maggie's blog

It is commonly acknowledged that providing a good customer service can help company gain more customers and thus having more profit. While approaches like providing more training to employees are usually adopted, many business ignore the importance to improve the organizational culture as a whole.  For example, Uber, a company used to be one the most promising businesses, now faces huge problems because of its bad organizational culture. Therefore, to be a successful business, having a good organizational culture is necessary.

One example offered in class is Zappos, a company that has a fantastic organizational culture. In Zappos, employees can enjoy all kinds of benefits such as getting free food all the time and customizing their working desks. In this way, people working in Zappos may regard the company as a family, thus having higher efficiency and giving better customer servicess, which is a win-win business for both employees and the company itself. From psychological perspective, employees are motivated to work harder in Zappos because they have more “perceived control” over what they are doing. Perceived control is defined as one’s beliefs in how much one can influence the environment by his own actions. When employees have more perceived control, they have more motivations to work harder because they know what they do matters.

Another company that has an amazing organizational culture is Haidilao, a hotpot company in China. In China there is probably more than thousands of hot pot companies, but Haidilao always gets top sales because of its insurmountable customer services. For example, Haidilao offers free salon services, online computer games, drinks and snakes as compensations for customers waiting in line. Moreover, Haidilao also adopts e-commerce platform, which means people can order hotpot online, and when they finish eating, they can call Haidilao to finish the cleaning. Therefore, even though the taste of hot pot is essentially the same with every company, people choose Haidilao over other hot pots because of its comfortable and considerate customer service.  The most surprising one is that in Haidilao, all the waiters will serve customers with big smiles, which make every customer feel like they are eating at home.  The reason why employees working in Haidilao are so enthusiastic about their jobs is because of the welfare mechanism offered by the company: employees are offered with free dorm, medical insurance, promotion based on customers’ feedback. Even though it is surprising that a company can be such a huge success only by providing the best customer service in one industry, this example does show the benefits brought by an amazing organizational culture.

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Nowadays automation is omnipresent: self-service kiosks in McDonald, self-scanners at Shoppers, self-service check-in kiosks in the airport. While we are getting used to these new changes and praising for the convenience they bring, automation also influences our life more profoundly in another aspect, and it is not welcomed.

According to CBC news, Walmart recently introduces self-scanners to 20 stores in B.C. and Fedex is going to close all retail stores in Canada. These news haves sparked discussions about whether robots will completely replace human labor in the future, which causes a huge unemployment.

From my perspective, I think it is inevitable that in the future some jobs will be replaced by robots, but some jobs will also be created because of automation. Using SWOT analysis, the strength of human labor is that human beings have social intelligence and creativity, which are irreplaceable and extremely important when doing business. For example, social intelligence can be applied to providing better customer services and creativity is essential when companies want to innovate. Moreover, in the short-term human costs relatively less since companies have to spend money on robots’ hardware and software. Therefore, opportunity generated by the strength of human labor will be a higher demand for high-skilled workers since companies need human resources for the overall management, marketing and innovation. However, the weakness of human labor is obviously its lower working efficiency when compared to robots since robots are programmed to do the job and therefore they have unlimited “patience”. In this way the threat generated by this will probably be less low-skilled workers needed. The analysis from McKinsey Global Institute implies the similar trend: automation mainly replaces low-skilled workers while some jobs that require high intelligence cannot be largely replaced.

Judging from the SWOT analysis above, personally I think the automation may not have a huge impact on the overall number of the job position required by companies, instead, it is highly likely to widen the income gap. Just as what is analyzed above, in the future companies will compete for high-skilled workers while low-skilled workers may lose their jobs because of automation. Since low-skilled workers are normally not well-educated because of their poor financial conditions, they will be even poorer when their jobs are replaced by robots. While some experts suggest introducing a universal base wage for every worker, I don’t think this method will help reduce the income gap since high-skilled workers can still be rewarded with bonus or other benefits. From my point of view, I think in order to reduce the income gap, government should focus primarily on giving everyone an equal opportunity to receive education, which in turn will help poor people be more competitive.

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Recently, Apple released its new products: iPhone 8 and iPhone X, which, as always, caught huge public attention. While iPhone 8 is slightly refined compared to iPhone 7, iPhone X revolutionizes the whole industry by using face ID to unlock the phone. As an android user who just switched to iPhone, I begin to wonder why people continue to buy new iPhone even if it updates really quickly.

First and foremost, Apple gains the largest market share by getting and maintaining its leading position in the industry. A decade ago, different from Blackberry and Motorola, Steve Jobs abandoned the physical keyboard and introduced the multi-touch interface that let the iPhone smoothly pinch-to-zoom. Innovation and successful marketing strategies enable Apple to always be the first in customers’ mind, which is of great importance. According to AI Ries and Jack Trout, the top three brands in a product category occupy market in a ratio of 4:2:1. Just as people normally only remember the name of champions, customers tend to have a deeper impression on the brand that takes the first place.

