Claire Chen mentions about her motivation of doing schoolwork in her blog “are you a procrastinator?”. I am going to talk about my motivation in team work and individual assignment.

Let’s first talk about what motivates me working hard in a team. First the relationship between members is really important to me, which influence my performance in a team. I want to contrast the two groups that I have been worked with in the past.  The experience of working with the first group was a nightmare. Group members always late for meetings, even after everyone were there nobody willing to start the conversation. We just sat there and killed time with phones. For the first several times, I came to group meeting with the individual works that they assigned to me in last meeting, and realized that there was no one else got their jobs done.  After this kind of situation happened for several times, I started being just like my team mates, and did not feel guilty for my behavior at all.  Conversely, after I was teamed up with several diligent, creative, and high-efficient students, I felt the pressure came from my teammates.  I started to take as much as works as I can, arrive at our meeting, place earlier, and participate in every discussion. I even feel guilty and stressed out for not making equal amount of contribution as my teammates. To sum up, my teammates’ performance is my best motivation of being hard working.

I am a 100% procrastinator, so I usually work extra harder before the due date and test. So the limited time and grades are my best motivation for studying harder.

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Transactional leadership is a good alternate for Michael. Transactional leadership advocates the leader to  guide or motivate their followers in the direction establishing goals by clarifying role and task requirements. when the Corleone family comes with a detailed, long-term plan, they are much more powerful. In the movie, After Vito got shot, the Corleone brothers and their employees made a very detailed revenge plan, the plan was carried out by Michael successfully.

In addition, for fighting against on other NY mafia families, the Corleones need Michael a thoughtful, dispassionate leader rather than only being fearless. Furthermore, Michael, the new godfather should prepare for challenges and pressures comes from his subordinates. Those challenges, so-called, Individual resistance in OB term.(p.496) People with self-interest are usually the type of people who worry that they will lose something of value after they working for a Michael.  Some subordinates may refuse to follow Michael’s leadership before they don’t really know well about Michael. Michael could also encounter some employees who have very different assessments with him, or born with a low tolerance for change. We suggest Michael to collaborate with Tom. For instance, Tom has been worked with Vito for decades, he knows better about the employees than Michael does. Besides, some employees who have followed Vito for a long time may encounter the problem of fitting Michael’s management model, and Tom may help those employees get through those maladjustments.

Word Count: 238

Undoubtedly, Vito Corleone is a successful leader who governs one of the most powerful mafia families in NYC for several decades, besides Vito exerts a high level of power of his employees. However, Michael should still be aware of the problems that hide behind Vito’s success.

When Vito was still in power, he adopted both of the autocratic and Laissez-faire style of leadership. However, both of the two leaderships did not work well on Vito’s business management. The autocratic leadership was defined as “people within the team are given few opportunities for making suggestions”. (Amulai,2017) Vito might listen to Tom’s advice, but at most of the time he made order by himself. In the movie, Vito turned down Tom’s advice of joining the drug trading business, his rejection caused further conflicts and bloodshed with other mafia families. The French phrase “Laissez-Faire” describes a leader who leaves his or her colleague to get on their work. (Amulai) Vito Corleone was capable of generating good ideas, however he was also a reckless decider. Vito never made sophisticated plan and evaluated the feasibility of his ideas before taking action.  Moreover, Vito ignored the importance of unifying his employees’ behaviors.  Vito put too much trust into his employees, and endowed them the authority of getting things done by using their own way. Leaving too much freedom for his subordinates cause some employees’ betrayals and low executive capacity on tasks. Apart from the points that we mentioned above, the Laissez Faire leadership only apply to teams in which the individuals are very experienced and skilled self-starters. Since, most of Vito’s employees failed the premise, leaving too much authority and space for those men was a huge mistake.

For an organization’s long term developing, leaders have to take responsibility for developing future leaders through mentoring relationships. The mentor role includes coaching, counseling, and help protégés develop skills. (p.395)As a leader, Vito failed to be a good mentor. Vito realized there were some problems went on his employees and children, but he chose to tolerate those mistakes rather than correct them.His indulged his oldest son, Sonny in being a reckless and irritable decision-maker, which indirectly leaded to Sonny’s tragedy.

