Civil society organizations tackling environmental and social risks
SweatFree communities
SweatFree Communities aims to support sweatshop workers globally in their struggles to improve working conditions and achieve respect at work. This campaign does this by encouraging U.S. cities, states and school districts to adopt policies to purchase goods made in humane conditions by workers who are paid decent wages. By adopting a sweatfree policy, an institution makes a commitment to use its leverage to help improve conditions for sweatshop workers. Sweatfree procurement laws send the message of "not with their sweat, not with our dollars!"
Localities can take several key steps toward becoming sweatfree. Adopting a sweatfree procurement policy puts in place requirements for transparency and decent working conditions in government supply chains. As part of the policy, governments should join the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium in order to have a bigger impact in their supply chains by pooling resources for policy implementation. In consultation with the Sweatfree Purchasing Consortium, the City of Madison, Wisconsin, has developed a cooperative "piggyback" contract with a vendor that has agreed to transparency and anti-sweatshop measures, and supplies a variety of uniforms and other apparel typically purchased with our tax dollars. The contract, which was bid competitively in a request-for-proposals (RFP) process, is available for use by public agencies across the United States.
Sweatfree campaigns can foster sustained local activism and strong coalitions of labor, student, and faith-based groups. Using institutional purchasing as a lever for worker justice, the sweatfree movement empowers people to advance fairness in the global economy through local action.
350.org
350.org - Climate Change Is About Power
Strategies to build resilience
Re-shoring of economic activity by TNCs
Re-shoring is the opposite of outsourcing. It happens when manufacturers decide to relocate their overseas operations back to their country of origin which is usually where the headquarter is.
Factors that are accelerating the reshoring movement include favorable domestic economic conditions; advanced technologies such as automation, robotics, and the Internet of Things; reduced domestic energy costs; the just-lowered corporate tax rate; aggressive tax incentives from various states; as well as increased labor costs overseas.
In particular, the labor cost differential between China and the U.S. has narrowed significantly over the past five years, greatly reducing profits for offshore enterprises. Increased shipping costs further erode the bottom line. Disruption of supply is also a concern with longer supply chains. This is especially true for possible shortages of materials or parts that can only be sourced from a few suppliers, which would have serious impacts on delivery and production schedules. Increasingly, the cost advantage of lower wages overseas is undercut by higher supply chain costs and quality issues. When all these factors are considered together, more U.S. manufacturers are starting to look at the United States as the place to manufacture.
Advantages of a U.S.-only supply chain include:
- Improved quality control and safety
- More reliable and less costly shipping
- Shorter and more reliable supply chains
- Faster decision-making
- American job creation
- Positive impact on the national economy
- Improved brand through “Made in America”
Use of crowd-sourcing technologies to build resilience by government and civil society
The term crowd-sourcing splices together two words: crowd and outsourcing. In this way crowd-sourcing occurs when an organization outsources a work project or creative problem to a large group of people. In its purest form, then, crowd-sourcing is a process of co-creation between an organization that provides direction, structure, and incentive, and “the crowd” which devotes its time, effort, and abilities to completing a task.
Crowd-sourcing projects might assume various forms, but one common application of crowd-sourcing is to achieve large, labor-intensive work projects more quickly, easily, and economically.
Through crowd-sourcing, large work projects can be broken down into smaller chunks called micro tasks and then divvied out to tens, hundreds, or thousands of people for fast, efficient completion. In this sense, crowd-sourcing is based on the principle that many hands make light work.
Examples of crowd-sourcing companies
- Waze: one of the most successful crowd-powered start-ups is Waze. It’s an app that allows users to report traffic jams and automatically gives directions for the best route to take. Waze crowd sources information by measuring drivers speed to determine traffic jams and by asking users to report road closures. It’s a great app that proves a dedicated crowd is sometimes all a company needs. It also attracted some big-name investors and suitors.
- McDonalds Burger builder: in 2014, McDonalds decided to give their customers free reign and submit ideas for the types of burgers they’d like to see in store. They could create their perfect burgers online and the rest of the country could vote for the best ones. In Germany, creators were also encouraged to create their own campaigns, which included viral videos and other valuable content marketing, which of course cost McDonalds nothing. Once the winners were crowned, McDonalds released the burgers weekly, along with the picture and short bio of the creator.
