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Archive for the ‘Ethics’ Category

Toy surprises buried in cereal boxes or in bags of popular snacks have been a marketing tactic for as long as package goods have been sold in supermarkets. Most people probably can’t even imagine a Cracker Jack box without a prize inside.

Giveaways are not just for kids; adults have long participated in incentive giveaways ranging from a free tote with the purchase of makeup or perfume at a department store, to $500 gift cards with a new account at the local bank. All of these giveaways are designed to entice the consumer to try particular brands and services.

Recognizing the power of free offers to drive consumer purchases, NetFree Direct LLC, a leading Internet marketing company, has taken the concept to the next level. Through the company’s Web site, consumers can obtain a variety of rewards including mobile phones, flat-screen TVs, laptops, PlayStations and other game consoles, digital cameras, gift cards and more, simply by completing advertisers’ surveys and signing up for subscriptions and free trial offers. Read the rest of this entry »

Business always moves faster than government …

It’s no surprise that a great deal of lawmakers’ time is spent reacting to advances in commerce and science. It’s also no surprise that one of their favorite tactics is to call on their enforcement agencies to bring scrutiny against any topic about which they’re struggling to understand.

We’re now seeing this applied against at least two e-currency operations.

One of them, INT Gold, saw their head offices in Texas raided by the FBI in December. No arrests were made and no disclosures were presented to indicate the reason for their actions. The only auspices mentioned were that they were pursuing an ongoing fraud investigation. It’s now been over a month and nothing further has happened.

At roughly the same time, e-Gold was also served with a search warrant. It seems the justification was petty — they allegedly didn’t have a ‘required’ currency-exchange license — and they were upset enough to place the following posting on their website:

e-gold® welcomes US Government review of its status as a privately issued currency January 20, 2006

“Starting in mid-December 2005, Gold & Silver Reserve, Inc. (G&SR), contractual Operator and primary dealer for e-gold, has been the subject of a warranted search of its premises and records, had its domestic bank accounts frozen, and been the target of a precisely timed, extraordinarily misleading attack by a major business publication.

“In an emergency hearing in US District Court January 13, 2006, the freeze order on G&SR’s bank accounts was lifted. Though numerous criminal claims had been made in obtaining the search and seizure warrants, the Government has not sustained these allegations and the only remaining claim is a contention that G&SR has operated as a currency exchange without the proper license. G&SR had previously proposed to the Government that e-gold be classified for regulatory purposes as a currency, enabling G&SR to register as a currency exchange. In a Treasury report released January 11, 2006, however, the Department of Treasury reaffirmed their interpretation of the USC and CFR definitions of currency as excluding e-gold.

“G&SR, for nearly a year, has been engaged with an agency of Treasury in a BSA (Bank Secrecy Act) compliance examination it had voluntarily initiated. G&SR, though preferring that the venue was not a courtroom, welcomes the opportunity to extend its discussions with the Government on how best to achieve appropriate statutory or regulatory cognizance of e-gold while continuing to build e-gold’s market share as a medium of international commerce.

“Despite the unfounded charges and adverse misleading publicity that have severely damaged both e-gold and G&SR, G&SR has continued to meet all financial obligations and remain completely operational. e-gold remains highly committed to its goal of bringing, for the first time in history, to people of any financial means across the globe, a secure payment mechanism at a fraction of the cost of any other system. e-gold fully expects to transcend the unfortunate events of the past month and resume its exponential growth.

“Further information can be found at:

www.e-gold.com
www.omnipay.com
www.treas.gov/press/releases/reports/js3077_01112005_MLTA.pdf”

The proactive approach by e-Gold should be applauded. INT Gold should have done the same thing.

If more of the public only knew how many times search papers were served on financial institutions for one reason or another, they’d no doubt be as skeptical as I am about the publicity the authorities have given their actions against these two e-currency companies.
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In the 25 + years of working with some of the best people in Business Development within the power generation industry, we have found some unique characteristics that separate these individuals from the rest. It doesn’t seem to matter what organization they work for, or the services, the client base or the economic climate. We find that these individuals are in fact the top 3% of the professionals in their field. In addition to learning to think as CEO’s, Presidents, entrepreneurial leaders of Business Development units, we’ve discovered they have acquired the behavioral characteristics of a leader. They have learned how to set strategic and operational objectives in putting together plans, how to be visionaries and see opportunities for their organizations that other individuals may miss, and in the role of Business Development, they have mastered the 12 Core Competencies, a benchmark to measure leaders.

One of the most compelling definitions of a leader is an individual whose mere presence inspires the desire to follow. When asked if leaders are born or bred, the general consensus is that leadership can be taught. While few of us have had the opportunity to be formally trained or mentored in leadership, all of us are called to be a leader at different times and circumstances in our lives. Leadership is first about who you are as an individual, not what you do, and the term character best describes the core characteristic of a leader. It is this part of an individual that inspires other to follow, so we see character as the summation of an individual’s principles and values, core beliefs by which one anchors and measures their behavior in all roles in life. Principles and values of a positive leader include loyalty, respect, integrity, courage, fairness, honesty, duty, honor and commitment.
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Background Check Resources

Whether you’re hiring a CEO, a subcontractor, a babysitter, or even looking for a new tenant or roommate, you’re taking a big risk. It’s the nature of business unfortunately for people to go to great lengths to misrepresent themselves and thus create the need for background check resources and references.

Avoid doing business with deceptive people with these 5 key factors in mind:

1. Prepare comprehensive histories from vague or misleading responses
2. Filter fact from fiction and deal with dishonest interviewees
3. Deal with legal issues including which questions you can and cannot ask
4. Make a confident, well-researched hiring decision
5. Use waivers that protect you legally during the background check process

Personal References

A personal reference could be anyone whom the candidate happens to know but most likely has never worked for. For landlords or people looking for a nanny for their children the request for references should still be for business references and not personal ones. The landlord-tenant relationship is still a business one as is the relationship between nannies and in-home health care workers and their employers. Nowadays, personal references have become one of those overused catchphrases that disguises the real work of responsible, effective reference checking.

Background Checks

The term background check is another catchall phrase that means checking the accuracy of basic information provided by a candidate for employment or similar. It’s an important step in the employee selection process because it is a relatively painless and inexpensive way for the prospective employer to whittle down the pile of applications to only those candidates who are, at least, who they say they are.

While determining whether or not the candidate is whom he or she claims to be is an important first step, it should ultimately lead into real reference checking. There is so much more to learn about a candidate for employment or a prospective tenant or even a babysitter before the final decision can be made. And the only way to learn that is by talking to people who have worked with, rented to, or received service or care from the candidate in question.

Job Application Issues

There are several things employers can do to increase the likelihood of receiving honest responses to job performance questions:

1. Always ask the job seeker to provide a resume that contains a complete work history, including dates of employment for every job held.
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