Growths of Business'

Growth:

1.     No+ range of products

2.     Sales is not equal to market share

3.     Profit is not equal to cash and profitability

4.     No of employees

5.     Volume of assets

(2) Market share of Nivea

Sales of nivea

Sales of nivea + Sales of all other COMPETING brands of the same product   

Profitability:

-       profits/sales

-       profits/assets

-       profits/ capital employed (how much capital you used in the business)

TL value = expenses -–-inputs --- throughput --- output --- TL value= revenues Revenue does not equal to cash inflow Expenses does not equal to cash outflow

Organic growth- growing internally generated resources

Market penetration- deepening the market by selling more to the market 

Peak Oil Essay

OPEN UP YOUR EYES

What responsibilities, if any, do businesses have in building a sustainable and convivial future?

“The Blind Spot” gives a realistic picture of the situation we are in now. This situation is: we can continue to consume energy and destroy our world or we can choose not to and destroy our economy. In this movie the main focus is on fuel and the problems related to it can serve as an example of other forms of fossil fuels. There are many concerns expressed in the movie that can be related to our question: What responsibilities, if any, do businesses have in building a sustainable and convivial future? The fact that the excess use of fuel started with industrialization, makes us realize the root of the problem: the businesses itself or to desire to make money.

First the problem should be identified. It is not just that excess amount of fuel is consumed, what should concern us is what we consume is more than what we can produce. In the movie they talk about a term “Peak Oil” which means “the global peak in oil production and it occurs when the amount of oil produced worldwide reaches a peak and starts a permanent decline.” (vt.peakoil.net). They foresee that when the oil declines it will not only result in an increase in the price but will effect many other areas things such as food, agriculture and anything that relies on consumption of oil. The movie also mentions about the global warming and how we treat our world in such a terrible way and destroy it. While we were doing many terrible things to our environment we did not think of the consequences rather we looked back and thought how much we progressed because we are industrialized, technologically advance etc.

Now it is time to take a step back and look at the picture in a realistic way. The fuel companies will not stop extracting oil until all the resources are finished. They do not really care of the results of their action. As they make believe game. You have to make believe that what you know is going to happen to you is not going to happen to you. But this does not change the situation.

Businesses should have certain responsibilities but that is not the case in reality for many of them. In an ideal world, all the companies would do a STEEPLE analysis which is a technique used for identifying changes that are taking place within that environment from 7 different points: Social, technological, economical, environmental, political, legal and ethical. All these aspects show us that business can do many things to change the world we live in to prepare a better future for next generations. The things they can change may not fix the damage that is already done to the earth but they might serve for a better society. With a right strategy they can increase the employment level, change their workers’ life style or offer them better living conditions. For the environment they can use the technology and decrease their harm to minimum. However, as we see in the “Blind Spot”, there can be liars to keep making money without thinking of the damage they are making in the long run. Instead of supporting the production of electric cars, they kept on sending harmful gas emissions to the atmosphere.

This does not mean that there are not “good” corporate which would try to do things for the earth. There are companies who are socially responsible and taking care of their environment. In the movie these companies were not focused, rather they were giving a more pessimistic perspective. There is a business model called corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its goal is “to embrace responsibility for the company's actions and encourage a positive impact through its activities on the environment, consumers, employees, communities, stakeholders and all other members of the public sphere”.   So if we go back to our question again: What responsibilities, if any, do businesses have in building a sustainable and convivial future?” If it is a business that has CSR, it can do a lot to build a better future. It can start campaigns, it can use the technology and limit its damage to the world, it can be respectful to the rights of its workers, by paying taxes it can support the society, it can care for the environment and so on.

            A business without any ethical objectives on the other hand, would not try to care more for the society surrounds it and the earth it is built on. It would just focus on making more and more money; it would be the one that can substitute human, nature, earth for money. Yet, we can not just put the responsibility on the companies since they are able to make money as we keep on consuming. By saying “You know, I have kids, I want peace on earth, I want all good things. And yet I found that people that also want those things unable to realize that we’re all a huge part of this problem.”, Jason Bradford, he touches on a good point. Since we are a part of the problem, we need to take action to solve it.

            First of all we should not let the advertisement brainwash us to consume more and more so that the companies will not keep on damaging the environment by extracting more energy from it. We can ask for more laws to protect environment, we can organize people to stand for their earth rights etc. Our ability to make change should not be underestimated. In the movie, Derrick Jensen says we can not save the day by buying energy saving bulbs but it can be seen as a starting point to get more aware of “What is happening around and what can I do to change it?” So we should stop thinking that we can have infinite growth on a finite plan, as he says.

             It is not very hard to find ways to make a better world. I believe the first thing we should do is to learn more and act more for this purpose. We inherited from this planet from our ancestors and will give it to our next generation. It is obvious that the generation before us did not take good care of it but we can fix things and make it better. We can not just leave the solution to this problem “someone who is smart/authorized” as in the example in the movie “smart people from Washington”. Thinking from this perspective maybe we should change our main question to “What responsibilities do we, as all people living on this earth, have in building a sustainable and convivial future?” Maybe it is time to open up our eyes and tell the others to open their eyes.

Class with Can Kaya

Sole traders

Unincorporated businesses owned by and individual for profit.

The individual runs the business on their own and has sole responsibility for its success and failure.

Owner is also the manager.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Owners retain all profits	Unlimited liability
Easy to form	Financing limitations
Owners have flexibility	Management deficiencies
	Lack of continuity

Internal locus of control: they believe that the future is under their control

External locus of control: believe in faith or chances

Partnership

More managerial help, more finance but more conflict.

