Buisnesses can change the world

Businesses, especially in today’s globalized world, have a large impact on how we live. They decide which products will be produced and distributed to the public. Out of this pool of goods, we can choose, but if we wanted anything different, unless we produced it ourselves, we would not be able to obtain it. As people become more concerned about the changing environment, and pollution, businesses will play a large role in how quickly we go “green”. The governments can establish regulations and laws in order to start cutting back on pollution, but ultimately it is up to businesses, one, to follow these regulations and two, to start producing more eco-friendly products and come up with other energy sources for us to consume. They are the ones who ultimately have the power to change how we live, change what products we consume and how we consume them. Something simple such as changing packaging materials or how a company advertises would make a huge impact on the environment by changing what and how much the consumer throws away. If packaging were to be made up of something that could be recycled, rather than using plastic packaging, it would cut down on the amount non-biodegradable waste sitting in the landfills. It is also much more healthy for the environment, plastic takes over 400 years to decompose, while paper and cardboard might only take a few months. Although paper can be recycled and is biodegradable and not really all that harmful to the environment the excess production of ads by companies and businesses is wasteful. 30% of all mail delivered is junk mail, and over 100 million trees are needed to make all of these ads each year. 100 million trees!! By not sending out these ad’s imagine the impact this would have. Businesses have the power.

Changing business practices can be environmentally changing. Companies that now own all of the oil and natural gas would be smart in sectioning off of a portion of their profits and start investing in new sources of energy such as wind or solar power. By making a gradual transition, we will have a back up source for when the time comes when the other natural resources run out. However, if businesses fail to start this transition either they will loose revenue to newer companies that have started producing cleaner sources of energy, or we will run out of the resources we are using, and have to go without electricity.

Honda and Toyota are beginning to make this transition. Although they are not in control of the oil and natural gas, their product consumes it. Toyota was the first to come up with the hybrid electric car, and in July of 2008, they introduced the hydrogen car to a select public in California by offering it for lease. It looks not much different from the common everyday vehicle, but the inside is what has completely been transformed. No longer powered on gas, this vehicle uses hydrogen, oxygen and battery power to run, and the only bi-product is water. With luck, the public will begin to catch on to the trend of hydrogen cars when they start to become more affordable, and CO2 transmissions, at least from cars, will begin to steadily decrease. As gas and oil become more scarce, the price will soar, and people will come looking for a vehicle that no longer depends on these resources. Honda predicts that by 2018, the hydrogen car will become very close to the mass produced ordinary vehicles, perhaps by then we will all be considering a hydrogen powered vehicle?

The car industry is considering the future, but there is more to cutting back on pollution by changing the emissions of the car we drive. We are still a consumerist society, we still have trash and waste. What about the factories and industries ? What happens when we run out of room for landfills? Then what? There are still many questions that need answering, many problems that need solutions. Governments can help solve these problems, but businesses need to pave the path for the public. By changing their practices and creating new ones, businesses can significantly impact the environmental conditions, now, as well as in the future. But its up to all of us to do our part.

Culture

In class last Thursday, we had a disscusion about culture and what it was. It dragged my memory back to the preliminary orientation before I left to Germany, when we did an activity pertaining to this topic.

Known fondly by the AFS Volunteers as the “Iceberg”, it gets the students thinking about how much culture is actually by an initial glance at a particular country or area in the world. Really, there is not much. Most of what goes on cannot be seen, unless you are completely emersed in the culture, which is one of the purposes of the AFS program – to get you to look beyond that first impression.

So what sorts of things would you think about a culture if you were just to go for a week visit?
Dress Language
Food/cusine Art/Music/Literature

If you were to live in a country for a year, what other things would you expereience that you wouldn’t otherwise have?
Social behavior Morality Customs Work/jobs
Gender roles Family relationships Beleifs Conception of Beauty
Rules of inheritance Notions of adolescence Concept of cleanliness
Relationship to animals Manners
ETC!!!

For people who have not been able to explore the iceburg, and dive down further towards the tip under the ocean, sometimes they have a hard time understanding reasons for certian actions of another culture.

What is a norm in one country, may be completely taboo in another.

