Originally Posted by AndrewC

What are you responsible for as a PTM if you don't mind me asking.

I'm sort of special. My job title is one of the Internal Coordinators at Compass, so I've been responsible for everything under that job description. But, I've also fulfilled/do fullfill about 70% of the Shift Supervisor roles as part of my duties as IC. If you want specifics I can clarify more over PM. The job descriptions are available here.

Originally Posted by AndrewC

I suppose, I don't even own a burberry scarf.

LOL

Yes I'm sure Andrew, Stereotypes Do come from somewhere don't they? And this stereotype isn't exactly Racist/Ethnic/Religious is it? So according to theory there must be some rational element behind it.

What is this supposed to mean? What Rational element did you find in this "theory". You clearly do not know anything about business and have watched the news and seen a scan about Enron or you have seen something about Nike operating sweat shops.

You aren't denying Buisness works on profit maximization and cost reduction, And you know very well how they go about doing it! But I'm really not going to argue any further, because I just don't need to! The current Financial crisis/Sweat shops/Unfair practices can be blamed on the world's orthopedics maybe?

Publicly traded companies have a legal obligation to maximize shareholder profit. But not every company is like Enron and not every company has executives who conduct insider trading. Research the CEO of Costco, as honest business man who treats his employees like equals. Take a business class and learn that ethics and fair business practice is as much a part of success as fraud in the past.

And As far as Bill Gates and Warren Buffet et all are concerned, you must be kidding me! What else do you think they will do with all that money?

You are telling me, that you would leave over 40 billion dollars to charity in your will instead of giving it to family and friends? So when businesses succeed it is because they are unethical, but when they are responsible for the largest charitable foundation in the world they are just doing it cause they are bored. C'mon.

That doesn't change the fact that Microsoft is still a bullying monopoly.

Microsoft, the ruthless monopoly that so horribly employs over 100, 000 people. Give me a break, they are a monopoly because their operating system was used on IBM computers which were the only computers businessmen trusted because all their businesses used major IBM servers. Microsoft is successful because of good business decisions and smart choices as well as taking advantage of opportunities. Do not associate success with corruption.

I am starting to think this is a joke because your arrogance is shocking. I suppose all football players are knuckle heads and all philosophy students sit around and smoke hash all day. Do not argue things you have no idea about.

Well it is quite clearly obvious that you have just proven your "I know more then you stereotyping/assumption making simpletons"mentality that makes students dislike and dismiss commerce student's as arrogant/cocky! Well done

You are mistaken if you think I'm one of those random everyday "customers" of yours whose entire span of knowledge is based around stuff they saw on discovery/human rights watch reports/CNN, hence all they know is Enron,Nike, Microsoft and hence proclaim "Oooh corporate scum, corruption, greed, doom!".
I will simply not make any statements unless I have done readings from various sources over a extended period of time!

And as far as Bill Gates is concerned, he is NOT giving out money because he is "bored", nor has he any reason to give to his "friends and family". He will be dead when his will is in order, at that time what exactly would he gain by "pleasing" them? Trust me mate In the very long run we all are dead and we all are on our own, friends and family its all a worldly concept! On the other hand him helping out people gives him the satisfaction that he is doing the world a good, helping out people; And this feeling increases his "Personal Utility". Its the same philosophical concept as a soldier who dives on a grenade to save his unit, because he doesn't want to face the sight of them dying and him doing nothing about it! The utility of guilt is greater then his life. Answer the question what would me or you or any other person do in his place? The exact same thing!

Anyways I don't see any point of continuing this any further, I'll let others and time be the judge here. Its all arbitrary sir

Originally Posted by AndrewC

What is this supposed to mean? What Rational element did you find in this "theory". You clearly do not know anything about business and have watched the news and seen a scan about Enron or you have seen something about Nike operating sweat shops.



Take a business class and learn that ethics and fair business practice is as much a part of success as fraud in the past.



I am starting to think this is a joke because your arrogance is shocking. I suppose all football players are knuckle heads and all philosophy students sit around and smoke hash all day. Do not argue things you have no idea about.

Arrogance according to the dictionary meaning is : "overbearing pride evidenced by a superior manner toward inferiors.
the manifestation of scorn and contempt
displaying a sense of being better than others
the trait of condescending to those of lower social status"

It is quite clear who is being arrogant/patronizing/condascending in this case.