Believe or not, the group projects have already been an irreplaceable part of our school life since highschool. We have participated into numerous group discussions and encountered different group members. I have probably forgotten most of the project themes, but still can recall some of the best memories with my group members.

The best group experience so far was happened one year ago when I was still in my high school, I was randomly chose to be group four others and made a movie trailers. The reason that I describe it as the best group experience so far was due to several reasons

1. No Role Conflict issue and role ambiguity (Ob pg.210)

Five of us all have different skills, we were all assigned to work on our strengths. We were not experiences any disagreement during the stage of assigning individual works. All of us were clear about our own works throughout the whole project.

2. Strong Conformity (212)

First, strong conformity was reflected in punctuality. None of us would be late for the meeting more than ten minutes, even though some of the meetings were set on weekend nights.  Second, a strong conformity group requires all of the members to complete their individual works on time, and polished those works together.

3. Climate of Trust (212)

A group project cannot be done by one person, usually a perfect project compiles all of members’ ideas and wisdom. Thus it’s important to leave enough space and trust for others doing their own individual works. Sharing feedbacks is a great way of impelling the project, but you have to avoid with imposing your own ideas on others.

4. Specific Goals (228)

Unlike the individual assignment, the group project requires each member to make agreements with achieving specific goals. Setting goals not only clarify the potential issues, but also holding each other together and unit everyone’s thoughts. Before starting the assignment, we decided to hit A for this big assignment, it was great to see five of us were on the same boat.

5. Communication

Successful group projects are marked by a range of different communication behaviors. First, for showing your respect, always hearing and make sense of what your colleagues are saying, the nonverbal languages like sharing eye contacts with each other or nodding your head when you agree with something. Second, always respond to others people before simply pushing your agenda regardless of what anyone says. Third, one thing that I loved my group was we asked people who haven’t spoken what they thought about this issues before moved on to the next page, thus nobody feel left behind in this group. Last but not the least, it’s inevitable having disagreements and conflicts, the strategies that we used was finding middle ground satisfies everyone.

It’s a huge bless when you and your team members are get along with each other, but this luck doesn’t happen on you everytime. Next time, when problems appear, try to apply those OB knowledges on it.

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Today, there are more companies getting realize the fact that firms’ profit can be directly affected by employees’ job satisfaction. Usually those companies with low job satisfaction Have to face the problem like high job turnover rate, low productivity, and wasting resources. For creating better workplaces for employees, companies have to better understand their employee’s value in their job. Basically, the companies have to investigate what do their employees actually want and what do they really care about.

By reading the several surveys conducted by different institution at different time, I conclude the most 10 recurring factors correlates to employees’ job satisfaction, and re-ranked the order based on my own thoughts.

1. Job Security
2. Good relationship with supervisors and colleagues
3. Attractive fixed salary
4. Interesting job content
5. Job stress
6. Appreciation for your work
7. Good work- life balance
8. Company’s financial stability
9. Company values
10. Learning and career development

It’s beneficial for firms to make their employees to feel secured and stable about their own jobs. To better understand this, we can contrast the performance between those part-time workers with formal staffs. Usually, the part-time workers are dealing with the most basic works of the firms, thus they can be easily taken place by any others. Without any job security, the part-time workers only focus on getting their job done in the given period. However, those established workers with stable working pattern are more likely to keep improving themselves in order to get promoted in the company.

Only when employees are sharing a strong bond with each other, they are more likely to corporate well and increasing the company’s productivity.

The reason that we work 24 hours and seven is because we need the money to keep our lives going. The amount of salaries that we get paid directly affect our lives quality. Thus, salary has been one of the most important factors that employees take accounts when they are considering about accepting a new job. The high turnover rate harms firms’ long-term growth.

Employees are much motivated and passionate when they are working on interesting job contents. Like the old saying “Money cannot buy anything”, rather than only offering high salaries to keep those Significant employees, it’s better for companies to catch those employees ‘real appetites.