For example:
In Burma, the Paudung tribe has an unusual conception of beauty. Starting at the age of 5, girls begin wearing rings around their neck in order to make it longer. Within this particular culture, a long neck is considered attractive, as well as a way to show of the wealth of the family. The longer the neck, the more metal rings and the more wealthy the family. For people in the United States, the idea of stretching your neck to look beautiful may seem ghastly and unheard of. But for us, what we see as beautiful is much different. It all depends on what you are taught, and what you are familiar with.

However, it does not really matter what norms or taboo is considered. Ideas, practices, speech between one country or culture and another….are not good, nor bad…just different. We as people just have to learn to respect what other people beleive, be flexible, and try to learn from how other people live their lives. If this mutual respect and understanding could be acheived between one culture and another, the world today would be somewhat different.

I would argue that globalization is speeding up this proccess of understanding as countries are becoming more economically connected. As buisness partners, it is now important for each country to be able to understand, or at least relate, socially. It is important today, more than ever, to be able to speak more than one language. But not only is globalization forcing the spread of the knowledge of languages, it is also causing an intermingling between cultures

Ideas, beleifs and cusine are being dispersed across the globe from one country to the next. America has always been a melting pot of cultures, but now the rest of the world is having the oppourtunity to dip their fingers into the pot as well.

But how is globalization affecting culture?

Do foreign investments help or harm Third World countries?

Foreign investment can be benefical as well as harmful. In many ways it depends on how the host country handles the situation. If it knows what it wants to get out of the relationship, and how it can manage it correctly, then the advantages can be immense.However, if the host country does not take steps to manage the extent to which foreign companies have control over buisnesses in the country, then foreign investment can also be a detriment to the economy.

In terms of a sucessful instance of foreign investment, take a look at China. (I know..it is an over used example..oh well…) It has used foreigners in order to create and build jobs within the country by exploiting its human resources for use, and economically it is doing much better than it was a few decades ago. By allowing the investment from abroad, it has gained technologies, products and capital that it likely would have unable to have gained otherwise.

However, there still remain countries who have not been able to benefit from foreigners. Most of these remain part of the Third World, such as in Africa, where the economy has not yet broken away from colonialism, but rather, transformed into an economy that is absorbed by neocolonialism. Areas such as Kenya for example, do not actually have much control over their economies in terms of where the money ends up. Foreign buisnesses dominate many sectors of the economy so much to the point where they are earning over 70% of the revenue that that country actually makes. Even though Africa is actually rich in resources, minerally and agricuturally, the home countries cannot benefit from it because they have no control over where the resources end up. It is being controlled by foreign companies.

Countries such as these could be benefiting from the investments being made in their country if they would only stand up and start creating limitations on how much control the companies have over their economy. It’s easier said than done, however, because regulations are in place, such as TRIM (Trade Related Investment Measures), which prevents the goverment from restricting the operations of foreign investors. This was actually put in place by the WTO! Does it realize that it is actually sustaining poverty in areas such as Africa? Probably.

“A Smarter Planet”

The following was not written by me. It was sent in an e-mail by someone working at IBM. Just thought It would be interesting to share it with the rest of you. It makes some good points.

Today there is growing consensus that global integration is changing the corporate
model and the nature of work itself. But we now see that the movement of information, work
and capital across developed and developing nations – as profound as those are – constitute
just one aspect of global integration.

In the last few years, our eyes have been opened to global climate change, and to the
environmental and geopolitical issues surrounding energy. We have been made aware of
global supply chains for food and medicine. And, of course, we entered the new century with
the shock to our sense of security delivered by the attacks on 9/11.

These collective realizations have reminded us that we are all now connected –
economically, technically and socially. But we’re also learning that being connected is not
sufficient. Yes, the world continues to get “flatter.” And yes, it continues to get smaller and
more interconnected. But something is happening that holds even greater potential. In a word,
our planet is becoming smarter.

This isn’t just a metaphor. I mean infusing intelligence into the way the world literally
works – the systems and processes that enable physical goods to be developed, manufactured,
bought and sold… services to be delivered… everything from people and money to oil, water
and electrons to move… and billions of people to work and live.
What’s making this possible?