As I said in my last post sir, this is a no-hoper and we have pretty much de-railed the topic
All this faculty mudslinging is rather uneccesary, the world will still be the same once we all graduate! We are just being socialized/trained to do our respective roles: Your job is to generate profit by "any means possible" and you will do it well! End of story
Cheers!

Caterine,

My point was not that the Commerce degree is any better or worse. In fact, as you know, I think the Quality of Education we get is shit all across the board. As you said, it doesn't hinder a person to not have a commerce degree.

As for my thing about Managerial Accounting, I should have elaborated but I was a bit pissed off, but I'm sure you can imagine why. The reason why I said this is so that we can actually figure out the inconsistencies in accounting with the services. As I showed you the other day, there are glaring problems with the accounting of certain services in the past, and having that accounting course under the belt helps one understand the shortcomings.

As far as 2aa3 goes, it's more about preparing numbers for external sources, rather than the long-term, risk assessment of 2ab3.

Now, as far as everything else goes, Huzaifa, I totally disagree with you on any point you made about corporations. You don't cut corners to make a buck. It's why we have such things like Enron failures, Subprime bubbles bursting, Argentinian economic crises, Madoff's ponzi scheme etc. People get caught. It's not sustainable to have unethical business practices because it doesn't work out in the long run.

Microsoft does not have a monopoly at all. People have the choice of using Apple products, or Linux products. With the existance of that choice, there is no problem.

I'm going to turn this idealogical and go off topic if we start on the path of the ethics of profit-maximizing, so I'm going to just do the smart thing and create a new thread.

Yes ofcourse Mr Rohan, You do have a point that there are consequences in the "long run".

But the definition of long run is very much relative/arbitrary for all people, your definition of it would never be what I consider "time spent raking in money vs time spent suffering the consequnces"

Even as far as the consequences are concerned, who are the first ones to lose their job in the subprime crisis/argentina? The working class/retiree's who lost their investment and the middle/upper middle white collars who were sent home. Enron/Web Bubble burst is pretty much the same, its the everyday investors who had their stock tank and the battalion's of IT workers who lost their jobs after it burst.

Sure North America does have a good enough legal system that does come down HARD on anyone "IF" they get caught, but for me personally far too much goes on covertly that is either never caught, or is monopolistic(and hence not officially legal but unethical to small buisnesses/consumers).

And As far as Microsoft is concerned I didn't mean it was a monopoly for the consumer choice, I was referrring to the internal buisness mechanisms/strategic behaviour.

Anyways I guess I'm just too cynical/marxist in my view of the corporate world for your liking! But trust me I do have my rationale/supporting reasons for it.

Anyways You are right, this is not the topic we were at! I do apologize for that.

It is quite clear who is being arrogant/patronizing/condascending in this case.

I am not the one here insulting your degree. You have made up this fallacy that business is a ruthless and heartless trait and you have to be a "pig" to be successful. Both my parents are successful entrepreneurs who have based their business off of ethics and customer relations and I study business not as a means to throw away my ethics and sell my soul but as an area of strength and interest.

You are in poli-sci I see. Stereotype tells me you are both hypocritical and speak without content, as well, your are more self motivated and care more about personal image than your fictional fight for the little guy. But clearly I would not assume this about you because I don't know you and it would be foolish to judge someone based on their career and/or academic pursuit.

I will simply not make any statements unless I have done readings from various sources over a extended period of time!

Give me names, academic materials or any other source that is not main stream media. I have asked you multiple times and you have given me nothing.

Do not come in here, and insult my degree or my career path which I take very personally. Do not come in here, and try and tarnish the reputations and discredit those who work so hard to be successful. I strongly suggest, that in your time here, you visit the Business School, listen to keynote speakers and educate yourself because in only 3 years I have been exposed to dozens and dozens of industry professionals. I concede not everyone in business is ethical but then again noone in any profession is, however to blindly assume that all business is in someway corrupt is a slap in the face to anyone who conducts themselves in a legitimate way.

Good lord, You aren't getting my point here are you? whatever I said doesn't apply to all commerce graduates, infact alot of them spend their times doing honest/constructive work anywhere from lower rung cubicle ones to mid to semi upper level office managers. However these employees aren't the ones who make their descisions or for that matter any wrongdoing, that is reserved for the ones who managed to climb to corporate ladder to the very top! And you do have to posess a certian list of qualities to do that and "sadly" hardwork and honesty aren't at the very top of that list(Thought they are an important part of it). If they were, the world would be a better and more egalitarian place!

