Yimeng Jia's blog

Kathy’s blog Why common sense is not always common action brought up an interesting topic we talked about in organizational behaviour class. The cognitive evaluation theory indicates that offering extrinsic rewards for work effort that was previously rewarding intrinsically will tend to decrease the overall level of a person’s motivation. Even though generally people are motivated by rewards, providing too much extrinsic rewards can result in people focusing more on rewards than their work, which will lead to a decrease in the person’s performance. This phenomenon goes against our common knowledge, which is that more rewards equals more motivation.

The video provided a suggestion on how company should decide the amount of extrinsic rewards. “The most appropriate  amount to pay is the amount that takes the money off the table.”

After all, in workplace, the strongest motivator is intrinsic motivator. Even though extrinsic motivator also affect employee’s performance, the most effective motivation comes from inside. The cognitive evaluation theory can be applied to performance management to provide the company with the idea of how to set up its extrinsic rewards.

Link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/kathyhuang/2013/11/13/why-common-sense-is-not-always-common-action/

Recently I read my COMM101 classmate Candice Chung’s blog, Connected Net. In her blog, she brought up some interesting advices on starting up an online shop, such as creating a business plan with realistic, measurable goals, making sure the website is accessible, making payment simple, and etc. She also mentioned that creating a management information system (MIS) helps to make decisions.

This reminds me of the lecture on the application of IT system in business. IT systems can be used to collect data, get insights, share insights and replicate insights. The key for every business is getting the customer’s opinion, thus, an effective way of collecting these information is valuable to the business growth.

Compared to doing business in real world, doing business online is facing more technological challenges. Zappo is an example for a successful online shop. It demonstrates how the management information system contributes to running the business effectively.

 Creating an online shop has always been my business idea. The article provided me with some valuable insight that I can apply to create my own business.

Link: https://blogs.ubc.ca/candicechung/2013/11/12/connected-net/

http://businessgross.com/2013/10/26/things-consider-setting-online-shop/

The article brought up an interesting concept of ” five levels of strategy” , to provide a solution of a general problem” fancy plans and little action”. The steps of creating an effective strategy share a lot of similarities with the steps of designing a house.

Level 1 Set out basic principles.

Level 2 Roughly sketch.

Level 3 Identify the main organizational units responsible for different parts of the strategy and the operating model that links these organisational units together.

Level 4 Specify the people, the money and the time needed for each sub-task within each unit.

Level 5  the inevitable adjustments that need to be made as events unfold.

Interestingly, we can see that strategy is a mix of both science and arts, and should be planned but requires some scope for  adjustments in case unforeseen problems or opportunities arise.

The problem for most company is that they build their strategies upside down. They start with the big idea, but run out of energy, motivation or interest before accomplishing the details of their plan. Therefore, implementation should be emphasized more than the construction of the strategy.

Link: http://blogs.hbr.org/2013/11/what-strategists-can-learn-from-architecture/

The train-safety campaign  “Dumb ways to die” has become the winningest campaign of the year. The video has generated 60 million YouTube views. Even 10 months after it launched, it still appears in the top 20 most-shared global ads on the weekly charts. The success of “Dumb Ways to Die” propelled Metro to the No. 3 slot on this year’s most-awarded advertisers list and its creators, Exec Creative Director John Mescall, Creative Director Pat Baron and Director Julian Frost, to the top of the people charts.

The success of “Dumb ways to die” provides me with an interesting aspect of marketing. The purpose of  a effective campaign is to leave a strong impression of the product (or concept) in people’s mind. “Dumb ways to die” shows great creativity in its content, and gives me the feeling that it is more of entertainment rather than advertising.

Perhaps “more of entertainment rather than advertising” is something that should be taken in to account when trying to market a product. Provide people with a entertaining experience, rather than merely feeding them with information of the product.

Link: http://adage.com/article/special-report-the-awards-report/dumb-ways-die-dissected/245195/

Tim Hortons, the Canadian coffee-and-donut gaint, have made two cities, Columbus, Ohio,and London, Ontario its official testers for the company’s new dark-roast coffee. This move was commented” It’s the first-ever new-blend experiment for the big chain.”

It’s not the first time the company has turned to the cities to try out new items. This method turns out to be successful and efficient in determining whether the company should launch a new product.

Tim Hortons have put a lot of effort into its marketing. It focus most on its campaign, which increased its public visibility and captured a lot of customer’s attention. Instead of competing with Starbuck, the NO.1 in the industry, Tim Hortons focus on the Canadian market and dominates it. With reference to the Porter’s Generic Strategies, Tim Hortons’ strategy can be considered as cost leadership strategy within Canadian market. However, within the international market, Tim Hortons is using a focus strategy. This is why I found Tim Hortons’ marketing strategy interesting.