• First, our world is becoming instrumented: The transistor, invented 60 years ago, is the
basic building block of the digital age. Now, consider a world in which there are a billion
transistors per human, each one costing one ten-millionth of a cent. We’ll have that by
2010. There will likely be 4 billion mobile phone subscribers by the end of this year…
and 30 billion Radio Frequency Identification tags produced globally within two years.
Sensors are being embedded across entire ecosystems – supply-chains, healthcare
networks, cities… even natural systems like rivers.

• Second, our world is becoming interconnected: Very soon there will be 2 billion people
on the Internet. But in an instrumented world, systems and objects can now “speak” to
one another, too. Think about the prospect of a trillion connected and intelligent things –
cars, appliances, cameras, roadways, pipelines… even pharmaceuticals and livestock.
The amount of information produced by the interaction of all those things will be
unprecedented.

• Third, all things are becoming intelligent: New computing models can handle the
proliferation of end-user devices, sensors and actuators and connect them with backend
systems. Combined with advanced analytics, those supercomputers can turn
mountains of data into intelligence that can be translated into action, making our
systems, processes and infrastructures more efficient, more productive and responsive –
in a word, smarter.

What this means is that the digital and physical infrastructures of the world are
converging. Computational power is being put into things we wouldn’t recognize as computers.
Indeed, almost anything – any person, any object, any process or any service, for any
organization, large or small – can become digitally aware and networked.
With so much technology and networking abundantly available at such low cost, what
wouldn’t you enhance? What service wouldn’t you provide a customer, citizen, student or
patient? What wouldn’t you connect? What information wouldn’t you mine for insight?
The answer is, you or your competitor – another company, or another city or nation – will
do all of that. You will do it because you can – the technology is available and affordable.
But there is another reason we will make our companies, institutions and industries
smarter. Because we must. Not just at moments of widespread shock, but integrated into our
day-to-day operations. These mundane processes of business, government and life – which
are ultimately the source of those “surprising” crises – are not smart enough to be sustainable.

Consider:

• How much energy we waste: According to published reports, the losses of electrical
energy because grid systems are not “smart” range as high as 40 to 70 percent around
the world.

• How gridlocked our cities are: Congested roadways in the U.S. cost $78 billion annually,
in the form of 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons of wasted gas – and that’s not
even counting the impact on our air quality.

• How inefficient our supply chains are: Consumer product and retail industries lose about
$40 billion annually, or 3.5 percent of their sales, due to supply chain inefficiencies.

• How antiquated our healthcare system is: In truth, it isn’t a “system” at all. It doesn’t link
from diagnosis, to drug discovery, to healthcare deliverers, to insurers, to employers.
Meanwhile, personal expenditures on health now push more than 100 million people
worldwide below the poverty line each year.

• How our planet’s water supply is drying up: Global water usage has increased six-fold
since the 1900s, twice the rate of human population growth. According to the Asian
Development Bank, one in five people living today lacks access to safe drinking water,
and half the world’s population does not have adequate sanitation.

• And, of course, the crisis in our financial markets: This will be analyzed for decades, but
one thing is already clear. Financial institutions spread risk but weren’t able to track risk
– and that uncertainty, that lack of knowing with precision, undermined confidence.
It’s obvious, when you consider the trajectories of development driving the planet today,
that we’re going to have to run a lot smarter and more efficiently – especially
as we seek the next areas of investment to drive economic growth and to move large parts of
the global economy out of recession.

Fortunately, we now can. We see this in how companies and institutions are rethinking
their systems and applying technology in new ways.

• Stockholm’s smart traffic system has resulted in 20 percent less traffic, a 12 percent
drop in emissions and a reported 40,000 additional daily users of public transport. Smart
traffic systems are strengthening the competitive positions of cities from London to
Brisbane to Singapore – with many more being planned.

• Intelligent oil field technologies can increase both pump performance and well
productivity – in a business where only 20-30 percent of available reserves are currently
extracted.

• Smart food systems – such as one now running in the Nordics – can use RFID
technology to trace meat and poultry from the farm through the supply chain to
supermarket shelves.

• Smart healthcare can lower the cost of therapy by as much as 90 percent – as
ActiveCare Network is doing for more than 2 million patients in 38 states, whom it
monitors for the proper delivery of their injections and vaccines.

