Suggested textbooks

• NSCC Fundamentals of Business — 2023
• Fundamentals of Business — Canadian Edition 2021
• Fundamentals of Business — British Columbia Edition 2022

Suggested articles

• RIM’s rise and fall: A short history of Research In Motion
• Victim of Success: The Rise and Fall of BlackBerry
• Whatever happened to Blackberry? From market leader to intern farm
• Why Kodak Died and Fujifilm Thrived: A Tale of Two Film Companies

“At the 2017 Montreal Auto show, an impressive array of new electric vehicles (EVs) were on display. Included were Volkswagen’s e-Golf, Honda’s Clarity, Hyundai’s Ioniq, and Nissan’s Leaf. Suddenly there are lots of EVs to choose from; almost 50 new versions will come on the market by 2022. Toyota also introduced its Mirai fuel cell electric vehicle in 2018 in Quebec. In 2017, Volvo announced that all the new models it introduces in 2019 and later will be either hybrids or EVs. Countries such as France, Britain, Norway, China, and India have all announced plans to reduce or ban the sale of gas- and diesel-powered vehicles over the next couple of decades.

China has the largest number of registered EVs (336 000), but that is only 1.3 percent of the country’s total car market. Worldwide in 2016, only 0.1 percent of the cars on the road were electric. But the number will likely rise to 10 percent of new cars sold by 2025, and by that year, EVs might constitute 4.5 percent of total vehicles on the road. At the time, electric car sales in Canada were 0.56 percent of total car sales. The Bourgeois Chevrolet Buick GMC car dealership in Rawdon, Quebec, is the top seller of EVs in Canada.

To date, the sale of EVs has been influenced by several factors: limited range, high purchase price, long charging times, and too few charging stations. But progress is being made in dealing with those shortcomings. For example, Toyota is introducing a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that will get 1000 km per fill-up. That is double what the best EVs get now, and the fuel cell car can be refueled in just three minutes. Improved efficiencies in batteries have reduced battery prices, and this may make EVs cheaper than gas-powered cars by 2025. Work on further improvements in battery technology is ongoing at Dalhousie University and at Hydro Quebec’s Montreal research lab.

Ontario has invested $200 million to build more charging stations and that increased availability should make consumers more willing to purchase an EV. Quebec and Ontario also pay subsidies to consumers who buy EVs. Ontario gives $13 000 to consumers who purchase a BMW i3 (the list price of the car is $48 000). Quebec also mandates mini- mum levels for sales of EVs. Starting in 2018, 3.5 percent of all auto sales in Quebec must be electric, hybrid, or hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. By 2025, the minimum increases to 15.5 percent. It is hoped that these incentives will result in a big increase in the number of EVs that are on the road. However, critics say that subsidizing electric cars is both expensive and ineffective. The Montreal Economic Institute says that the subsidies offered by Ontario and Quebec could cost those provinces a total of about $17 billion by 2030, but they will cut emissions by only 4 percent.” ¹⁾

Critical thinking question

Consider the following statement:

“Giving money to consumers so they will be motivated to purchase an electric car is a bad idea. In a democratic, free-market society, it is much better to let consumers consider the various costs and benefits of each type of car and make their own decisions about which type they will purchase.”

Do you agree or disagree with the statement? Explain your reasoning.

Answer these questions:

• Which of the four forms of business ownership do you think would be best for you if you were a small business owner? Explain the reasons for your choice.
• Which era in the history of Canadian business would you like to live in most? Why?
• “What role should the government play in social responsibility? Should government create more regulations to encourage businesses to uphold their responsibility to stakeholders? Or should government take a laissez-faire approach and allow businesses to be as socially responsible as they choose? Explain your reasoning.”

Read the following article:

Volkswagen

Activity Instruction

Answer the ethical dilemma at the end of the article.

Answer the following question:

• What differences in corporate culture might you expect to find between a 100-year-old Winnipeg manufacturing firm and a five-year-old e-commerce firm in Toronto?

• Identify internal strengths (S), weaknesses (W), external opportunities (O), and threats (T) surrounding CDI College. (For more information, see this: Using SWOT for Strategic Analysis)

Answer the following question:

• Consider the various corporate-level strategies discussed in the chapter (concentration, growth, integration, diversification, and investment reduction). What is the relationship among these various strategies? Are they mutually exclusive? Complementary? Explain.

• New Brain Study Shows Why Obeying Orders Can Make Us Do Terrible Things
  • If you are curious, read the original white paper here: Obeying orders reduces vicarious brain activation towards victims’ pain

Watch Psychology Electric Shock Experiment (Milgram Experiment).

Read the following article and think about the hierarchy of authority within organizations and the ambiguous roles they are expected to play in light of resulting ethical dilemmas.