Link: http://blogs.wsj.com/canadarealtime/2013/11/04/tim-hortons-tests-new-brew-in-cities-300-miles-apart/?KEYWORDS=tim+hortons

In 2006, HP chairwoman Patricia Dunn contracted a team of security experts to investigate board members and several journalists in order to identify the source of an information leak. During the investigation, the security experts used a spying technique known as pretexting (investigators impersonating HP board members and journalists to obtain their phone records). The information leaked related to HP’s long-term strategies was published on a CNET article in January 2006.

The investigation found out the source of the information leak in a short time, however, it also incensed some innocent board members. As the violation of the privacy of the board members made public, on September 22, 2006, HP announced that Patricia Dunn had held herself responsible for the misdeed and resigned.

HP is a struggling company. In my opinion, HP is currently lack of a strong ethical organizational culture. Culture conveys a sense of identity to organization members, creates commitment to something larger than an individual’s self-interest and works as the social glue that helps hold the organization together. To improve HP’s organizational performance, the first thing HP should do is to create a strong ethical culture, which can be created by communicating ethical expectations, providing ethics training, visibly rewarding ethical acts and punishing unethical ones, and providing protective mechanisms.

Source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hewlett-Packard_spying_scandal

Samsung have jumped into the wearable technology bandwagon with its new product Samsung Galaxy Gear. The new product aroused a temporary excitement of the market, but in the mean time, people are questioning themselves:” Do I really need one?”

What’s the point of a smartwatch? It certainly cannot replace a computer or a cellphone, and its function are strictly limited due to its shape of a watch. Like it is argued in the article:” It’s accessory.” All the functions on a smartwatch can be completed on a smartphone more conveniently, so why would we need that watch once we have a smartphone? Sure, they’ve presented technology innovation, but what they really should do is to introduce its value proposition to the market.

Smartwatches have limited target market. People may buy it because of a temporary excitement or curiosity or just want to keep up with “fashion”, however, after all that, who is the main target market remains ambiguity. People who enjoy outdoor sports may be one customer segment, but there will still be some inconvenience due to the immaturity of this technology.

Some advocates of this devices said that it save the trouble of having to pull the phone out of their pocket to read a message. But what I’m thinking is:” Are we already that lazy?”

Reference: http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2013/10/04/samsung-galaxy-gear-in-canada-pebble-smartwatch-meet-the-competition/

Tomorrow’s Child, my daughter-son
I’m afraid I’ve just begun
To think of you and of your good,
Though always having known I should.

Begin I will to weigh the cost
of what I squander; what is lost
If ever I forget that you
will someday come to live here too. —————-Tomorrow’s Child by Glenn Thomas

Lured by maximizing profits, many entrepreneurs today stick to the traditional” take, make, waste” industrial system and give no concern about the social and environmental impact they caused.   However, Ray Anderson holds a contradict opinion and devotes his energy into business sustainability.

Ray Anderson founded Interface, the company that makes Flor carpeting. He focused his company’s attention on building a sustainable world. They call this drive Mission Zero: “our promise to eliminate any negative impact our company may have on the environment by the year 2020.”

In the video, Anderson objected to the traditional definition of environmental impact equation, which is explained as” the product of population, affulence and technology”, and bring up a new equation in which technology becomes a denominator rather than the numerator. He believes that technology could and should be used to contribute to sustainable ways of doing business.

Link&Citation: http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_anderson_on_the_business_logic_of_sustainability.html

Due to the growing trend of e-book reading, many magazine publishers have found it a fashion to make a beautifully designed mobile app for their magazine.

It is a common phenomenon that we have too many apps on our smartphone that we’ve opened only few times. People found a magazine attractive are likely to download an app for it, however, it usually don’t take long before the app fades out of their memory.

One interesting point brought up in the article is that publishing magazines through mobile apps does not really count as “publishing”. The content of magazines remains invisible online. Without a direct access to the articles, it is less likely that the readers will discuss about them, thus, it’s safe to say that creating apps for magazines contribute little to increasing the visibility of the magazine. Apps are inefficient channels for distributing magazines to customers.

The problem of these publishers is that they jumped into what is considered “fashion” without a thorough consideration about whether it fits the business. This is a trap that we should always watch out when deciding business plan.

Link: http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2013/10/07/publishing-dont-make-a-smartphone-or-tablet-app/

Food security has always been a serious problem in China. In recent years, scandals concerning food security had been exposed to media continually. Behind all these scandals lies the lack of responsibility and moral level decline.

One of the causes of the food security incident is the firms’ seeking of improper profit. Lured by the profit, some firm ignored the consumers’ interest to maximize their revenue, prejudice the legitimate interests of the consumers.

Another reason is the lack of sense of responsibility. Since the food producer are anonymous, they are more likely to take a risk and perform differently than they normally do when in front of others. Also, people in the same group tend to copy each other’s harmful behavior, which led to a lack of ethics with in the whole organization. Because the responsibility will fall to the whole organization instead of individuals, people feel they will not bear responsibility for all the serious consequences arising, which could entice them to exceed the moral bounds.

Link: http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cndy/2013-02/05/content_16200464.htm