There are many other examples I could cite. Smart systems are transforming energy grids,
supply chains and water management. They are ensuring the authenticity of pharmaceuticals
and the security of currency exchanges. And they are changing everything from organizations’
business models to how they enable their employees to collaborate and innovate.

And remember, the opportunity to become smarter applies not just to large enterprises,
but to smaller and mid-sized companies – the engines of economic growth everywhere. When
we think about systems like supply chains, healthcare delivery and food systems, we’re really
talking about the interactions of hundreds, even thousands of companies, most of them small.
This opportunity also applies beyond business. Smart infrastructure is becoming the
basis of competition between nations, regions and cities.

In a globally integrated economy, investment and work flow not only to the places in the
world that offer cost advantages, skills and expertise. It is flowing to countries, regions and
cities that offer smart infrastructure — everything from efficient transportation systems, modern
airports and secure trade lanes… to reliable energy grids, transparent and trusted markets, and
enhanced quality of life.

Certainly, as you travel the world, you see countries everywhere leapfrogging – not only
to the latest technology and to digital infrastructures, but to the most modern business designs,
processes and models. Ultimately, this is about competitiveness in a globally integrated
economy.

The importance of this moment, I believe, is that the key precondition for real change
now exists: People want it. But this moment will not last forever.

Isn’t it true that the hardest part of driving any kind of change is whether the individual –
the employee, the citizen – feels the need to change at a deeply personal level? And in
hindsight, when the circumstances that cry out for change are gone, when things have returned
to “normal” – don’t we always wish we had been bolder, more ambitious, gone faster, gone
further?

Well, today, from the boardroom to the kitchen table, people everywhere are ready,
eager for a new way of doing things.

That’s why a period of discontinuity is, for those with courage and vision, a period of
opportunity. Over the next couple of years, there will be winners, and there will be losers. And
though it may not be easy to see now, I believe we will see new leaders emerge who win not by
surviving the storm, but by changing the game.

To do that, they will practice forms of leadership that are very different from the models
of the past.

Think about the way the world today actually works: Very few of our systems are the
responsibility of a single entity or decision-maker. So leaders will need to hone their
collaboration skills, because we will need leadership that pulls across systems. We will need to
bring together stakeholders and experts from across business, government and academia, and
all of them will need to move outside their traditional comfort zones. This is something on which
the Council on Foreign Relations has been showing the way for many years.

There is much serious work ahead of us, as leaders and as citizens. Together, we have
to consciously infuse intelligence into our decision-making and management systems… not just
infuse our processes with more speed and capacity.

But I think one thing is clear: The world will continue to become smaller, flatter… and
smarter. We are moving into the age of the globally integrated and intelligent economy, society
and planet. The question is, what will we do with that?

The world now beckoning us is one of enormous promise. And I believe it is one that we
can build – if we open our minds and let ourselves think about all that a smarter planet could be.

If infrastructure could be improve, could countries compete in the real world economy?

Infrastructure is an extremely important entity, it is essential for the development of a country. It helps to maintain the basic standard of living by maintaining important services to the local population such as a clean water supply, roads, sanitation, telecommunication and electric. These services lead to improved health, access to education, and are ultimately the “motor” for economic growth. Other countries will not be as interested in investing in a country that does not have a good railway or road system, because of the lack and ease of accessibility to move around goods and supplies. For most countries, investments allow for that economic growth to happen.

A reason, also, as to why countries with lack of infrastructure are struggling to jump on to the globalization train, is that they are just trying to find the means in order to survive. Without living with clean water or sanitation, people are more likely to become ill, and therefore unable to work. Then for those who are able to, have a difficult time getting to their place of occupation due to the lack of sufficient transportation systems and roadways.

If more governments in areas, such as in the Third World, were to invest in establishing a stronger and more improved infrastructure foundation for their country, not only would the standard of living increase, it would also benefit the whole of the country economically. With people healthy enough and able enough to work, they are now able to start buying supplies and products, which in turn, circulates the money throughout the economy.

Once the economy becomes more solidified within the country, they can start redirecting their thoughts to the global world. They can start manufacturing and producing products that can be exported and traded for other needed goods that are not being produced within the country. They can begin to compete in the globalized economy.