Workers fail to manage their emotion under the high job stress. As long as negative emotion exists, workers fail of achieving high efficiency, or the situation can be even worse than our expectation.

Word Counted: 419

Citation:

Morgan, Jacob. “The Top 10 Factors For On-The-Job Employee Happiness.” Forbes. Forbes Magazine, 23 Jan. 2015. Web. 06 Feb. 2017. <http://www.forbes.com/sites/jacobmorgan/2014/12/15/the-top-10-factors-for-on-the-job-employee-happiness/#641b873944fe>.http:/http://digitalimperia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Job-Satisfaction.jpg

Put Japan into the 6 value dimensions of national culture, it’s interesting to see that Japan gets extreme high score on masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long term orientation among the world. However, compare to other Asian countries, they get relatively low scores on power distance, individualism, and indulgence. I am going to talk about my point of views on power distance, individual vs collectivism, and masculinity.

Power Distance:

“Power distance describes the degree to which people in a country accept that power in institutions and organizations is distributed unequally” (OB paged,81). Unlike other hierarchical Asian countries (Thailand got 64 on power distance), Japan gets the intermediate score on power distance. However, Japan has a well-known hierarchical business circle. Japanese firms usually consist of clear hierarchical layers and managements.

Individualism or collectivism?

Japanese society shows many of characteristics of a collective society. One of my friends (she used to live in Japan for 10 years long) told me Japan was a very collective nation. Japanese are pretty group-minded and care enormously about others’ thoughts toward them, they make their decisions based others’ advisor. However, the studies conduct on Japanese living habits and their family relationship tell the individualism side of Japan. First, most of Japanese prefer to live by themselves rather than sharing apartments with family members or friends. Second, Japanese don’t have a strong connection with their extended family, indeed they prefer to take care and live by themselves. In western standard, Japan is more likely to in the collectivism sides. Japan shows it individualist characteristics by approaching Asian standards.

Masculinity:

Japan gets 95 on masculinity, and it’s one of the most masculine society in the world. In Japanese traditional culture, women are in charge of taking care the whole family, and it’s inappropriate for them to pursue their own careers. In today’s Japan, those doctrines and gender stereotyping are left behind by those new Japanese generations. It’s getting more common to spot women dressed up in professional outfits on stress and public transportations. Today’s Japanese society is getting more tolerated for women pursuing their own careers, but still hard for women to climb up the corporate ladders with their masculine norm of hard working.

Word Counted: 372

Citations:

“Geert Hofstede.” Japan – Geert Hofstede. Itim International, 5 Jan. 2017. Web. 06 Feb. 2017. <https://geert-hofstede.com/japan.html>.

Those days, Sephora has promoted the annually 20 percent off sales for customers who own their VIB membership. Almost my every female friend has participated into this sales, and made contribution to Sephora’s revenue. Shockingly, me and two other girls ordered nearly eight hundred dollars’ beauty products on Sephora website last week. I can’t stop thinking about the reasons behind Sephora’s success. I googled online, and found an article, called The Sephora effect: How the cosmetics retailer transformed the beauty industry, which provided some deep and valuable insights on Sephora’s sales model.

As the article mentioned, Sephora has clearly set their target customers and gotten well-know of their shopping preference. Today, girls like my age have different habits of buying cosmetics than our mother did. Unlike our mothers, we are not particularly loyal to any single brand, instead we approach buying beauty products as more of a treasure hunt. For us, the experiences of shopping at Sephora are always much joyful and relaxed than shopping in any other cosmetic stores. Before the rise of Sephora, consumers mostly shopped at no-frills drugstores, (such as Shoppers and London Drugs, or go to department store counters (like Nordstrom and Hudson Bay) and taking lessons about those products from some so-called specialists. However, Sephora adopts the sales models that research shows this generation of shoppers prefers—sense of individuality. Consumers can test out any products by themselves at store, the beauty consultants will only be there when you need.