I never directly mentioned that if you are a commerce graduate/student you are bound to behave in a certain way, I was talking about a different entity. You always have a choice, corruption/heartless behaviour is a disease that can take effect in any profession, It is human nature after all. But the buisness world is more suspectible because they operate in a certain way(It is the whole profit maximization and kill or be killed scenario), not all of them do, but the ones that matter at the very top seldom don't have any option.

You might have good ideals now(And I'm very sure of that) but unlike your parents if you go join a big company where you are not your own master, chances very soon in your career you will face a choice similar to what I described. It will be A) Progress into the next room & get an office with a window and a Audi or B) Stick with your ideals and get overtaken by a rival manger.

And as far as sources go, I don't neccesarily write them down/keep track, I simply read and move on. And actually I have gotten into trouble for not sourcing essay content, Citations are not really my thing I rely far to much on memory sadly.
But for your demand here are a few that i've skimmed over(apart from the economist,forbes, american economic review): HN 90 .E4 H84 2003
HV 6769 .S72 2006 & JF 1081 .P35 2002

And also that signature is old, I have since then decided not to pursue polisci, I am an economics major for now, hence corporate ethics now have direct relavance to my future. That is exactly the reason why i took time out to read up on them last month.
Therefore chances are I'll most hopefully be working in a corporate environment, now I woudn't be bashing my own job would I?

I've tried to take a back seat on this issue, but I am going to chime in on a few things.

It's not entirely Wall Street's fault, the Community Reinvestment Act as it was used during the Clinton years did more to precipitate this crisis than any amount of "corporate greed." - http://www.aei.org/docLib/20081203_1123724NovFS Og.pdf

The $18.4 Billion in bonuses that Obama called "bad taste" were in fact paid out to 165,000 employees (that's about $112,000 per person for an average salary of about $400,000 including said bonus). http://network.nationalpost. com/np...of-talent.aspx

Most importantly, the Recession isn't even that bad. FDR was right when he lamented that we only have to fear fear itself. So why is everyone in politics and the media trying to make this seem worse than it is? Oh right... it was an election year stupid. (and in the age of 24/7 News media... fear makes money)
http://network.nationalpost. com/np...miserable.aspx

The US would benefit from some new regulation, but in many ways they need less regulation. The fact that the US has no real equivalent to Canada's Bank Act is one of the main pitfalls of US regulations. That's not to say that we're perfect, we have 13 securities regulators after all, however our Banks are the Best in the World. The Bank Act, and the fact that the Green Chamber keeps its hands out of the Bank of Canada's cookie jar, is why we're the best.

It has dawned on me, from looking at your public profiles, that I've actually taken more Economics Courses than some of the people here who are majoring in Economics. This is in no way an insult, more a reflection of the fact that I'm done my degree while you are only part way through yours. I thus recommend that you all take Econ 3K03 - Topics in Monetary Economics with Gordon Holmes. It's probably the most relevant course to understanding the current situation and Gordon Holmes teaches it with many historic, real world examples. - http://www.mcmaster.ca/economics/holmesg/index.cfm

Lastly, in regards to "fair" trade and factories in the developing world. It is important to remember that the sweatshops of the developing world, in many cases, provide a higher income than the average income of the country in which they reside and that the next most likely occupation for a female child sweatshop worker is prostitution. - http://www.econlib.org/library/Colum...weatshops.html

To quote Dr. Powell, "it's bad, but compared to what?"

Also of note is the fact that many of these developing countries that have sweatshops have longer average life expectancies than people in Great Britain did during the Industrial Revolution. In fact, the life expectancy in the developing world is now on par with that of the US & UK in the 1940s (Lomborg, Skeptical Environmentalists page 50-53, original reference material from UNDP). The fact is that these sweatshops are helping the developing world industrialize faster and cleaner than we ourselves industrialized.

Originally Posted by Alex McColl

It has dawned on me, from looking at your public profiles, that I've actually taken more Economics Courses than some of the people here who are majoring in Economics.

McColl, that's creeping.

Originally Posted by Alex McColl

The fact is that these sweatshops are helping the developing world industrialize faster and cleaner than we ourselves industrialized.

This is actually very true. A good example of this is South Korea. However, that being said, there still are very many ethical issues associated with the practice... work conditions, child labour laws etc.