If everyone reached the same standard of living as the US, would there be enough resources to sustain us?

• If everyone reached the same standard of the US, would there be enough resources to sustain us?

I argue, that if it were possible for all of the countries around the world to reach the US standard of living, and live in such a consumerist society as we, that there would not be enough resources to sustain us.

Already 83% of the earth’s surface is influenced by humans. If everyone were to start demanding more “stuff”, the population would not only explode because of the better healthcare and food avaliable, we would have to use the rest of this untouched space. The earth can only hold so many people.

Just as an example, if the world were the size of a picknick table, and there was a banquet of food on top, there is only a limited supply of resources. A few ants discover this plentiful area, and they build homes on and around it, gradually eating up all of the food on the table. Eventually, the area will become over populated, all the while the food supply is steadily decreasing. When there is nothing left, although we are just talking about a picknick table, say there was no where else for the ants to go. They would die because of lack of resources and lack of space. If the world was this picknick table, than we have to be careful and caculate how much of what we have and what is left, or we could end up like the poor ants.

The average human in a developed country uses about

11,465.06 gallons a year. Which is 31.41 gallons a day. – urban
6551.4 gallons a year which is 17.94 gallons a day – rural/poor

Only 2% of the Earth’s water is drinkable.

If all countries were to be part of the more wealthy, urban population, imagine what would happen. Billions of people would be using over 10,000 gallons each year! Certainly, our small supply of freshwater would not be able to hold out very long with so much being used.

It is not only just water that we have to worry about. There are a lot of other resources, both renewable and nonrenuable, that are getting eaten up by human activity. Forests are disappearing due to clearcutting, because of the demand for products produced from them: furniture, paper, boxes, toothpaste, gum, nailpolish, paint, crayons, toilet paper…etc!!! Land, is being taken up by housing developments, roads, farms, landfills…

As humans we have deviated from the order of natural selection, by becoming smarter and outrunning illnesses and health complications using surgery and medicine. Our population is exploding, we are taking over the planet and with so many people, eventually, the earth will not be able to sustain all of our demands for resources. And, perhaps, like the dinosaurs, we too will die out.

The Second Industrial Revolution

Response to the article: In NC, A Second Industrial Revolution

American manufacturing in the 21st century is producing more goods than ever before. We make up almost  one-fourth of the global manufacturing, even Japan and China do not even come close. Although this may be the case, many manufacturing jobs in the United States, such as textile or furniture factoires, are still being outsourced, causing manufacturing employment in the US to shrink dramatically. Companies are finding that they can profit from sending their jobs abroad, because the price of labor in countries like China or India, is much lower. However, the effects of outsourcing vary. There are benefits for those who have learned to adapt to this changing market, but for those who can’t, outsourcing is extremely detrimental.

In North Carolina, Henredon Furniture Industries once employed more than 1,000 people, paying at $14 an hour, pluss health and pension benefits. Many of these people were uneducated and illiterate, yet it was a way for them to obtain a modest living. However, sometime in the 1990′s model’s similiar to those that the furniture industry started being produced in China for roughly $2,000, $3,000 less than what the Henredon Furniture Industries was offering them for. The plant had to be shut down, and all of the workers lost their jobs. For Phillip Wilson, life just got harder. He was working at Henredon as a master carver, but when the plant shut down he had to find another job. His new job, a prison gaurd at the Mountian View correctional facility, pays 15% less than what he’d made carving furniture. He like many other factory workers who were laid off, are usually able to find new jobs but most of them at lower pay. In a study done by the North Carolina Justice and Community Development Center for 1999 and 2000, people who lost manufacturing jobs were earning just 72% of their previous salaries! For these people, outsourcing is extremely unbenefical.

However, with the willingness to adapt to new requirments, previous furniture and textile workers can find better paying jobs. As an example, Whitaker, coming out of highschool, went straight to working at a yarn texturing plant in Yadkinville, a company her mother had worked for for 30 years. At one point, when her company started opening plants abroad, she enrolled at a community college and earned a degree in biotechnology. The same year she graduated, she was hired as a lab technician at Targacept. Her salary was much more than she was being paid at the factory. For Whitaker, the shutting down of the plant actually opened up new possibilites for her to find a better job, she just had to apply herself, and remain flexible.