Besides, Sephora’s marketing strategies are pretty unique but effective as well. Sephora sending the sales email for their registered customers at least twice a week, and holding the big sale once or twice a year for their VIB consumers. Being Sephora VIB require to purchase at least $350 items annually. Those coupons and promotion sales encourage consumers to stick with Sephora. Moreover, Sephora encourages consumers to shop online by giving away the free samples and offering small discount. As long as the consumers purchased the certain amount of dollars, you will receive twice amount of free samples than you will receive in stores.

Sephora’s success demonstrates that there’s nothing important for a retail company to adopt the sale model and marketing strategies base on their target customers’ preference. Apart from the traits that listed above, Sephora also well-known of their stores’ modern designing the variety of extraordinary beauty services that they provide for female. Sometimes, winning the game from other competitors, requires the courage of breaking traditions.

word count: 411

Resources:

Halzack, Sarah. “The Sephora Effect: How the Cosmetics Retailer Transformed the Beauty Industry.” Washington Post. The Washington Post, 9 Mar. 2015. Web. 13 Nov. 2016. <https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2015/03/09/the-sephora-effect-how-the-cosmetics-retailer-transformed-the-beauty-industry/>.

One of the questions that I get asked about as a business school student is why the iphone always win? In today’s oversaturated smartphone marketplace, iphone has maintained its ionic and dominate statues since 2007, the iphone 1^st has released. I think the value proposition of Apple company effectively sets its product apart from numerous of other competing smartphone brand. In other words, the iPhone designers have acquainted with consumers’ desire from smartphones.  The value proposition plays a significant role in a company’s sales, because they convince the prospects why they should buy your products rather than your competitors.

The value proposition of iphone designing is simple but effective. I concluded it into two points based on my point of view.

1. iPhone has appealing, innovative external design

For any product that Apple creates, they all have a simple but high-tech iconic look, iphone adopts this visualization on their following NEW products as well. When iphone was announced to the market for the first time in 2007, Consumers were amazed by its angular and metallic look. The large and sleek touch screens favored people from all ages. The high-praised, innovative look of iphone 1^st successfully draws prospects’ attention and curiosity to the look of NEW iphones. Apple never disappoint consumers, they keep changing the new products’ look in order to prevent consumers’ aesthetic fatigue. New iphones reduce the thickness of the products, enlarge the size of touch screen, and provide more choice for the phones’ sizes. Besides, designers always adding fresh, visual elements for example the feminine color rose pink to attract female customers.

2. Convenience & Simplicity

IPHONE believes a phone “should be more than a collection of features.” In other words, the features of smartphone should bring exact values to users.  The designing of ios system fulfills customers’ demand. One of the features, TOUCH ID wipes out users’ concern about their security concern of their phones. Customers adores the idea, because taping the fingerprint on the home button is  so much easier than inputting a series of numbers(letters) for every time you unlock the screen. Morover, iphone runs in a relatively stable and confidential ios system than the Android phones. Thus iphone users are having less possibilities that their information is hacked. Apart from the security features, the imessage, icloud, and airdrop functions make us stick to the apple product.  Imessage supports the voice message and picture/video sending. Indeed, this function works for users who have limited amount of text messages sending. Airdrop, and icloud also do a great job for apple users to transfer their files between serval devices.

As my classmates, Claire Lee mentioned in her blog A Goodbye To A Legend, the failure of blackberry was due to the brand’s unsuitable value proposition. Compare to iphone, black berry lack of innovation on their external designs, thereby customers are easy to get sick and tired of their products look. Second, black berry has smaller customer base than iphone. The Blackberry products are mainly design for businessman, and the company insisting on improving their products’ security and quality rather than developing more practical, new features on their new products , thus blackberry lost their old customers fastly. Third, Blackberry does not pay attention on the convenience of their products. Contrast to the blackberry’s little keyboard, customers usually prefer to type/ handwrite in a larger touch screen. Balckberry’s fall and Iphone’s rise demonstrates the significance of adopting the suitable value proposition for the company.

Words Count: 446

Resources:

Shewan, Dan. “WordStream.” 7 of the Best Value Proposition Examples We’ve Ever Seen. Http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/04/27/value-proposition-examples, 14 Oct. 2016. Web. 31 Oct. 2016. <http://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/04/27/value-proposition-examples>.

