Monthly Archives: March 2017

For the past two summers, my friends from Edmonton and I have been working on growing our business SMG Inc. (Student Movers Group Inc.) The company is basically a moving company and our point of differentiation is that all of our employees are students. Currently we have approximately fifteen employees and consistently have customers looking for assistance. In addition to this, we advertise that we are an employee owned company and 100 percent of our profits goes towards paying for tuition.

Cole Clarke’s blog “Vancouver’s Crazy Market”  does and excellent job of displaying how shortages of companies like ours has led to a high demand for our work. Comm 292 has also taught me various reasons that could potentially explain why our company is functioning well.

One potential reason is that “SMG” works more as a team rather than a group. A group can be considered as two or more people with a common relationship, where as a team is considered as a small number of people working towards a common purpose. SMG works more like a team because of our employee ownership. This means that everyone associated on our team benefit when our company grows, which will lead to higher dedication.

Another reason that SMG is doing well is because of our ethics. As I previously stated, all of our profits are dedicated towards our employee’s tuition. This gives our customers a much higher incentive to use our business because they have the satisfaction of knowing that the money they paid is being put towards a good cause.

Overall, with SMG being considered as a team with appropriate ethics, our company continues to display large amounts of demand.

word count: 279

Sources:

• https://blogs.ubc.ca/coleclarke/2017/02/05/vancouvers-crazy-market/

With the recent election of President Donald Trump, the US has continuously showed little regard for the 2015 Paris agreement. This pledge that Obama signed on behalf of the US in 2015 stated that the country would lower their greenhouse gas emissions by at least twenty six percent, which is stated in the New York Times blog. However, Trump has displayed various actions that demonstrate he has little regard for the agreement. He claims that loosening various regulations on transportation and industry (largest contributors to carbon dioxide emissions) is better for the economy.

Although Trump evidently values the economy much more than the environment, it is not entirely ethical to disregard the agreement that US agreed upon. Over 140 countries came to a consensus in Paris and all of them have made an effort to reach their emission regulation goal. However, with Trump in power, the US is now on pace to have higher emissions than they have ever had, which is not even close to their goal.

Another reason this is not ethical on behalf of the country is because climate change doesn’t only affect the US. The rising in temperature has proven to have a major affect on the entire globe. Factors such as increasing heat waves and rising sea levels could leave millions of people inhabited.

Overall, the US has displayed little regard for this agreement and Trump seems not to care, being that there seems to be no consequence for breaking the agreement.

word count: 235

sources:

• https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/03/28/climate/trumps-executive-order-pushes-the-us-climate-pledge-further-out-of-reach.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=b-lede-package-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news
• https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
• http://unfccc.int/paris_agreement/items/9485.php

Every odd weekend throughout the summer, I typically have friends up to my cabin. The number of people I host typically ranges from 15-20 people and, by the time the weekend is over, the cabin gets fairly messy. Although I have now developed a system that gets the cabin clean within an hour or so, it took a while to implement the idea.

When I first started inviting friends to my cabin two summers ago they would consistently have a great time. We would spend the weekend on the lake, in the woods and made countless unforgettable memories. The only downside was cleaning. For the whole weekend, it would typically take me up to 6 hours to clean the property. By myself, I would have to vacuum the floor, wash all the bed sheets, clean the boat, etc. I could have asked for help but I was afraid that it would my friends with a negative impression on their experience. So, every time we went to the cabin, I would be stuck cleaning.

When relating this situation to strategies for dealing with conflict, it would be safe to consider that I took the avoiding approach. This approach typically leads to concerns not being met and limiting disruption. Although this can be appropriate in various situations, it was definitely not the best choice for mine.

Eventually, I realized that I would not be able to continuously deal with this situation in this manner. Therefore I implemented the idea to assign every person a job regarding cleaning up. I was surprised to find that the first time we tried the idea it only took about two hours to clean the whole property and today we can do it in almost under an hour.

This implementation associates with the problem solving strategy of conflict because I was able to gain commitment through a small compromise from my friends. This strategy was definitely the most appropriate for this situation because it saved me countless arduous hours of cleaning. I also realized that avoiding conflict is not always the best tactic for situations, being that this doesn’t allow the expression of opinions from both parties within the predicament.

word count: 361