Yue Huang's Blog

As I was doing the preparation for class 6 : operations, the interview with the founder of Dell — Michael Dell in 1998 grabbed my attention. Dell was known as a successful example of outsourcing. The company tried to apply a special business model which is a combination of “verticle” and “virtual” integration. By doing this, Dell does not have to produce every single component of the computer, instead of which, can put more focus on catering for customers’ needs. The difference between pure outsourcing and Dell’s business model is that Dell is not just seeking for facturies to do the manufacturing work, but also work with them as partners by, for example, let engineers from partner companies work with engineers from Dell’s team when lauching a new product. The key point is, we have to make sure what the company’s value is if we want it to stand out among competitors.

However, why Dell has no longer been one of the strongest companies in the industry? Why Dell fails competing with Apple?

Innovation. No matter the innovation of technology or of customer-friendliness, Dell was not marching as fast as Apple. Apple developed a brand new system IOS by itself while Dell still chose to work with Microsoft without awareness of investing on this development.

I assume there are many other reasons explaing Dell failing Apple. Welcome to leave comments!

First I tried to figure out what business ethic means. According to Wiki, “business ethics” is a philosophy of business, one of whose aims is to determine the fundamental purposes of a company. After finishing the preparation for Class 3, I also reconciled Friedman’s and Freeman’s opinions: the purposes of a company should be maximizing profits for all the shareholders while taking certain social responsibilities.

However, what I disagree with Friedman is that social responsibilities should not only be taken by individuals, ironically, companies should take the most because I believe the existence of CSR(corporate social responsibility).

Take an example of Microsoft and Bill Gates: according to Microsoft website, the company runs 50000+ nonprofit programs globally per year and Bill Gates himself has also donated $28million+ to charity and funds. As one of the biggest enterprises of the world creating $25million+ per quarter, Microsoft set a positive example of corporate social responsibility. The reason I think companies should shoulder more social responsibilities it that businesses always have a stronger and faster impact on influencing people’s lives by producing goods and services, creating job offers, paying taxes, etc. Also, stakeholders of the company have the right to expect a business to be ethical.