Upon reading my fellow classmate Junbeom Yoo’s blog post on the significance of different leadership styles, I completely agree with him about how different leadership styles can greatly affect the stability of an organization. In the group case project, my group and I analyzed the OBHR issues in the movie Horrible Bosses, and one of the characters in the movie, Kurt Buckman, immediately began to hate his job from loving it the moment his affable boss Jack Pellitt dies and his despicable son Bobby takes over.

Because Kurt only liked his job due to the camaraderie that his former boss Jack shared with all the employees, he immediately begins to hate how Bobby establishes a toxic workplace that is filled with prostitutes and drugs. This helps explain how different leadership styles severely impact the motivation of employees to perform their jobs and how much they enjoy it.

People often like to claim how much they love their job without realizing they can easily start to hate it as soon as a few circumstances at the workplace change. During the group case project in class, my group explored the movie Horrible Bosses Project and one character in the movie, Kurt Buckman, epitomized exactly such kind of complete change in attitude. At the beginning of the movie, Kurt claimed to be completely in love working as an accountant at Pellitt Chemicals and how his job was totally his “dream job”. Yet, his love takes a full 180 degree turnaround in one day when his affable boss Jack Pellitt dies and his despicable son Bobby takes over the company.

So what happened? Kurt’s job as an accountant certainly didn’t change, but he still suddenly started to hate his job once his boss died. The explanation behind this is that like Kurt, many people often confuse loving their workplace with loving their job. Kurt loved his job not because he really enjoyed working as an accountant, but rather he loved it because he loved the warm interactions he shared everyday with his boss Jack and the rest of his co-workers. Thus, when Bobby takes over and establishes a toxic workplace environment, Kurt immediately begins to hate his job because the intrinsic motivation behind him loving his job in the first place is gone.

Likewise, reading Alan Zhou’s blog post on how he quickly went from loving his job as a day camp leader at the Strathcona Community Centre to quickly dreading it, I see the same scenario happening. In his blog post, Alan states he originally loved his job while working in the summer because he shared a close relationship with his fellow volunteers that motivated him to go to work everyday. However, when he returned in the winter, the cohort of volunteers had changed and he no longer had the same motivation. This simple change quickly caused him to dread the exact same job he loved only a few months ago.

Cases like Kurt and Alan show that changes in only a few external factors can quickly alter a person’s perception of their job from love to hate.

From safaribooksonline.com “Competition in Workplace”

The importance of ethics has become increasingly pronounced over the past few decades as high profile cases of well-known corporations being guilty of making unethical decisions have sent shockwaves across the general public. For instance, at Wells Fargo, employees secretly created millions of unauthorized and fake credit card accounts in order to achieve their performance results. Furthermore, clothing manufacturers such as Nike and Under Armour are frequently criticized for establishing sweatshops in third-world countries in order to take advantage of cheap labour. As a result, a lot of attention has turned to behavioural ethics in order to understand exactly why unethical acts are committed by organizations.

In the textbook, the “broken window theory” was introduced to show how superficial aspects of an environment, such as outward displays of wealth and status, can affect ethical behaviour in organizations. That is, if signs of status and money are frequently present in a company’s culture, an employee is more likely to be swayed into pursuing wealth and status at the expense of thoroughly considering ethical standards. While I completely agree with the logic behind this theory, I do not believe it accurately explains how wealth and status often emerges as a more important factor in an organization’s culture to end up influencing unethical acts.

By stating that “outward” displays of wealth and status is the root cause of facilitating an unethical culture, the theory is essentially saying that this only happens to organizations who have such kind of explicit superficial culture. However, what the theory fails to consider is that a lot of organizations do not actually have such kind of explicit superficial culture, but status and money can still influence employees to a high degree through implicit means. For instance, a recent blog post by the Harvard Business Review explored how cut-throat internal competition within an organization can easily cause employees to perform unethical acts if the competition causes employees to focus on an coveted bonus or public recognition.

Therefore, it is perfectly possible for an organization to have a humble environment, but still face the same issue of employees valuing money and status over ethical standards because competition within the organization is implicitly elevating the influence of such superficial aspects. Had it been me working at a cut throat organization such as Wells Fargo, I likely would have been pressured to do the same thing in order to meet my performance criterias even though I perfectly understand it is unethical. This is because at many modern workplaces, the mere existence of performance standards elicit fear and anxiety among employees to compete with each other in order to not be the one who gets laid off or humiliated, which leads to them committing unethical acts to survive.

