The arrests of two black men who were waiting for a friend at a Starbucks in Philadelphia have raised questions about how race determines how customers are treated. But does race also affect how the employees are treated within the service industry? Prior research shows that black workers in people-oriented occupations – health care, service...
Commerce
Why the Business Model of Social Media Giants Like Facebook Is Incompatible with Human Rights
Facebook has had a bad few weeks. The social media giant had to apologise for failing to protect the personal data of millions of users from being accessed by data mining company Cambridge Analytica. Outrage is brewing over its admission to spying on people via their Android phones. Its stock price plummeted, while millions deleted...
Trump’s $60 Billion in China Tariffs Will Create More Problems Than They Solve
After spending seven months investigating whether China is engaged in unfair trade practices, the Trump administration announced March 22 that it will impose tariffs on as much as US$60 billion in Chinese imports. The tariffs are meant to address two problems: intellectual property theft by China and a steep and persistent trade deficit. As an...
William McFarland Pleads Guilty In Manhattan Federal Court To Defrauding Investors And A Ticket Vendor Of Over $26 Million
Geoffrey S. Berman, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that WILLIAM McFARLAND pled guilty today to one count of wire fraud in connection with a scheme to defraud investors in a company controlled by McFARLAND, Fyre Media Inc. (“Fyre Media”), as well as its subsidiary (“Fyre Festival LLC”), which...
Confucius Has a Message for Business Leaders Who Want to Succeed: Reflect
One of the most admirable and arguably underrated qualities of leadership is the capacity for reflection. Confucius called it the most noble way to learn wisdom. But when we talk about what makes someone a successful leader, we typically describe attributes like the ability to innovate, make strategic decisions or manage uncertainty. We rarely mention...
How Gender Equality Can Help Fix the Construction Industry
The government-commissioned Farmer Review warned in 2016 that the UK construction industry was “facing challenges that have not been seen before”. In no uncertain terms, it called for major industry-wide change. The “overwhelming risks” foreseen in the review sadly seem to have come to pass. Major contractor Carillion’s collapse comes shortly after an autumn...
Ethiopia Could Be Sitting on One of World’s Great Untapped Gold Deposits
To the west of Ethiopia near the Sudanese border lies a place called the Asosa zone. This may be the location of the oldest gold mine in the world. Dating back some 6,000 years, it provided a key source of gold to the ancient Egyptian empire, whose great wealth was famous throughout the known world....
Almost 50 Years of Equal Pay Legislation – but the Waiting Continues for Women
It will take 217 years for women to achieve equal pay, at the current rate, according to the World Economic Forum. So we can expect many more stories of women earning far less than their male peers – such as the recent case of Carrie Gracie at the BBC, who recently resigned over a pay...
The Ikea Effect: How Ingvar Kamprad’s Company Changed the Way We Shop
Ingvar Kamprad, who started Ikea as a teenager, has died at the age of 91. He started with stationery and stockings, but went on to build one of the world’s biggest furniture companies. And the way he did it has revolutionised how retailers operate. There are two facets of modern life that we have Ikea...
Macron’s Pledge to Wipe Out Coal Is Just as Meaningless as Trump’s Plan to Revive It
In a speech at the 2018 World Economic Forum held in Davos, Switzerland, French President Emmanuel Macron said he wanted to “make France a model in the fight against climate change” and promised to shut all coal-fired power plants by 2021 – two years earlier than the timetable put forward by his predecessor. While...