Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility - McGraw-Hill Introduction to Business

An Expensive Musical Festival Turns into a Disaster

May 2, 2017

For many attendees of today’s big music festivals, enjoying an interesting atmosphere is often just as important as watching what’s happening on stage. After all, these events don’t happen in a vacuum: festivals like Coachella are endlessly documented through Instagram and other social media platforms. From the fancy food trucks to famous people casually milling about the crowd, music festivals offer no shortage of material to liven up anyone’s feed.

Last weekend’s Fyre Festival promised to be the most Instagrammable Continue reading →

Entertainment, Advertising, Music, Marketing, Coachella, Ethics, Fyre Festival, Product Development

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 13: Marketing, Chapter 14: Product and Price, Chapter 15: Distribution

The Tricky Relationship Between Bankers and Regulators

April 27, 2017

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The 2010 Dodd-Frank financial reform act stands as one of the most complicated pieces of legislation ever devised. The law includes more than 22,000 pages of rules, which is equivalent to about 15 copies of Tolstoy’s epic novel War and Peace. These guidelines tell banks how much money they must set aside, how they can advertise, what sort of investments they can make, and many other stipulations and requirements.

As you can imagine, keeping track of all those regulations Continue reading →

Wall Street, Wells Fargo, Compliance, Ethics, Banking, Human Resources, Regulation, Dodd-Frank

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 7: Management & Leadership, Chapter 9: Production and Operations Management, Chapter 11: Human Resource Management, Chapter 18: Financial Management, Chapter 20: Money and Financial Institutions, Bonus Chapter A: Business Law, Bonus Chapter C: Managing Risk

IBM Summons Remote Workers Back to the Office

April 18, 2017

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In the 1980s IBM was one of the first companies to make remote work a priority for its employees. Starting with “remote terminals” installed in staffers’ houses, by 2009 40 percent of the tech company’s 386,000 employees worked from home. In the process, IBM reduced office space by 78 million square feet and started saving $100 million in annual costs. Other companies took IBM’s lead and began to follow the remote trend as well. In fact, 25 percent of American Continue reading →

Innovation, IBM, Ethics, Collaboration, Human Resources, Remote Work, Silicon Valley

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 7: Management & Leadership, Chapter 10: Motivation, Chapter 11: Human Resource Management, Chapter 12: Labor Management and Unions

[VIDEO] Why Do Airlines Sell Too Many Tickets?

April 14, 2017

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This week United Airlines angered millions when a video surfaced of a man being brutally dragged off of an overbooked flight. People not only felt horrified at the violence of the incident, but they also questioned why the company needed to overbook flights in the first place. As this video shows, though, the answer is not so easy.

Questions:

Should airlines be allowed to overbook flights?
What risks do airlines face if they do not overbook a flight?

Product Distribution, Air Travel, Operations Management, United Airlines, Ethics, Overbooking, Transportation

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 9: Production and Operations Management, Chapter 14: Product and Price, Chapter 15: Distribution, Videos

Hotel Chains Use Travel Troubles as Selling Points

April 13, 2017

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This week United Airlines has faced a surge in public anger following the release of a video that showed a passenger being dragged off of an overbooked flight. Along with its plummeting reputation, the company’s stock price has also experienced quite a bit of turbulence since the incident. At its worst point United shares fell 6.3 percent, reducing the the airline’s market value by $1.4 billion. United’s CEO has repeatedly apologized for the way the company handled the situation Continue reading →

Marketing, United Airlines, Ethics, Hotels, Advertising, Transportation, Air Travel

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 13: Marketing, Chapter 14: Product and Price, Chapter 15: Distribution, Chapter 16: Place and Promotion

United Airlines Causes Outrage over Passenger Removal

April 11, 2017

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On Monday morning, people across the world woke up to find a disturbing video circulating in their social media feeds. The clip showed two men forcibly grabbing a passenger out of his seat on a United Airlines flight and then dragging his body down the aisle. Blood ran down the victim’s face and fellow passengers screamed in horror. Soon the video went viral as millions of social media users directed their outrage towards United for allowing this brutal incident to Continue reading →

Customer Service, Transportation, Air Travel, Crisis management, Ethics, United Airlines, Word of Mouth

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 3: Globalization, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 9: Production and Operations Management, Chapter 16: Place and Promotion, Bonus Chapter B: Technology and New Media

Major Advertisers Flee from YouTube

April 5, 2017

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Since YouTube’s founding, the video sharing site has prided itself on being a platform that anyone can use to express themselves. This concept catapulted the site to instant success and led to a $1.65 billion buyout from Google in 2006. Along with becoming one of the search engine giant’s most lucrative advertising outlets, YouTube is also the most valuable video platform on the Internet by far.

Despite this lofty status, though, major advertisers like AT&T, Lyft and Johnson & Continue reading →

Innovation, Marketing, Advertising, Ethics, Tech, Google, YouTube

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 13: Marketing, Chapter 14: Product and Price, Chapter 15: Distribution, Chapter 16: Place and Promotion, Bonus Chapter B: Technology and New Media

Fast Food Chains Slowly Adopt Automation

March 29, 2017

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From factory floors to Wall Street financial firms, robotic labor is becoming an increasingly important part of production for many companies. And according to the head of Yum Brands, fast food could be the next industry to adopt automation on a wide scale. This week CEO Greg Creed said that robots could start replacing humans at Yum-owned chains like Pizza Hut and Taco Bell by the mid-2020s.

Other fast food companies have already begun to experiment with automation. Wendy’s, for Continue reading →

Innovation, Fast food, Automation, Operations Management, Production, Food, Robotics, Human Resources

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 9: Production and Operations Management, Chapter 11: Human Resource Management, Bonus Chapter B: Technology and New Media

The Startup That Lets People Crowdfund a Cow

March 17, 2017

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For many modern consumers, the origin of their food is just as important as its nutrition stats. That’s why high-end grocery stores like Whole Foods often specify which farms their meat and vegetables come from, sometimes even including detailed stories about their staff and methods. Still, even this attention to detail isn’t enough for some discerning eaters. In order to ensure they know exactly where their food comes from, these consumers can pool their resources together to purchase a cow Continue reading →

Sustainability, Product Distribution, Crowd Cow, Food, Crowdfunding, Kickstarter

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 9: Production and Operations Management, Chapter 15: Distribution, Bonus Chapter B: Technology and New Media

World Bank: Natural Disasters Cost More than $500 Billion Annually

March 3, 2017

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From tsunamis to earthquakes to hurricanes, each year natural disasters strike all across the world and leave devastation in their wake. In the immediate aftermath of these catastrophes, ensuring people’s safety is the number one priority. As a community starts to recover from a disaster, however, their thoughts turn towards rebuilding and returning to normalcy. Still, this isn’t such an easy task to accomplish. Natural disasters can destroy infrastructure and buildings that take millions of dollars and months of time Continue reading →

Risk Management, Global, World Bank, Ethics, Insurance, Natural Disasters

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 3: Globalization, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 9: Production and Operations Management, Chapter 15: Distribution, Bonus Chapter C: Managing Risk