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Additional Citations:

1.Langton, Robbins, Judge, Organizational Behaviour, 7th edition, p. 434.

Taken from lightspeedhq.com “Foodie Culture”

If you asked the founders of popular social media networks such as Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, just what kind of impact their creations would have on the world the day before the launch date, I highly doubt any of them would have guessed they were about to give birth to a completely new culture – the foodie culture.

Taking pictures of food and sharing them on social media has quickly turned from a frenzy to an obsession these days with seemingly almost every meal getting documented. This phenomenon has led to the complete alteration of what it means to be a foodie. Originally coined as a term for a connoisseur, the word foodie has now evolved to pretty much include anyone who loves food. And the whole purpose of social media is to share what we love right? So go figure.

Now, all this foodie culture thing isn’t just for visual appeasement. For restaurants, this represents a major business opportunity because after all, the billions of pictures being circulated on the internet each day is really free marketing. Much like how fashion designers and retailers pay fashion influencers to post about their latest products, many high-end restaurants who are ahead of the game are now inviting foodies with a large social media following to dine for free.  As the article claims, foodie influencers “can, and often do ‘make’ restaurants” by turning a completely unknown quantity into one of the most sought after eateries in the city overnight.

From code95.com “Marketing Funnel”

Looking at a simple marketing funnel diagram, such claim does not seem to be a stretch by any means. Essentially, what is really happening is that foodie influencers are propagating the awareness of restaurants by creating content which then pulls their followers into considering the restaurants themselves. This is nothing different than how restaurants conduct marketing themselves, but the key point here is that in order for restaurants to reach the vast audience in the millions that foodie influencers can reach in just one post, a remarkable amount of resources must be devoted to advertising which can be very very expensive.

While the vast majority of restaurants do not have the luxury of being provided with the publicity of well-known foodies, tools such as location tagging on Instagram has made it possible for every foodie out there to be an influencer. In 2015,  over 300 million photos shared on social media were considered to be about food.   Such data presents each and every restaurant an opportunity to gain the free publicity it needs to drive traffic. However, not nearly enough restaurateurs are realizing the importance of just how powerful an influence foodies have on their business.

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From CBC “Uber Faces More Delays in Vancouver”

Ever since the Uber craze started in around 2010, virtually every major city in the world has adopted the app and its novel idea of connecting “freelance drivers” with consumers. Whether you’re in San Francisco, London, or New York, the Uber app allows you to conveniently hitch a ride with the simple tap of a button and the nearest driver will come pick you up. Seems like a great idea right? Well, apparently not according to angry taxi drivers around the globe and . . . the BC government.

Despite serving over 500 cities worldwide in 66 countries, Uber has had unbelievably hard luck when it comes to breaking into the Vancouver market. Time and time again it has had its license approval rejected by the BC government and the Vancouver City Council after relentless lobbying by representatives in the province’s taxi industry. After its latest rejection earlier this month, it appears that Uber’s patience with the province’s stubborn opposition has reached a breaking point. Using unusually strong language, Uber’s chief advisor, David Plouffe, warned that BC will fall behind the rest of the world if it doesn’t allow the ridesharing app soon. 

As mentioned in fellow student Kevin Li’s blog post on the emergence of freelance drivers , the emergence of disruptive technology will inevitably compete and in many cases, replace traditional industries. The taxi industry is only one of many examples in which the emergence of technology such as the smartphone, has changed how the service is offered. Having been in China this past summer, I agree with Kevin on just how shockingly low the taxi rates in China are compared to the rates in Vancouver. Because of the fact that the rates are really high in Vancouver, riding taxis is not really a viable alternative to say taking the bus. I believe this really is a significant problem that should be addressed in Vancouver because the whole concept of taxis is to provide people an affordable alternative to a) driving themselves and b) taking the bus.

Would allowing Uber in Vancouver potentially close the existing vacuum? Possibly because freelance drivers will offer much needed competition to the existing oligopoly in Vancouver’s taxi industry and to gain market share, freelance drivers will need to offer lower rates. From this perspective I can understand why Uber is so eager to enter the Vancouver market, but what I found very interesting was Uber’s warning that BC will fall behind if it does not enter BC. This to me sounds like a melodramatic marketing ploy of Uber positioning itself as a technology company who will offer disruptive tech such as autonomous driving when it is really just a service company.

