Chapter 10: Motivation - McGraw-Hill Introduction to Business

Wells Fargo Faces More Claims of Employee Fraud

September 7, 2017

Last year we took a close look at how Wells Fargo fostered a culture of fraud that encouraged employees to open unauthorized credit and debit card accounts for customers. Investigators at the time estimated the bank had created more than 1.5 million fraudulent accounts, leading Wells Fargo to fire thousands of employees. Further inquiries from Congress also caused the company to replace managers and roll back executive pay as part of an overhaul of its retail division. The scandal Continue reading →

Banking, Regulation, Fraud, Wells Fargo, Ethics, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 10: Motivation, Chapter 11: Human Resource Management, Chapter 18: Financial Management, Bonus Chapter A: Business Law

Restaurants Serve Up Jobs Across the Country

August 10, 2017

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The U.S. economy has managed to add thousands of jobs so far this year thanks to big gains in industries like construction and health care. But even these substantial sectors can’t compare to the robust growth of the restaurant industry, which has gained nearly 200,000 new jobs in 2017 alone. And unlike manufacturing or construction work, these jobs aren’t localized to a few lucky cities scattered across the nation. Instead, nearly every American metropolis has seen a boom in restaurant Continue reading →

Economics, Restaurants, Food, Job Creation, Human Resources, Service Industry, Manufacturing

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 2: Economics, Chapter 6: Entrepreneurship, Chapter 9: Production and Operations Management, Chapter 10: Motivation, Chapter 11: Human Resource Management, Chapter 15: Distribution

Big Companies Start to Leave the Suburbs

August 3, 2017

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Over the course of four decades, more than 80,000 people have learned how to become McDonald’s managers on the the leafy grounds of Hamburger University. The company long considered this 86-acre Oak Brook, Illinois, institution to be the perfect place to train employees while also attracting top-level executives. Then last year McDonald’s surprised staff by announcing the company would move its headquarters out of the suburbs and into the West Loop of Chicago.

Located near an “L” train stop and Continue reading →

Motivation, Headquarters, Caterpillar, Innovation, McDonald’s, Hiring, Management, Illinois

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, Bonus Chapter B: Technology and New Media

Summer Jobs Become Increasingly Difficult to Fill

July 28, 2017

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With the fall semester right around the corner, there’s only a few more weeks of freedom left for those lucky students who didn’t have to spend their break in class. Of course, those who managed to avoid summer school may have been working at one of the many seasonal jobs that pop up at this time of year. According to employers, however, these jobs have become increasingly difficult to fill recently. For instance, in the spring business owners located along Continue reading →

Education, Hiring, Skills, Summer jobs, Internships, Motivation, New Jersey

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

Silicon Valley’s Culture Has a Big Influence on Chinese Companies

April 25, 2017

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For years tech giants like Facebook and Google have tried to set up shop in China only to see their efforts blocked by the country’s restrictive government. In place of these global brands, domestic companies like the search engine Baidu and the social network Weibo have flourished among China’s enormous Internet community. And in an ironic twist, this growing tech sector owes much of its success to the structure and culture of Silicon Valley’s biggest names.

Many Chinese companies are Continue reading →

Management, Motivation, Global, Innovation, Silicon Valley, China, Google, Facebook, Company Culture

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 3: Globalization, Chapter 6: Entrepreneurship, Chapter 7: Management & Leadership, Chapter 8: Organizational Culture and Structure, Chapter 10: Motivation, Chapter 11: Human Resource Management, Bonus Chapter B: Technology and New Media

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 →

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

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] Inside the Pantone Color Factory

March 14, 2017

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While identifying colors might seem like a simple preschool task to some, it’s a serious job at the Pantone color factory. This company creates color guides that act sort of like dictionaries for artists and designers. In order to create consistent colors every time, Pantone depends on eagle-eyed employees to check for flaws. Along with these dedicated staffers, this video also shows some of the machines used by Pantone to create such vivid hues.

Questions:

Why does Pantone require Continue reading →

Motivation, Operations Management, Product Development, Production, Pantone, Design

Chapter 9: Production and Operations Management, Chapter 10: Motivation, Chapter 14: Product and Price, Videos

Investment Bank UBS Switches to Open Offices

March 10, 2017

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Over the years, Silicon Valley startups have become famous for developing open work spaces free of personalized desks or big corner offices. The idea is to allow employees to gather together and collaborate rather than leave them enclosed in their cubicles. While other companies avoided this unconventional approach at first, more firms have switched to open offices as the concept has become more popular. Still, these companies have tended to be smaller operations as many big businesses remained skeptical that Continue reading →

Switzerland, Finance, Motivation, Open Offices, Global, UBS, Human Resources, Work Environment

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 3: Globalization, Chapter 7: Management & Leadership, Chapter 9: Production and Operations Management, Chapter 10: Motivation, Chapter 11: Human Resource Management

The Swedish Software Company That Thrives with No CEO

March 9, 2017

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Three years ago, the staff of the Swedish software consulting firm Crisp felt it was time for a change in leadership. The company had been recently experimenting with its upper management structure, going from a standard CEO model to one that replaced the top executive annually through a staff vote. Then, a radical idea took root in the minds of Crisp’s employees. “We said, ‘what if we had nobody as our next CEO – what would that look like?’” said Continue reading →

Leadership structure, Management, Crisp, Motivation, Sweden, Global, Human Resources

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 7: Management & Leadership, Chapter 8: Organizational Culture and Structure, Chapter 9: Production and Operations Management, Chapter 10: Motivation, Chapter 11: Human Resource Management

Finland Experiments with Basic Income for the Unemployed

January 26, 2017

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To people familiar with sunny Silicon Valley, Finland may seem like a questionable tech hub. But thanks to the telecommunications giant Nokia, for years the snowy Scandinavian nation served as one of the central destinations in Europe for tech workers. Once Nokia began to collapse, however, the fortunes of many Finnish engineers declined as well.

These formerly prominent staffers then signed up for unemployment benefits in the hopes that the tech industry would turn around. When jobs largely failed to Continue reading →

Motivation, Global, Finland, Ethics, Nokia, Labor Relations, Basic Income, Unemployment

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 3: Globalization, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 10: Motivation, Chapter 11: Human Resource Management, Chapter 12: Labor Management and Unions, Bonus Chapter B: Technology and New Media