Ethics - McGraw-Hill Introduction to Business

Hotel Chains Use Travel Troubles as Selling Points

April 13, 2017

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

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 →

Ethics, Customer Service, Transportation, Air Travel, Crisis management, 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 →

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

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 →

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

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

Vizio Fined After Tracking and Selling Customers’ Personal Data

February 9, 2017

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In this digitally driven age, personal privacy is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Along with social networks and websites that track users, many electronic devices also pay close attention to their owners’ personal habits. And in at least one recent case, sometimes people don’t even know they’re being watched by their possessions.

That’s why the Federal Trade Commission recently slapped the television maker Vizio with a $2.2 million fine. According to investigators, the company installed software that allowed Continue reading →

Marketing, Ethics, Entertainment, Demographics, Television, Vizio, Internet of Things, Data Tracking

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

American Apparel Bought by Canadian Company

January 31, 2017

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For years American Apparel seemed poised to become the next big fashion brand. Their simple but bold cotton clothing and suggestive advertisements catapulted the company to a $1 billion valuation in 2007. A decade later, however, American Apparel filed for bankruptcy and sold its assets to a Canadian firm for just $88 million. Along with shuttering its 110 stores, the company also lost its famed garment factory in Los Angeles.

This production facility was one of American Apparel’s best assets Continue reading →

Ethics, Manufacturing, Clothing, Retail, Bankruptcy, American Apparel, Workplace Harassment

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 7: Management & Leadership, Chapter 9: Production and Operations Management, Chapter 12: Labor Management and Unions, Chapter 13: Marketing, Chapter 14: Product and Price, Chapter 15: Distribution

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

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

Eight Richest People Own As Much Wealth as Half the World

January 24, 2017

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In the years since the economic crisis of 2008, wealth inequality has been an increasingly alarming problem both for scholars and regular people. Last year, the development charity Oxfam estimated that 62 billionaires owned just as much wealth as the poorest 50 percent of the globe. This month, however, the agency had worse news: a group of just eight men are worth a combined $426 billion, equivalent to the wealth held by 3.6 billion people.

Along with foreign billionaires like Continue reading →

Global, Ethics, India, China, Facebook, Amazon, Inequality, Tech, Wealth, Brexit, Oxfam

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 2: Economics, Chapter 3: Globalization, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Bonus Chapter B: Technology and New Media

Jimmy John’s Drops Non-Compete Clauses for Sandwich Makers

January 19, 2017

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For many corporate executives, non-compete agreements are just a part of doing business. Since companies want to hang on to top talent as long as possible, they often insert clauses in contracts that prevent employees from joining competitors for a certain amount of time. While this limits a staffer’s options when looking for a new job, their high-level status usually provides them with plenty of alternative choices.

That’s not quite the case for sandwich makers, however. While non-compete clauses are Continue reading →

Ethics, Franchising, Food, Human Resources, Labor Relations, Jimmy John’s, Non-Compete Clauses

Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 6: Entrepreneurship, Chapter 10: Motivation, Chapter 11: Human Resource Management, Chapter 12: Labor Management and Unions, Bonus Chapter A: Business Law

Portland Institutes Tax on Companies with High CEO Salaries

December 15, 2016

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In 2010 the median salary for the 200 highest-earning executives in the U.S. topped out at nearly $10 million. Just five years later, though, that number doubled to almost $20 million. Meanwhile, researchers at the Economic Policy Institute found that CEOs in 2013 earned more than 300 times the salary of average workers. For comparison, in 1965 chief executives brought in just 20 times more pay than their average employees.

To combat this increasing inequality, last week government administrators in Continue reading →

Management, Motivation, Ethics, Compensation, Executive Compensation, Regulation, Taxes, Leadership, Portland

Chapter 1: Taking Risks and Making Profits, Chapter 4: Ethics and Social Responsibility, Chapter 7: Management & Leadership, Chapter 10: Motivation, Bonus Chapter A: Business Law