From Business 2 Community: “7 Digital Marketing Trends To Be Aware of in 2016”

Whether it’s work, entertainment, research or even education nowadays, virtually every facet of our lives now involves the usage of the internet in one way or another. But, as much as the internet has changed how we live day-to-day, it has made an even more profound impact on marketing by radically altering the way it has been done for decades. Gone are the days of fighting for premium newspaper ads and eye-catching flyers. Instead, the centre focus of modern-day marketing strategies has shifted to a completely new battle frontier where consumers now lie – the internet.

However, for many businesses, the question becomes what exactly does social media marketing entail of? Does it simply mean creating one’s own Facebook page and bombarding the internet with ads?

Well, according to this online blog, the key strategy is actually to create as many marketing channels as possible.   The author claims that the biggest mistake business owners can make is to “put all their eggs in basket” and not have a “diverse marketing plan”. The advantage of having diversity is that not only will businesses be able to communicate with a much broader target audience, but also it mitigates their vulnerability to any external environment changes.

While I do agree with the author on the need to implement multiple marketing channels such as  social media networks, blogs, email marketing campaigns and so on depending on the target audience, I believe it is equally important to also point out exactly what kind of content needs to be propagated from such channels. It would certainly be pointless to invest in a diversified marketing plan only to churn out rubbish content that no one cares about.

From themodernconnection.com via Nike Instagram

As we discussed in class about the importance of positioning, the same rules apply to social media marketing.  Nowadays, all businesses have a Facebook or Instagram account and consumers are constantly flooded with ads everywhere over the internet. Therefore, given this information overload, it becomes imperative for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors. But how can this be accomplished?

Azure Zhu’s recent blog post on social media marketing made a great point about how instead of simply posting advertisements, businesses should “interact with customers by joining in on discussions, posting interesting posters and so on”. One such successful example of this strategy would be Nike. Rather than interrupting their follower’s feeds on Facebook and Instagram, it actively engages with its target audience by sharing motivational messages. This way, Nike is able to establish a sense of community with consumers whilst using this opportunity to promote its products in a meaningful way at the same time.

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From the Financial Times

Ever since it was revealed that Apple would venture into the automotive industry alongside the likes of other tech giants such Baidu and Alphabet Inc’s Google, much speculation has incessantly surrounded the rumoured iCar, codenamed “Titan”. Is it an electric car that will go head-to-head with Tesla? Will it be fully autonomous? How will Apple even go about developing a car given that it has absolutely zero prior experience in auto?

While Apple has unsurprisingly remained firmly tight-lipped over the details of its secret project thus far,  there certainly hasn’t been any shortage of signs pointing towards the company seeking to revolutionize the automotive industry. First, there was the strategic $1 billion investment in the ride-hailing company, Didi Chuxing, and now Apple is reportedly seeking to acquire the British supercar maker, McLaren Technology Group.  The rumoured $2 billion takeover would no doubt substantially bolster any ambitions that Apple has in store for its iCar.

According to the article, the move would make “perfect sense” for Apple because McLaren – a world-renowned car manufacturer with arguably the most advanced technological expertise – would provide it with “instant credibility” in the auto sector. Similar to its acquisition of Beats in 2014, Apple is likely seeking to tap into McLaren’s top notch engineering team that has previously been responsible for developing industry-leading “lightweight electric motors” and “on-board computer systems”. Such kind of experience would likely take years for Apple to accumulate internally.

From the Verge

However, aside from McLaren’s  extensive patent portfolio and R&D that Apple can integrate, is it really correct to label the potential acquisition as making “perfect sense”? In fact, I personally think its the very opposite. Considering how just a week before Apple’s rumoured interest in McLaren surfaced, it was being reported that Apple was shifting the focus of its car project, the move for McLaren can even be argued to be absurd. Instead of producing its own car, Apple now wants to focus only on providing self-driving technology for existing car makers.

Unless Apple is planning to only serve 1500 – 1600 consumers a year for cars that cost at least $200, 000, there is little reason for Apple to acquire or even purchase a majority stake in McLaren. A much more sensible option for Apple would be to partner with an automaker that will allow its self-driving technology to reach the mass market. For example, Uber has partnered with Volvo to collaborate on autonomous car technology and Microsoft has inked a similar partnership with Toyota.  That way, Apple will be able to take advantage of an already mature mass production supply chain rather than establishing one itself from scratch as it would have to if it acquired McLaren.

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