Month: April 2017

I went shopping at downtown during the reading break. To my surprise, Hollister in Vancouver has a totally different image than the ones in China. In China, the store is always crowded and it takes 1 hour or more on average to get into the fitting rooms. It’s always a hotspot for teenagers. But here in Vancouver, there’re not many customers even on weekends. As an employee in Hollister, this was quite a shock for me. Besides the fact that Chinese population is huge, I believe there’re other factors for such a difference.

 

The main idea is that the ethical dimension of culture (EWC) is different between two countries.   EWC is the shared concept of right and wrong behavior in the workplace that reflects the true values of the organization and shapes the ethical decision-making of its members. ₁

 

The EWC in China stores is relatively negative. Discrimination starts from hiring. In China, only teenagers who are tall and skinny will pass the interview. Managers select pretty and hot customers as potential staffs and give them casting cards. Even though people can still apply for the job, the probability of getting admitted is quite small. After employees start working, they’re forced to purchase and wear the new arrivals all the time. Employees are treated as marketing tools. On the other hand, based on my personal experience in the Vancouver store, the staffs there look fit and healthy, and they’re always smiley and willing to offer help. Clearly, working ability and personality matter more.

 

The difference in EWC brings Hollister profit, but only in short term. It attracts lots of customers who hope to get a casting card. One of my colleagues applied five times because she thought working here was an approval of her appearance. However, many choose to quit after one or two months because of compulsory purchase and indifferent employment relationship. They would start badmouthing about Hollister and the huge turnover rate is definitely a waste of resources as the training period is almost half as long as the working period. Moreover, since employees are mostly high school students with hardly any patience, the customer satisfaction decreases. Nevertheless, the discrimination greatly limits its target market to only young people.

 

The negative core values of Hollister’s EWC will eventually hurt its reputation and sales in China as they directly affect employees’ attitude while working. In order to improve the situation, Hollister should make the employment relationship better, implement human-based management(stop forcing staffs to buy clothes), change the discriminate value and reverse the current EMC.

 

Word Count: 425

1. A. Simha and J. B. Cullen, “Ethical Climates and Their Effects on Organizational Outcomes: Implications from the Past and Prophecies for the Future,” Academy of Management, November 2012, pp. 20–34.

2.“Gilly Hicks and Hollister Flagship Store Opening.” Getty Images. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 Apr. 2017

http://www.gettyimages.ca/event/gilly-hicks-and-hollister-flagship-store-opening-143901891?#hot-life-guards-pose-for-the-opening-of-the-gilly-hicks-and-hollister-picture-id143715355

League of Legends is a multiplayer online battle arena developed by Riot Games. It attracts millions of fans and players all over the world and creates its own e-sports culture. Faker, a Korean gamer who is famous for his extraordinary skills and performance during matches, is extremely talented and brings his LOL team SKT T1 to the top.

In Kevin Park’s blog post, he discussed the reasons of SKT T1 and Faker’s success as a composition of team work, hard-working spirit, extraordinary management and human resources, and a caring and intelligent coach. While I agree with Kevin’s analysis, I feel that the unique operating system within the team can be further digging into.

League of Legends is a 5 versus 5 game and it requires immediate decision making and group cooperation. Unlike teams from other countries who choose to hire international players with better skills and reputation, all members on SKT T1 are Korean. Despite the elimination of such language barrier, the excellent team work affects a lot. Countries like China offer super high salary to poach staff from SKT T1, especially towards Faker, but most of them choose to stay. These team members stay together, skip holiday, and practice day and night to hold the team together. As what Faker said to ESPN interview: “I think going abroad is a good experience, but personally, I want to stay in Korea and win the world championship again.”₁ They love their country and is honored to be a member of SKT T1. The honor of winning the championship is more like an intrinsic motivation as they value glory more than bonus.

The coach kkOma and the management crews are also an important factor on SKT K1’s road to success. There’re specialties who go to every LOL games, search for potential outstanding player and invite them to join the team. They keep inject new ideas and new styles into the team and reinforce it. The coach, as a manager at the workplace, plays a great role on team building. I used to feel that it’s hard to keep SKT K1 united as Faker is far more famous and outstanding than the others. But the coach said that: “It’s a team game. When the team doesn’t do well, Faker doesn’t do well.”₂ There’s no bias or hierarchy within the team. Thanks to the structure of the game, each member plays a unique role; there’s no role conflict and the climate of trust is intense.

SKT T1 demonstrates clear purpose, participation, consensus decisions, style diversity and other characteristics of being an effective team₃. Together with each member’s great ability of gaming, I believe SKT T1 is going to stay gold and reach the top again.

Word Count: 454

1.& 2.

From The Mag: The Unkillable Demon King. (n.d.). Retrieved March 05, 2017, from

http://www.espn.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/13035450/league-legends-prodigy-faker- carries-country-shoulders

3.

M. Parker, Team Players and Teamwork: The New Competitive Business Strategy (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1990), Table 2, p. 33. Copyright 1990 by Jossey-Bass Inc., Publishers. ISBN: 978-1555422578

 

It’s hard to reach 100% equal or fair, especially when individual interpretation is involved. Claire Zillman expressed her opinion by stating that “Assigning blame too quickly for failures at work can backfire – big time.”₁, and I’m on her side.

In this news clip, Claire found that leaders tend to fix the failures by simply firing individuals or specific groups when they’re involved in failures over and over instead of digging into the failures and see what’s behind the surface. The employers might think it’s the easiest, quickest and cheapest way to get away from failing again. The strategy sometimes works for small firms or some specific cases, however, if highly localized failures keep repeating, the employers had better address larger issues.

The employers could make errors when assign blame too quickly for failures. People sometimes make interpretation using attribution theory that we tend to notice atypical behaviors and add meanings ourselves. This interpretation methods could lead to fundamental attribution error as we always underestimate external factors and emphasize internal factors while judging others; but we always believe in external factors for failures while judging ourselves. In the workplace, the employers tend to blame and fire the employees when there’re actually some external factors affecting the efficiency and effectiveness negatively.

Things could also go wrong when people make quick decisions based on the attribution error. The firing method could get serious if the employer ignores the larger issues. In the movie War Dogs, the protagonist David quickly decided to quit the firm AEY instead of having communication with his partner Efraim and this resulted in Efraim’s anxiety and David even got threatened. If David took his time, he might have calmed down and realize the conflict between Efraim and him also came from his compromising and submissive behaviors while working.

Assigning blame too quickly for failures is not a good phenomenon for a healthy and well-functioning organization. The leader should always remind themselves to think unbiasedly, penetrate and identify larger issues, and make appropriate decisions at low opportunity costs. Little failures add up, and the ignorance will eventually result in big pay offs.

Word count: 357

1. Zillman, Claire . “Assigning blame too quickly for failures at work can backfire—big time.” Fortune. N.p., 08 Sept. 2015. Web. 01 Apr. 2017. <http://fortune.com/2015/09/08/blame-failure-work/>.