Time Limit: 30 minutes

Just follow others

The business world is replete with examples of people behaving in ways they presumably knew were wrong because someone “higher up” in the organization told them to do so. Examples of such practices include these:

• Staff members at Arthur Andersen shredded documents related to the Enron debacle because their senior manager told them to. (Andersen Auditor Details Shredding of Enron Papers)
• Crewmembers on board Royal Caribbean cruise ships dumped toxic waste into the ocean because their boss told them to. (Caribbean cruise ships dump garbage at sea)
• Managers at Firestone and Ford did not report known defects on tires that were being used on the popular Explorer model because higher-level managers told them to keep quiet. (Firestone and Ford tire controversy)

What accounts for such practices? While there are a number of explanations, one common one is that people are often indoctrinated to believe they need to follow the chain of command and not question orders or directives from those above them in that chain. More specifically, people may come to believe that if someone higher up in their organization tells them to do something, they have little choice but to follow orders, and, in doing so, they also absolve themselves of responsibility.

This tendency was powerfully demonstrated in a classic series of studies conducted by noted Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram. Milgram told subjects in an experiment that they were to administer electric shocks to another “subject” in the next room on his commands. They were also informed that each successive command would result in a more powerful shock than the previous one. As the shocks increased in intensity, the other individual began to yell and scream in pain and eventually started to beg the subject to stop. (The other individuals were actually confederates in the study and were only acting like they were getting shocked.) While many subjects became uncomfortable and some asked if the experiment could be halted, upon hearing Milgram order them to continue (because “the experiment cannot be stopped” or “you don’t need to worry, I know what I’m doing”), most did so. Indeed, more than half of the subjects actually administered a shock clearly labelled as dangerous and potentially life‑threatening when ordered to do so.

So, what is the bottom line? Each individual has to make their own decisions when confronted with a situation in which their boss instructs them to do something they know or suspect to be wrong. Too much questioning or unwillingness to carry out orders can result in sanctions or even job loss, but people need to exercise some degree of self-control and be willing to accept personal responsibility for their actions.

Now that you have learned about this issue, answer the following questions: (15 minutes)

1. In what situations should subordinates go against what they are taught by questioning authority that may appear questionable?
2. In what situations should subordinates not question authority?

Answer the following questions:

1. Explain the significance of organizational size as it relates to organizational structure. Describe the changes likely to occur as an organization grows.
2. Why do some managers have difficulties in delegating authority? Why do you think this problem might be more pronounced in small businesses?

Answer the following questions:

1. Do you think that you would want to work in a matrix organization, where you were assigned simultaneously to multiple units or groups? Why, or why not?
2. In your own words, explain how a functional structure differs from a divisional structure.

• Production Planning and Scheduling
• Material Requirements Planning (MRP)
• Aggregate Planning
• Capacity Planning

Answer the following two questions:

1. Pick three services (not physical products) that you use regularly. Explain what customization, unstorability, and intangibility mean for each of the services. How do these factors influence the way the service is delivered to customers?
2. Describe three high-contact service operations and three low-contact service operations. Do the concepts of intangibility and unstorability have different implications for low- and high-contact service operations?

This is why we can’t have nice things

—

Planned Obsolescence Sucks. Here’s Why It Still Exists.

—

Planned Obsolescence documentary - The Light Bulb Conspiracy (2010)

—

Planned Obsolescence: Why Electronics Don’t Last Long | ENDEVR Documentary

—

Longer-lasting light bulbs: it was complicated

How Toyota Became So Reliable & The Rise of Japanese Auto Industry | CuriousReason

—

Why Did The American Car Industry Fail? | CuriousReason

• Lean Manufacturing and Just-in-Time Production
• Statistical Process Control and Six Sigma
• TQM on Wikipedia
• Lean Manufacturing on Wikipedia
• The Limits of “Lean” (👈This page loads slowly. Please be patient.)
• Manufacturing Innovation: Lessons from the Japanese Auto Industry (👈This page loads slowly. Please be patient.)

• A First Course in Quality Engineering, 3rd Edition (You will need a Toronto Public Library card to access this book.)
• The Machine That Changed the World
• Toyota Production System (TPL card is needed.)

“Many businesses have grown tired of general TQM strategies, having once tried them and found them ineffectual. One frequently cited case involves the 3M Company, which implemented Six Sigma after hiring a former GE executive as its CEO. The company later abandoned the methodology, asserting that it had stymied the innovation for which 3M is known. The attention paid to this case has sparked controversy, however, with detractors suggesting that it reveals the limits and pitfalls of Six Sigma, and supporters arguing that it reflects misunderstandings of the methodology and its proper use. Even when they are successful, TQM strategies can be expensive to implement. According to a 2018 article in Industrial Engineer by Satya S. Chakravorty, Six Sigma certification can cost $5,000 or more per person. Full implementation also involves the use of often-expensive software for statistical analysis.

