Recently, a controversal news has attracted public’s attention. Samsung had just released its new product, Note 8. This is the first product of its series that has been released since the extreme battery defects of its previous generation the Note 7. It is not surprising that a there is a lot of debate on this new product. Consumers are re-evaluating whether Samsung’s brand name is still trustworthy after last year’s explosion cases. In September 2016, Brain Green, a customer who had just purchased the Note 7,  found his phone starting to overheat in his pocket. His first reaction was toss the phone onto the ground. Within the next few moments, the phone caught on fire. Samsung took immediate action to replaced the products; however, the replacements experienced the same problem. As more and more phones began to see over-heating problems, Samsung decided to recall all Note 7 phones. They also make a public announcement for their mistakes and the solution to errors.

Unfortunately, even a company like Samsung, who has a strong competitive advantage, had to suffer high consequences. Their share price dropped a dramatic 7% with additionalUS$14billion loss in their market value. Additionally, Samsung’s reputation and brand image suffered with this issue. It was a difficult challenge for Samsung to regain a trustworthy and loyal relationship with consumers. With all the negative news, a lot of people who are now considering Samsung’s newest product, Samsung Galaxy Note 8, are rethinking their choice.  As other brands were able to build their own reputation during the incident. This includes products like the Google Pixel XL, Apple iPhones, and newer competitors such as HuaWei P10. Undeniably, the public does not want to take the risk of caught fires on the electric devices again.

In contrast, a large part of public believe that the Note 8 will be a promising product as it presents a package of industry leading features, including the bezel-less display and upgraded stylus. Samsung also displayed corporate social responsibility by not denying their mistakes and taking action to recall the defected products. Even with significant problems on a previous product, Samsung did not hesitate to become more innovative to not only fix that problem, but create, once again, an industry leading flagship device.

Reference

• Hollister, S. (2016, October 10). Here’s why Samsung Note 7 phones are catching fire. Retrieved September 27, 2017, from https://www.cnet.com/news/why-is-samsung-galaxy-note-7-exploding-overheating/
• Farrell, S. (2016, September 12). Samsung share price dives after Galaxy Note 7 phone recall. Retrieved September 27, 2017, from https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/sep/12/samsung-galaxy-note-7-share-prices-dives-phone-recall
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Last years, the CNN news has reported an unbelievable news which has caught everyone’s attention. The well-known bank Wells Fargo was being ranked on the top pages of every search engine when the news came out.There are approximately two million illegitimate bank and credit card accounts are established secretly without acknowledging their customers. Obviously, the purpose of the Well Fargo’s employees is using this method to boost their sales in the quickest way and reach the sales targets in order to receive the bonus. In addition, after this “secret” is being exposed to the public, the company has fired 5300 employees who were involved in this scandal. This news makes public start concerning about the business ethic in nowadays. This also relates to a controversial topic, what level of corporate social responsibility should organizations reached towards the community and what exactly is business ethics.

In general, the business ethic is defined as what is right or wrong in the business scenario and people has chosen to do something right. However, it also depends on people’s background, position and values. In addition, the business ethic is related to the level of corporate social responsibilities that an organization is holding towards the stakeholder, instead of just focusing on shareholders. However, this leads to a question that has no absolute answer, what level of corporate social responsibility should organizations holding?. From an organization perspective, there are both advantage and disadvantage about corporate social responsibility. On one side, high corporate social responsibility could improve company’s image and reputation in the public, and also gain more royalty and trust from their employees and customers, but on the opposite side, it would waste time and money on the things that do not make profit as the main purpose of business and companies is making profit. Moreover, business is supposed to produce better service and goods to the public instead of caring about the community.

In addition, for the Well Fargo’s case, it definitely shows the example of an organization with poor business ethic. The action that they were done is illegal and unethical. They do not care about their customers, they just focus on their own profit and how to maximize their own personal gaining. The issue of having responsibility is the basic understanding of the ethics in an organization. Ironically, it seems almost too fundamental to mentioned; however, those kinds of unethical behaviors very common in the society. The poor social corporate responsibilities which mean unethical business behavior is often starting by over greed and the addiction from making the profit, it also became an alert to the public to start thinking about their moral value and business ethics in nowadays.

Reference:

-16. 1990: Wells Fargo. (2016). Inside the Investments of Warren Buffett. doi:10.7312/lu–16462-018
-Top Business Ethics Cases of 2016. (n.d.). Retrieved September 12, 2017, from https://www.casestudywriting.com/top-business-ethics-cases-of-2016/