Greater Comfort With Ambiguity Affect Businesses

Jingran Dai
Dr. Dahlie
Expos 101
March 4, 2019
The extent to Which Ambiguity Affects Businesses
The business environment is getting more complex, especially due to changing consumer preferences and technological advancements. The corporate life offers many internal complexities as well as external complications; all brought about by constant changes. Change is currently considered to be the only certainty across the universe. Each day, individuals are bound to deal with ambiguity. Ambiguity results in complexity, which makes decision making a difficult issue. Nonetheless, successful businesses today are required to embrace ambiguity and identify means of handling such ambiguities. Companies deal with a large number of multi-channels with their consumers, each having their specific responsibilities and priorities. Additionally, even the relationships that companies have with their competitors cannot be plainly understood, since some markets require companies to compete with one another but at the same time, collaborate. Ambiguity is inevitable for a majority of businesses, and the extent to which such ambiguity affects business is dependent on the response and adaptability.
Big food and technology companies are among the most affected by greater ambiguity. These two businesses have grown to be among the most powerful institutions globally. Food companies spend a lot of money annually for market researchers to develop products that will make them more competitive and increase their market share. Part of their research involves identifying their customer’s preferences and making products that fit this category. Such is the case of the American food companies like General Mills, Nabisco, and Mars, who strive to satisfy their consumers urge for tasty foods without considering the health complications brought about by such products (Moss 259). Similarly, technology companies strive to gain as much information from their consumers to be able to identify their behavior patterns and use them to their advantage. Although social media is considered a platform for the public to air their views openly and communicate freely to other individuals, Zuckerberg’s team has been able to gather useful information about their users through the use of algorithms, to make individuals more predictable (Foer 77). The need for big technology companies like Facebook to gain more control over their users has resulted in users conforming to the ways presented by the platforms and a complete lack of privacy. Both food and technology companies use information from their consumers to create a culture that is misleading and one that lacks private contemplation. For the big food companies, the CEO’s are aware that the products manufactured have high sugar and fat content, which increases the chances of obesity in children. However, the companies continue to manufacture the products and add special ingredients to make consumers hungrier (Moss 260). The two scenarios prove that big food and technology companies do not consider ambiguity to be a good aspect of business. In fact, the companies strive to eliminate any form of ambiguity in their environments by developing more complex algorithms and allocating more revenues for market research. ...