As a part of this course, I completed an assignment that required me to research companies and their contribution to the world as global citizens. This was a tough question, it took me a while to figure out how a company can possibly be global citizens but I managed to come up with 5 indicators to show that a company is genuinely a "global" company.
1. Delivering international services globally.
2. Continual positive community engagement.
3. Environmental initiatives.
4. Employee satisfaction.
5. Existing Supplier Code of Conduct.
I want to briefly explain why I chose the above characteristics as indicators of a company is globally aware.
There has been a huge emphasis on the equal rights for human beings and that's why I feel that it is important for a company to make their products easily accessible to the entire world. Companies that are able to deliver globally are making their presence and are able to have more influence than companies that deliver locally.
In my opinion, continual positive community engagement is the most basic thing a company can initiate in order to earn a good reputation and show the world that they, as a company are global citizens. This is also supported by Ron Israel who is the co founder of "The Global Citizens Initiative" summarising the importance of community engagement as someone who identifies with being part of an emerging world community and whose actions contribute to building this community (Israel,2013). Giving back to the community positively can benefit the company by attracting more supporters and help combat global issues such as lack of education and homelessness.
Environmental initiatives is also a very important aspect as a globally concerned company will be focused on global issues such as global warming and melting of the polar ice caps. There should be initiatives in place in order to address these issues or at the very least, adopt sustainable methods in their production process. A good example of an environmental initiative is recycling, Apple's buyback program takes consumer's old products and recycle them to make new ones while giving the consumer a discount on their next Apple purchase (Apple,2014). Another good example is the use of wind power to generate electricity to power Google's servers in some countries (Verge,2014).
Employee satisfaction is one of the simplest indicators as it a measure of the willingness of an individual to work for a particular company, highlighting their influence and power around the world.
Lastly, in a world where companies such as Nike rely on outsourcing(Dusen, 1998), there must be a legal binding document such as a Supplier's Code of Conduct to ensure that the companies behave ethically and that individuals receive fair treatment. Not only such a document should highlight the conditions a human can be subjected to but also highlight the safety and environmental requirements as a result of production.
Apple. 2014. Apple Recycling Program. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.apple.com/au/recycling/. [Accessed 25 January 15].
Jason Verge. 2013. Google Powering Finnish Server Farm with Swedish Wind Farm. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2013/06/04/googles-powering-finnish-data-center-with-swedish-wind-farm/. [Accessed 25 January 15].
Ron Israel. 2013. What does it mean to be a global citizen?. [ONLINE] Available at: https://www.opendemocracy.net/ourkingdom/ron-israel/what-does-it-mean-to-be-global-citizen. [Accessed 25 January 15].
Steven Van Dusen. 1998. The Manufacturing Practices of the Footwear Industry: Nike vs. the competition. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.unc.edu/~andrewsr/ints092/vandu.html. [Accessed 25 January 15].
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