Also, Apple delivers its value proposition consistently through all products. The most vital value proposition Apple supports is simplicity. From the product design to the ads, Apple emphasizes the beauty of simplicity. And removing home button on iPhone X shows Apple’s aspiration on simplicity as well. Moreover, instead of aiming at targeting as many as customers possible, Apple makes the product for people who value function and quality over prices.  As we all know, Apple charges premium prices (an iPhone can be twice or thrice more expensive than the flagship Android smartphones of other manufacturers) to show that their products have higher qualities. This pricing strategy gives people a sense of superiority, and nowadays some people may even regard buying new iPhone as a proof of attaining higher social standing.

There are some criticisms regarding the marketing strategy of Apple. According to William, a classmate of mine in Commerce 101, he criticized Apple for being unethical in his blog ” Business Ethics” because Apple updates its product too frequently. However, from my point of view, I think updating products is inevitable for all kinds of brand in the mobile device industry since the technology is developing at an astounding rate, and whoever gets left behind will fail. Moreover, contrary to what William said, I think Apple does better on product sustainability than other phones do. For example, a friend of mine is still using iPhone 6 now with a few dysfunctions occurred in his phone. Moreover, ios 11, the latest version, can still be used on iPhone 5s. Therefore, the longevity of iPhone is actually longer than that of most android phones.

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Recently, a credit monitoring company, Equifax, is hacked. It is reported that this data breach has affected 143 million U.S. consumers and 100000 Canadians. While this may be one of the biggest data breaches happened these years, the accident could have been prevented beforehand. According to Bloomberg report, this was the second time the company had been hacked this year. Despite knowing that it has security loopholes, Equifax failed to fix them. The senior executives are now facing charges from The Justice Development for selling off shares before disclosing the breach, and Equifax as whole is being investigated by the federal court.

Though companies have the moral obligation to protect their consumers’ information, they tend to invest money in other profit-generating programs rather than in cyber security. First of all, maintaining cyber security requires manpower and more advanced technology, which increases the total costs for the company while providing little profits. Moreover, the costs generated by improving cyber security are higher than the loss companies may face when they are breached. According to an analysis by Benjamin Dean, a fellow at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, the actual loss caused by information breach amounted to less than 1% of Sony’s annual revenues. Although the data is shocking, it is reasonable since companies can easily get away with their responsibilities when their information is breached.

A blog written by Brenda R. Sharton and David S. Kantrowitz raised questions about why it is so difficult for customers to sue the companies when private information is leaked out. The first reason they gave is that it is hard to prove the company is directly accountable for the breaches. And another one is that plaintiffs are facing a hard time when trying to prove their life has been severely affected by the breach. Because of these two factors, most companies can easily get away with their responsibilities. Therefore, since the costs generated by information breaches are so little for companies, even though customers’ privacy is severely damaged by hackers, the breaches keep happening, with an increasing frequency and a larger extent.

While governments now are investing more money to improve the online security, they don’t really see any progress. From my perspective, I think government should force companies to take on their responsibilities, instead of wasting money. In this way, when companies find that they may lose too much when they ignore the importance of information security, they’d start to pay attention to prevent breaches from happening.

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Nowadays issues regarding whether businesses have social responsibility are hotly discussed. An article written by Milton Friedman claimed that the sole purpose of businesses is to maximize their profits. First, he argued that business is not a moral agent to assume responsibilities. Also, emphasizing too much on social responsibility makes a company be more centrally controlled which ultimately leads to less profits.

 

However, business ethics, including social responsibilities, are beneficial for the development of companies. To begin with, when people are discussing businesses’ behaviors, they are studying the decisions made by the employers in companies. Since employers are moral agents and they need to behave ethically under the social contract, it is reasonable to say that businesses or members in the companies have to take on their social responsibilities. Apart from that, contrary to what Friedman said in his article that earning profits is in conflicts with behaving ethically, companies in fact can raise their reputation by assuming some social responsibilities, a way that could increase profits.

 

Responsible stakeholders now are paying more and more attention to the reputation of the firms they choose to buy product from, or to cooperate with. For example, according to a survey done by Elizabeth H. Creyer, consumers are more willing to pay higher prices when corporate behaves ethically and they punish the unethical act by buying products at lower prices. Same logic applies to the cooperation between companies, which means that an ethical company can get more reliable partners.

Nike, the famous shoe brand, used to be criticized for sweatshops. Though having workers work under relatively bad working conditions is not against the law, Nike still chose to establish an apartment to elevate working conditions to restore the companies’ image. After Nike did that, protests aimed at sweatshops gradually disappeared and sales even jumped higher since the company was acting ethically. Therefore, it is proved that business ethics are positively linked to companies’ brand, an element plays an important role in helping companies earning profits.

 

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