Some businesses are replacing their general TQM strategies with more specific aims and new ideas. For instance, many companies are applying quality management skills to information technology (IT) departments. IT projects are often clouded by uncertainty and logistics confusing to outsiders, leading to inaccurate estimations of costs and time. Having fixed these problems in manufacturing with quality management, businesses are beginning to expect the same level of efficiency in other areas, and IT leaders may have to adopt new quality standards themselves to keep up with the trend.

Cloud computing is also making its mark on TQM, or vice versa, as cloud computing is becoming a more consumer-oriented service. The vast amount of business server usage is switching over to aiding customers in their cloud activities, from running business services to chatting, messaging, and interacting with each other and the business over social and entertainment applications. As the importance of managing server quality increases, IT leaders will be looking for methods to improve bandwidth management and server space allocation. TQM and lean management tactics may be the answer that they are seeking. These IT versions of quality management may also be too complicated for businesses to handle, leading to an increase in dependence on outside vendors and IT outsourcing for TQM needs.

Another TQM trend is the turn toward hybrid methodologies such as lean Six Sigma, which brings together aspects of the Six Sigma and lean, a methodology that emphasizes the minimization of waste. Aspects of the 5S framework are also often co-adopted with these methods. Such hybridity will likely allow existing TQM methodologies to survive and take on new life in the future.”

Source:

“Quality and Total Quality Management.” Encyclopedia of Management, 8th ed., vol. 2, Gale, 2019, pp. 932-936. Gale Virtual Reference Library, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX7617900264/GVRL?u=tplmain&sid=GVRL&xid=d4a09ff0. Accessed 23 July 2019.

Answer the following question:

• Would it be appropriate to “Move Fast and Break Things”, as Zuckerberg used to say?

For more information on Zuckerberg’s philosophy, see this:

• https://medium.com/swlh/move-fast-and-break-things-is-not-dead-8260b0718d90

Here is a coder’s take on Zuckerberg’s “proposal.” You don’t have to read it to answer the question. Nevertheless, it gives you a sense of how quality control might work in an industry where things break often, i.e. building software:

• https://zachholman.com/talk/move-fast-break-nothing/

• Management Information Systems
• Reputation management in the age of cyberattacks against businesses
• ‘Just tell me how to fix my computer:’ a crash course on malware detection

• Ransomware (You will need a Toronto Public Library card to access this book.)
• Ransomware Revealed: A Beginner’s Guide to Protecting and Recovering from Ransomware Attacks (TPL card is needed.)
• Ransomware and Cyber Extortion: Response and Prevention (TPL card is needed.)
• Cybersecurity Threats, Malware Trends, and Strategies (TPL card is needed.)
• Cybercrime (TPL card is needed.)
• Information Systems (TPL card is needed. We’ll use this book in our later course with the same title.)

You have heard of the recent incidents of ransomware hitting government organizations, hospitals, and large companies. One such attack asked for $34 millions to give the victim’s data back:

• Ransomware attack behind Toronto Public Library service interruption, library says - Nov 7, 2023
• Foxconn confirms ransomware attack disrupted production in Mexico - June 2, 2022
• Ransomware attack turns 2022 into 1977 for Somerset County - June 1, 2022
• Taiwanese Apple and Tesla contractor hit by Conti ransomware - Jan 27, 2022
• Everything You Need to Know About Evolving Threat of Ransomware

Here are a few other news piece not long ago:

• Threat profile: RansomHouse makes extortion work without ransomware - May 31, 2022
• Chicago students lose data to ransomware attackers - May 23, 2022
• College closes down after ransomware attack - May 12, 2022 by
• Costa Rica continues defence against sustained Conti ransomware attacks - May 9, 2022

• His son’s school was hacked. Then the ransomware gang called him at home - Jan 25, 2022
• Ransomware gangs increase efforts to enlist insiders for attacks - Jan 24, 2022
• Ransomware group exploits Parler’s hands-off approach to shake down victims - Jan 20, 2022
• Hospitals On COVID-19 Frontline Face ‘Double Extortion’ Threat
• Canon suffers ransomware attack, Maze claims responsibility

• The Week in Ransomware - January 21st 2022 - Arrests, Wipers, and More - Jan 21, 2022
• Thousands of CRA accounts breached following pair of cyberattacks - Aug 15, 2020
• US liquor giant hit by ransomware – what the rest of us can do to help - Aug 18, 2020
• University of Utah hit by ransomware, pays $457K ransom - Aug 20, 2020
• Two Florida Cities Paid $1.1 Million to Ransomware Hackers This Month

If you search the news for the word “ransomware,” you will see many organizations are being attacked by it, several times a day:

• Google News on ransomware

Question

If you are in charge of the security of your organization’s information technology infrastructures, how would you protect your organization against this relentless threat? Or even your own self, for that matter?