Bajarin, Tim. “6 Reasons Why Apple Is Successful.” Time. Time, 30 Nov. 2016. Web. 31 Oct. 2016. <http://techland.time.com/2012/05/07/six-reasons-why-apple-is-successful/>.

Villapaz, Luke. “Apple IPhone: Six Years Of A Stunningly Successful Advertising Campaign [VIDEO].” International Business Times. N.p., 05 Dec. 2015. Web. 31 Oct. 2016. <http://www.ibtimes.com/apple-iphone-six-years-stunningly-successful-advertising-campaign-video-1414562>.

Is Advertising Good Or Bad?

We see numerous advertisements everyday. The main reason that companies spend time and money on advertising is to attract customers’ attention on their new products. However, there’s a diversity of opinions when it comes to influences advertisement has on the society.  I think whether an advertisement is good or bad depends on its’ content.

Advertising has a positive role to play in the society when it provides the information that is useful. First, With the information that advertisements provided, consumers are easier to seek the products that meet their requirements from the advertisements. Second, advertisements sometimes offer useful life tips for consumers. For example, the advertisements of clothing brands show you some awesome and trendy styles you may like. Third, some great advertisements contain not only information about their products but beyond it. For example, The Pantene advertisements from Thailand is a 4-miutes-long story which depicts a girl’s story. For consumers, watching the commercials like these are quite entertaining.

Advertising is bad when it coveys misleading information to customers. For example, the advertisement of Dolce&Gabanna involves with the issue of gender discrimination and sexual violence. In the picture, the woman lays down on the ground by a man above her, while others are watching indifferently. This advertisement could covey a misleading idea that “women are dominated by man” to the society. Besides, both me and my classmates Jina mention about the issue that the advertisement can distort people’s value proposition. For example, the Dove advertisement that we watched at class makes consumers feel inferior without wearing makeup and using photoshop. Those beauty advertisements promote the entirely opposite idea of “keeping your natural beauty.” Moreover, the fashion advertisements can cause consumers to have low-esteem on their body shape, and leads them to have unhealthy diet.

Dolce&Gabana 2013

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https://blogs.ubc.ca/jinachoi/

http://www.debate.org/opinions/is-advertising-harmful-to-us

https://www.quora.com/Is-advertising-a-good-thing-for-society

CVS Removed Tabaco

In 2014, US drugstore brand CVS announced to stop selling any cigarettes and tobacco related products in stores. CVS became the first major pharmacy that promoted the quit-smoking program.

My Initial Three Thoughts:

—– What caused CVS make this decision, and why?

It is impossible for CVS unnoticing the fact that the action of stopping selling Tabaco hurts the sales of the company. CVS definitely cares about their company’s revenue and their predominate position of the US pharmacy industry. Thus I think the idea of stopping selling Tabaco is part of the CVS marketing plan. CVS wanted to create a huge sensation by announcing their decision, and draw the global attention to CVS.

—– Is this a wise decision?

As a result of this risky behavior, the sales and the amount of attentions may significantly increase over a short period. However, from the long-term aspect, I think this is an unwise decision.

—– Did CVS really care about customers’ healthiness?

My answer is probably NO. I believe large corporate firms like CVS will always place their revenue and reputation in the first place. Stop selling tobacco did help it to create a better image and win supports from those who don’t smoke, and conductively for CVS claim to be a health-care company.

One Year Later…

One year ago, CVS claim to stop selling tobacco is a right decision. Nevertheless, one year later, CVS was detailing the impact of alcohol prohibition. While the prescription sales continue to rise, general merchandizes sales tumbled nearly 8% on a same store basis. CVS blamed their selling slump on banning tobacco.

Interesting Facts:

1.CVS changes its name from CVS Caremark to CVS Health with the prohibition of Tabaco.

2.Although smoking is not cool, but fact proves that cigarettes are hot for CVS’s stock dropped 3% after announcing the decision.

http://www.cvshealth.com/thought-leadership/message-from-larry-merlo-president-and-ceo

http://money.cnn.com/2015/08/04/investing/cvs-earnings-cigarettes/