Utopia. Globalization generates risks for business. Team building. Delighting customers

Text at p. 39, Utopia

   This article is about the employees of SAS Institute who live in a workers’ Utopia.

   These employees work in rather easy atmosphere. SAS was chosen as one of the best companies to work for in the USA by Fortune magazine. Employees don’t take the load off their workers’ shoulders. There is some ready-cooked meal for them in the gourmet. Employers are helping their staff fill their leisure too. They offer swimming pools, fitness centers, guitar lessons, providing garden allotments. Some companies also set the standard for employees to follow in their private lives too. They give different cash bonuses especially for healthy behavior. According to the article, at these companies hardly anyone ever leaves because any of them can have a “job satisfaction”.

   Why is it Utopia? The answer is also ready. According to this text, if employers really want to show that they are helping employees balance their lives, the answer is not to do their shopping, fix their teeth and issue them with laptops so that they can work “flexibly” right through the night and people don’t work too hard. There is another reason why it is Utopia. Certainly this way of working wouldn’t be easy, and probably not cheap either for companies.

Text at p. 41, Job satisfaction

This text is about satisfaction of job getting by different employers and employees. The text is an article from “The Times” and written by Tim Reid. Here are some statistic facts about it.

   Office workers have become “snobby” and 90 per cent of employers and 70 per cent of employees said that it caused staff division. That’s why filing clerks are known as “Data Storage Specialists”, secretaries as “Executaries”, post-room workers as “Office Logistics Co-ordinators” etc.

   Then 70 per cent of office workers said that might give up a bigger pay for a more professional work. It also found that 70 per cent of them believed the people they meet outside work instantly judged them by their job title.

   One can see that this small text gives rather useful information about office workers’ attitude of their work and job title and about their job satisfaction.

Text at p. 49, Globalization generates risks for business

This text is an article from PR Newswire and it gives us some facts about risks for business and globalization. There are some organizations which keep those risks in their limits such as Control Risks Group, Industrial Research Bureau of US and European companies, Research for Control Risks etc.

   The risks can be different. It can be kidnap, corruption, organized and petty crime, terrorism, internal fraud etc. US executives polled believe that globalization generates more risk for investors.

   This article also gives a survey about the most dangerous risks. According to it, the most critical reputational risk is share-holder action, the most significant security risk is kidnap, and the foremost political risk is international sanctions.

   According to that survey, the driving factors of these problems in Russia and the former Soviet Union are sophisticated fraud, corruption and organized crime. It also gives some statistic facts about other countries of the world.

Text at p. 57, How a mythical merchant uses three avenues of the net for e-commerce

This text was taken from Business Week. It tells us about e-commerce on an example of its mythical firm which is called Cool Sportz and the advantages of that e-commerce. The most useful advantage of it is saving the time when the goods are ordering on the Internet, when payments are realizing on it and when different designers all over the world can offer some product design through the Net. It’s also easy-to-use the auctions on the Net when products don’t sell. It’s really easy not only for employees and for buyers too to hold all the orders in electronic form as it may give a possibility to save some paper and time.

Text at p. 70, Team building

  This article which was taken from Accountancy magazine is about the importance of team building. The main idea of it is on the title of the article which is “Team building involves more than throwing a few people together”. And there are six measures for team building. The first is making a clear reason for the team to exist. The second says that members must be able to express their opinions freely without fear of retribution and feel that their suggestions will be taken seriously. The third one gives an idea that people that have nothing to contribute shouldn’t have been selected for the team in the first place. The forth measure is about the discussion should be encouraged and disagreements should be natural. The fifth says that the team should have a skilled leader. And according to the last one, team members need to be able to see how they are doing against the objectives set at the beginning of the project. In other words, the result should have its place.

Text at p. 79, article A