Advantages	Disadvantages
Expended financial capacity	Difficult to solve
Easy to form	Interpersonal conflict
Management skills	Unlimited financial liability
	Lack of continuity

What I learned on class last week

Public sectors are important:

• -       Resources are taken under control
• -       Non-trustable things like defense must be controlled.
• -       Employee
• -       Ownership of strategic resources
• -       Country may lack capital in private sector
• -       Protection of the public interest
• -       Is able to provide goods for social benefit

Outsourcing: obtain (goods or a service) from an outside or foreign supplier, esp. in place of an internal source

Government doesn’t have enough money for running prisons so it outsources it to a private firm.

Public Goods: provided equally to everybody so people don’t have to compete for its use.

Non-excludable (quantity available) ---- Non- rivalrous (benefit available)

If you were a private sector company would you be supplying public goods?

Because of the free rider problem you won’t get any money. Profit must come from the people using the lighthouse but you can’t get that money. Private investors have no reason to provide public goods because of the free rider problem.

Merit goods: everybody needs them but not everyone has the ability to pay them if it is provided by the private sector.

Franchisor- IB

Franchisee- Koç school 

What we did in class...

Matrix:

1.Dictionary meaning, the tissue between the cells

2.In terms of business, the structure

• What values do we share? Friendship, respect, honesty
• Negative values: prejudice, hate, intolerance, and selfishness

Style: Koc school: how do people behave? What things are tolerated and in tolerated

Kadikoy Anadolu Lisesi : is it the same spirit as Koc school? The way people talk to each other is different

• Shared values shape up the other elements

Structure in an organization: departments, sub departments

Relate to the organization itself: top 3 = the people in bottom 3 create them

The systems are created because people decide that they are needed

Strategy = answer to the 3rd Q

• Technology: internal systems, external factor: provides us with the resource: what makes the technology available to us
• Data management systems in our school: ara karne, e-okul (eziyet okul☺ ) system,

Generate strengths and weaknesses = by looking at 7 –s and how they are related to each other and if its powerful

Collection of facts no subject

What makes the piles build the building? The 7 – S Matrix

"More than just a pile of bricks, every single organization is more than just a collection of people."

Strategy of school = improve the performance of the students

The goal is wrong = it should be the future life, not the report card

Hit by the QUIZ

Because I wasn't at school on Friday I didn't know that we had a quiz on Monday. When I learned the time there was a quiz, it was too late. The paper was in front of me and Mr. Sen was assigning the questions. So without any choice I started to answer. You can check some of the questions and the answers about the quiz below.

1.Define private sectors

It is the sector in which the government doesn’t own the business.

2.Name the service sectors of an economy

Tertiary and quaternary sectors are service sectors.

***Service is related to a process from bringing a product to consumer. Q3

***What they provide to the customer isn’t a process of using natural goods ex: Google Q4

4. Define the mission of a business

The mission of a business can be defined as its purpose and to fulfill the needs of customers.

5. Why are external factors important for a business?

A business will take action according to the external factors. It is important in planning but for planning you have to know where you are. To know where you are you must know the external factors (steeple) and the internal factors. 

Except for the quiz but with the help of the answers we got from the quiz we discussed SWOT and STEEPLE

SWOT- strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats

Externals: OT    

Internal: SW

***Swot analysis is essential in planning because it shows where the business is. The first step of planning.

                    7-S matrix: where the strengths and weakness come from.

+

                    Steeple: (external factors) opportunities and threats

                                                                                 =

                                   SWOT: What should we do to get where we want.

Process of planning:

1.    Where we are now (swat)

2.    Where do we want to be at a particular time in future (in time x=horizon)----objectives

3.     What should we do to get where we want.  (Answers the question what my strategy is?)

4.    How do we know we are getting there. (control)

Time is an important factor and you can not make a plan about it.!! Everything is related to time without the precision of time you can not be able to accomplish something in business.

Continuing in the Steeple analysis of the school:

Legal aspects: In law we are all the same but in particular we are not all the same. The law does not always tell you what is right and wrong. You do not find all the laws written down in somewhere.

Students have right because the courts have behaved as they had rights.

Sometimes laws fail to reflect ethics.

What can and cant be thought? Ex: ban of political discussions.

Ethical factors: judging a student whether you like or not, fake reports.

Ethics change from generation to generation. Ex: girls being able to got to school.

Businesses show their selves as green and environmental when they are not because: 

** *Being environmental friendly can be costly but they do it in order for their reputation in society, it is about the image.

Do companies adopt environmental policies because they are good or do they adopt it because they are ethical?

In ethical thinking you think in terms of cost and benefits when you study business.

Don’t always judge something, if it is good or bad according to its benefits. 

I heard from other business students

On Friday I wasn't at school but I learned what was done in class by other business students. Here is how I developed what they told me:

Steeple- external factors effecting business growth 

Social technological economic ethical politics legal environmental

Social- schools reputation students and their families background

It is about occupation, ethics and demography

Political- is about what students and parents think, if they all agree on something that is wrong than there is a need for change.

In case of the government it is what the public thinks.

Economic- if dollar weakens it is an advantage for you if your doing imports.

Disadvantage; when dollar goes up if you have a debt to be pay in dollars then the amount of money you will pay will go up.

THE HİGHER THE RİSK THE HİGHER THE REWARD