- Lego: toy company, Lego is responsible for probably one of the best examples of Crowd-sourcing we’ve seen. The company allows users to design new products, and at the same time, test the demand. Any user can submit a design that other users are able to vote for. The idea with the most amount of votes gets moved to production and the creator receives a 1% royalty on the net revenue. Lego has been successful in increasing the number of product ideas while also improving customer engagement. And this specific kind of engagement generates a certain buzz that’s difficult to recreate by any other method. Just like McDonalds, creators take it upon themselves to promote their idea, and in doing so promote Lego as a company, too.
- Airbnb: you could say that Airbnb’s whole business model is based on crowd-sourcing – it’s essentially a travel website that allows individuals to let out their homes all over the world. If it wasn’t for them, there’d be no site. More recently however, they teamed up with eYeka and worked on a crowd-sourcing project that asked filmmakers from all over the world to create fresh, authentic video content about the places they call home. The videos had to be 60 seconds long, and the winners win a share of 20, 000 euros. But this isn’t the first time they’ve crowd-sourced content. In 2013 they asked users to submit scripted shots from all over the world in the form of Vines, via Twitter. They then put the clips together, named it Hollywood & Vines, and used it as a TV ad. From these campaigns, not only have Airbnb acquired millions of unique content that adds quality and authentic value to the Airbnb brand, they’ve also saved themselves a substantial amount of money. There are even more great examples of crowd-sourcing if you look into it, and lots of ways you can incorporate crowd-sourcing into your business model. Whether you’re a new company just starting out, a fairly established company looking for extra marketing, or a company looking to engage more with your customers. You can go as little or as large as you like with crowd-sourcing, and it’s almost always going to benefit you in some way.
New technologies for the management of global flows of data and people
Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting systems, networks, and programs from digital attacks. These cyberattacks are usually aimed at accessing, changing, or destroying sensitive information; extorting money from users; or interrupting normal business processes.
Implementing effective cybersecurity measures is particularly challenging today because there are more devices than people, and attackers are becoming more innovative.
A successful cybersecurity approach has multiple layers of protection spread across the computers, networks, programs, or data that one intends to keep safe. In an organization, the people, processes, and technology must all complement one another to create an effective defense from cyber attacks.
People
Users must understand and comply with basic data security principles like choosing strong passwords, being wary of attachments in email, and backing up data. Learn more about basic cybersecurity principles.
Processes
Organizations must have a framework for how they deal with both attempted and successful cyber attacks. One well-respected framework can guide you. It explains how you can identify attacks, protect systems, detect and respond to threats, and recover from successful attacks. Watch a video explanation of the NIST cybersecurity framework.
Technology
Technology is essential to giving organizations and individuals the computer security tools needed to protect themselves from cyber attacks. Three main entities must be protected: endpoint devices like computers, smart devices, and routers; networks; and the cloud. Common technology used to protect these entities include next-generation firewalls, DNS filtering, malware protection, antivirus software, and email security solutions.
Why is cybersecurity important?
In today’s connected world, everyone benefits from advanced cyberdefense programs. At an individual level, a cybersecurity attack can result in everything from identity theft, to extortion attempts, to the loss of important data like family photos. Everyone relies on critical infrastructure like power plants, hospitals, and financial service companies. Securing these and other organizations is essential to keeping our society functioning.
Everyone also benefits from the work of cyberthreat researchers, like the team of 250 threat researchers at Talos, who investigate new and emerging threats and cyber attack strategies. They reveal new vulnerabilities, educate the public on the importance of cybersecurity, and strengthen open source tools. Their work makes the Internet safer for everyone.
E-passports
What Is A Digital Passport And How Is It Changing Travel?
Synthesis and evaluation
Use the content from this post to plan an answer to the following question:
‘Discuss how perspectives vary on the severity of different risks and priorities for action’. 16 marks.
Use mark scheme on page 56 from the new syllabus guide (AO3)
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ReplyDeleteTechnology development is closely related to advertising trends because advertising is causing a need, needs are constantly growing and engineers and developers must constantly improve their product in order to maintain and stimulate the corresponding demand for their product. It can be said that the ad tech industry is the main engine of progress.
ReplyDelete