Although bribes and corruption is a kind of universal circle of life: ‘powerful politicians bully businessman and wealthy businessmen in turn bribe and influence politicians’, Samsung’s corruption scandal in 2007 still stunned South Koreans.

The three major allegations of criminal behavior of Samsung are ‘the creation of a slush fund; bribing prosecutors and government officials; and an effort by the chairman, Lee Kun Hee, to illegally help his son take over control of Samsung.’ From 1997 to 2004, Samsung bribed scores of senior politicians, journalists and court officials to win the deal for the business. According to a former lawyer of Samsung, the cash bribes were handed over in packages, like CDs or monthly magazines, or in suitcases. Samsung gave each of senior prosecutors between 5 million and 20 million three times a year. Also, Lee and his aides had raised huge sums of secret funds, using bank accounts illegally opened under the names of more than 1,000 Samsung executives.

The scandal reflects a lack of business ethics in the country’s largest cooperation, since conducting business in accordance with the applicable laws of the country is the minimal of business ethics.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/06/business/worldbusiness/06iht-samsung.1.8210181.html

High unemployment rate, strong Canadian dollars, weak global demand for Canadian products as well as fading government stimulus spending are several key challenges faced by Canada now. Among all the problems, joblessness is most largely concerned by the public. Job growth in Canada as a whole remains weak. While ‘the jobless rate dropped to 7.6 per cent from 7.9 per cent in November’, it is resulted more from fewer young people looking for work than from increasing jobs in the labour market. However, the good news for western people is that jobless rates are much lower (below the national average) in resource-rich West, compared to that in manufacturing-based East. The total amount of employments generated in manufacturing sectors declined to the lowest point. On the other hand, natural resources now are the fastest-growing source of employment. Statistics showed that ‘Ontario and Quebec have together lost more than 75,000 factory positions in the past year’. Moreover, the job creation in East is largely dependent on part time works. ‘Part-time work has grown 4 per cent from last year’. And ‘nearly 40 per cent of job growth since last November has been in part-time positions’, according to the Conference Board of Canada. From my analysis, the high unemployment rate in Canada is mainly lead by its high exchange rate. Exporting companies receive fewer revenues when their products are more expensive than the outputs of foreigners. To maintain the companies’ high profit, they will keep the labour cost low by hiring fewer workers. Thus, it explains why job creation is disappearing in the whole country, especially in the manufacturing sectors.

Link: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/jobless-figures-underline-east-west-divide/article1823392/comments/

“They don’t even want to leave the house, how do you expect them to be solar engineers?” That’s the question that most people will ask when they first hear the phrase “solar-engineering grandmothers”. Bunker Roy proved us that it is possible.

He established the Barefoot College in 1972. The Barefoot College is the only college in India for the poor: built by the poor and only for the poor. It provides basic services and solutions to problems in rural communities, like female education, health and sanitation, rural unemployment, income generation, as well as electricity and power. Starting from 1990, Barefoot College has trained thousands of semi-literate and illiterate rural women – many of them grandmothers – to become professionals in solar engineering. When they go back home, these women are able to install, maintain and repair solar panels and batteries, and change life in their remote villages forever. Bunker Roy found that illiterate grandmothers are the best investments for eduacating solar engineers, as they are committed to their village, enthusiastic to learn, and have no desire tp leave their village. As a social entrepreneur, Bunker Roy successfully innovates a solution: training grandmothers in remote villages as solar enginners, to effectivly solve some basic social problems ( such as gender inequality, shortage of electricity) in many poor countries.  The success stories of India’s Barefoot Colleg has shown us that social entreprenuership is able to make a difference for many.

For more information, please go to http://www.wipo.int/wipo_magazine/en/2009/03/article_0002.html, http://www.barefootcollege.org/

In my opinion, Trek 2000 International is a good example of entrepreneurial company due to a wide range of its innovation, and its founder, Henn Tan is one of the most successful entrepreneurs, who pioneer change. 

Trek 2000 International is a Singapore-based company that invented Thumb Drive, a USB (Universal Serial Bus) portable data storage device in year 2000. The company’s revolutionary innovation popularised the use of the USB flash drive which overtook the floppy disk as the most common portable data storage device for computers today.

The predecessor of Trek 2000 is a small family-owned electronic parts trading business. Tan bought the small company, restructured it and changed its business focus to providing technology-driven engineering solutions to businesses. On the way to success, Tan had to overcome many obstacles, which include securing financing from banks and the government, recruiting good staff, and convincing big companies to engage their services. With Trek’s substantial innovation beyond what a small business might exhibit, the world’s first “Thumb Drive” was produced. The plug-and-play memory drive required no cable or adapters, and could store more data than a floppy disk. It helps to create more conveniences for people in the 21^st century, as well as gives Trek the competitive advantage that results in wealth creation. Today, Trek 2000 has built up a portfolio of 161 patents, and has offices in the United States, Malaysia, Thailand, India, Hong Kong, Netherlands, China, Philippines, Vietnam and Japan. They were named as one of the “Best Small Companies in the World” by Forbes in 2000 and 2002.

For more information about the company and its chairman, please go to http://infopedia.nl.sg/articles/SIP_1071_2010-03-23.html