As for companies loosing buisness for abroad such as Glen Raven Custom Fabrics, focusing on specialty fabrics helped for them to stay in business. For buisnesses in the US to remain prosperous, it is important for them to zero in on “high-value products tha tap America’s technological advantages to offset high labor costs.” In North Carolina the development of biotechnology has created thousands of new jobs, because they have done just that.

Globalization does not cause the loss of jobs, but only relocates and redistributes them. If individuals and businesses can learn to be supple to the change, they can ultimately prosper. It is only when they remain rigid that they will begin to lose potential benefits of outsourcing on our communities.

Picture of Globalization

In my opinion, this picture, although it may seem as though it has nothing to do with globalization, is actually very relavant. AFS is an exchange program that allows students from across the world to travel to different countries in order to experience living in another country. But the way that this program is set out, at a minimum of once a month, the students will converge and do something together over a week or weekend. This, then gave them the oppourtunity to talk to one another about anything. And these are people who are from very differnent parts of the world. In my own group, we had a good variety and mix of cultures and backgrounds. Thailand, China, Japan, the US, the Czech Republic, Canada, Argentina, Chilie, Brazil, Australia, France, Belgium, and Italy were just a few countries that were represented by these embassdors.

I find this picture fitting because it shows a mix of these different people who have all come together. They are all sharing ideas, thoughts. AFS “enables, encourages and advances connections between both individuals and groups worldwide” by bringing people togther physically and allowing them to experience other cultures and communicate with others who live half a world away. However, it does not only just fit the first half of the definition, it also conforms, for the most part, to “allowing for the exchange and influence of cultural, technological and political ideas”. Although it does not so much have to do with technological ideas, it still allows for ideas to flow culturally and politically. As “embassadors” of our own countries, it was not uncommon to be asked questions about what it is like to live in the US or what you thought about the politics or government in your own country.

In this way, this picture is a very good representation of globalization through the AFS family and the rest of the exchange community.

Globalization A-Z

A: all, advances

B: behind, buisness, balance

C: culture, creation, connections, competition, computers, crowded, convergence

D: destruction

E: earth, economy

F: flat

G: government, green revolution

H: hope, homogenization

I: ideas, internet, involvement, inevitable

J: junction

K: knowledge

L: learning

M: money

N: new

O: open, outsourcing

P: people, pollution, population

Q:

R: revolution, rapid

S: sharing, spreading

T: technology, trade, “Third World”, trust

U: universal, united, unprotected

V:

W: worldwide

X:

Y: yearning

Z:

Will the whole world “flatten out”?

Although some countries are beginning to move up from their “backwardness”, behind the rest of the technological world, there is little chance for the whole world to become entirely flat. There will always be pockets of poverty in the world, such as in Africa, or parts of Asia, despite the many innovations being made in the 21st century, helping other countries to move foward. Since the beginning of our civilizaiton, there has always been rich and poor, just as there is light and dark. Although this truth is unfortunate, there is always a particular balance to everything.

Still today, Africa remains behind while a good portion of the world barrels ahead. Why is this? In Cohen’s Globalizaiton and its Enemies, he explains that it is likely because the “Third World” is not needed. They don’t have much to offer the more developed countries, because they have not specialized and expanded in productions or services. They have stayed, for the most part, where they were a few hundred years ago. And, my guess would be that there are going to remain that way. Poorer peoples, unless they have the ability to reach a higher education, are limited to their particular lifestyles. Most often, it is due to their corrupt governement that causes people not to be able to move foward, even if they wanted. Such is the case in parts of the Middle East.

Unless these governments are able to move away from its corrupt sections, they are doomed to continue living their lives without hope of a better life or without gaining trust between other people. With these corrupt governments, the limited trust is causing other countries to not have confidence in doing buisness with them, which, in turn, strangles and severs the relationship, if there ever was one.

I don’t beleive that all governments will ever be perfect, there would always be some that are flawed, therefore, it is impossilbe to have an entirely flat world, for the people of these governments are nearly always suffering from the effects.