just finished thanksgiving dinner with my family today. Nearly my whole family was at dinner, including my great uncle Tony. My Uncle Tony is a very successful business man, who has definitely proven himself in his field. As we were sitting around the dinner table, i began to talk to him about business in general. I asked him “how did you become so successful in your life, and what can i do to replicate your success?”. He told me that the secret to being successful in business is the same as being successful in anything. He told me that if you hang around with positive people, they only bring about positive things. If you hang around with negative people, they bring you farther from your goals.

After my family left from a great dinner, i took some time and thought about what this meant. What i came up with is that this is talking about networking and the people in your network.A good network, means good things can only happen. If you have a bad network, you are set up for failure. People can either bring you up or down, you just have to choose the right ones.

This weekend, i went and watched the movie the Social Network. This film is about the founding of the social media network we  Facebook. It was an amazing film, which really got me thinking about how even more amazing it was due to the fact that it was based on a true story. http://www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com/

These students in Harvard university, came up with this idea for a social media network, and created one of the most well known social media networks online today. One that has become a crucial marketing front for many successful businesses. And one that is used nearly everyday by most people regardless of age. Quite honestly this website became the “staple” of my generation, were people spend most of their days on updating their statuses, and uploading their photos, and “creeping” their buddies pages.  This website that some university kids made is now worth over a billion dollars, which is quite an amazing feat for some college kids.

The truly amazing thing about this story, is how viral their business spread. They literally started their website and it skyrocketed and spread like a common cold. Every business wishes for this, but few actually achieve it.

Today, i was just thinking about the topic of business ethics, and about what it truly meant to be an “ethical business”. I began to talk about this topic to some friends of mine. We came up with the conclusion together that an ethical business was one that treated it workers very well with respect and dignity, union for it workers, pay’s all workers at least minimum wage, and did not use questionable labour such as child labour and illegal immigrants.

After talking about this for awhile, i began to think about these things. And most of these made sense, but as i began to think about others, i began to become confused. I totally agree that is is ethical to not sue child labour or to treat your workers fairly and with respect, but one thing that confuses me is how having a unionized labour force and minimum wage is considered ethical. Economically speaking, the introduction of these institutions only really causes unemployment, higher costs to producers, higher costs to consumers, and less goods available. The only ones benefitting are the ones who originally hold the jobs. The rest suffer. So how are those things ethical?  You tell me.

In comm 101, in class, we talked about blockbuster, a major movie rental organization, making a rather large and costly mistake, which put them behind in the competition for market control. Blockbuster in a bold decision decided to implement kiosk movie rentals into their business design as they were trying to compete with up and coming online rental organizations such as netflix. They felt that this bold tactic would definitely advance them farther towards there strategy to gain predominant market control. Yet, the consumer preference leaned towards the online side of business. This business decision cost blockbuster quite a lot of money, and now blockbuster is just trying to concentrate on their brand power to let them survive.

After talking about this, i became interested in the topic. I went to the blockbuster near my house and i started up a conversation about this with the manager to see how the effects are being felt up in Canada. It turns out that this “huge mess” is actually not really felt up in Canada, and the Canadian blockbusters are doing rather great. This is quite confusing to me. How is it that the same organizations effects are not felt the same in different countries?

In todays economic driven world, in the western culture, people are driven by self interest. Consumers are looking to buy products for less money, thus benefiting themselves. And organizations are looking to maximize profits an cut costs in an effort to pursue there own self interest. Because of this “self interest”, many organizations can fall into practicing certain unethical business practices.

An example of this would be Walmart, a company who is famous for having the lowest prices out of everywhere. This company may have started off with good intentions of being fair to its workers, and supplying excellent value for its customers, but due to intense competition with other competing organizations, they have resulted to some “more the questionable business practices, which some might call “unethical”.

An article i have read brought light to these issues on ethics. The article talked about how Walmart was against it’s workers being apart or a labour union, and how it would prohibit its employees from talking to one. The company allegedly has gone so far as to bribe its employees to report others who have talked to a union. Also, the company has known to be one that is not fair to its women workers in respects to wages and promotions. Both issues above are very unethical practices, and should be corrected.

Welcome to UBC Blogs. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!