Originally Posted by dvy88

This is actually very true. A good example of this is South Korea. However, that being said, there still are very many ethical issues associated with the practice... work conditions, child labour laws etc.

Exactly! We do need to look at the pros and cons, pros being income and development, cons being exploitation and lack of a living wage...Simply because these sweatshops are providing income to a many in the Global South, doesn't mean we need to accept their treatment of workers worldwide.

And this ties in very well with the governance of the MSU and university as a whole...has anyone noticed where all the clothing with Mac logos or the Mac name on it is made? Some is made by Jerzees, particularly in their Honduras factory, one of few unionized clothing factories in the Honduras. Recently, Jerzees' parent company has stated it wants to close the factory...if this happens, the MSU and Titles should work together to find a new supplier that had pledged not to use sweatshop labour and that treats its workers with dignity.

Mr Mcoll for "now" atleast I'm in no position to argue the purely economic aspects having taken only four economic courses at Mac, but I will defo look into the links you provided as well as other sources. I have only done my readings for the negative side of the whole crisis.
However I cannot agree with your stance as far as sweatshops are concerend, the links you provided are full of absoulte nonsense, companies know they face a PR backlash from goody good Human rights activists so they come up with ways to rationalize and show it in a positive light.

The Lifespan's are greater due to improvements in nutrition, crop yields, Medical services, medicines as well as the world's movement away from epidemic disease types to degenerative. Industrial revolution was a time rife with plagues/cholera's and other nice stuff that mankind hadn't find the cure/awareness to. It has no relavance to today.

I woudn't expect you to understand the conditions in a sweat shop unless you have lived in a third world country for 18 years like me! Kids 8-10 are made to work 10-12 hours a day stiching soccer balls, they have no choice but to work and cannot leave since they are under an unofficial contract to the local tout who is payed directly by the companies to bully workers.

Then the same balls are sold at your friendly local Walmart! Who demand them at increasingly cost effective ways!

And I would highly doubt the data provided so as to the wages they pay these people, the data comes from "owners" in countries that rank pretty high as far as corruption is concerned. I have heard first hand accounts of workers who hadn't been payed for 3 months because they threatened to leave and another case where a kid gave an interview to a magazine and was tortured to set an example. And who is demanding this kind of treatment? The developed world who can't be "bothered" paying 12-15 and hour to their people or invest in captial machinery.
Plus your article is by a vague assistant prof from Suffolk, I'm pretty sure there are counter examples by even highly distinguished sources!

Originally Posted by huzaifa47

The Lifespan's are greater due to improvements in nutrition, crop yields, Medical services, medicines as well as the world's movement away from epidemic disease types to degenerative. Industrial revolution was a time rife with plagues/cholera's and other nice stuff that mankind hadn't find the cure/awareness to. It has no relavance to today.

yay geo!

geo makes me happy.

sweat shops make me sad. :(

Originally Posted by c.erl

Exactly! We do need to look at the pros and cons, pros being income and development, cons being exploitation and lack of a living wage...Simply because these sweatshops are providing income to a many in the Global South, doesn't mean we need to accept their treatment of workers worldwide.

And this ties in very well with the governance of the MSU and university as a whole...has anyone noticed where all the clothing with Mac logos or the Mac name on it is made? Some is made by Jerzees, particularly in their Honduras factory, one of few unionized clothing factories in the Honduras. Recently, Jerzees' parent company has stated it wants to close the factory...if this happens, the MSU and Titles should work together to find a new supplier that had pledged not to use sweatshop labour and that treats its workers with dignity.

Actually the MSU updated its policy on socially responsible purchasing this year (I had the privilege of writing it). In the new version the MSU can:

- Demand compliance with our ethical standards of labour
- Demand compliance with our environmental standards
- Set our acceptable labour policies to match those of the ILO (UN Mandated Labour Organization)
- Set a process by which the MSU can not only back out of deals for non-compliance, but levy a four year boycott on a supplier

The MSU takes socially responsible purchasing very seriously and we ensure (through this policy) that all of our suppliers and subcontractors meet our standards. I can promise you the MSU does not take in supplies or merchandise made by people who are not in compliance with international law - And if by some chance we are or did so, I'd be the first one knocking angrily on office doors demanding answers

The policy should be online if you'd like to see it... but knowing the website problems we've been having as of late it may be awol.

- Andrew