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Please review the DQ forum for this week

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Please review the DQ forum for this week. Select 2-3 postings from your peers to analyze in your personal assignment response. For your personal assignment this week: Write a 3 page summary on your an

Mark Tercek makes some good points about focusing on helping businesses to focus their efforts and attentions towards social responsibility.  Encouraging businesses to take care of the environment is a win for the planet and the business. There are programs through the U.S. government that supports businesses with international aid, which would assist with the businesses finances when contributing to save the environment.  Also, by focusing on social responsibility would cause competitors to want to mirror or try to rise one step above what their current competitors may be currently advertising for their social responsibility. 

My views on the microchip video are that I have the same concerns when it comes to privacy, health, and how the companies will use the data.  There is not data or research related to the long-term effects of using the microchips in the human body. The embedded chip is not a GPS tracker, which is what many critics initially feared.  However, analysts believe future chips will track our every move (Graham, 2017).  My main concern would be the privacy portion.  I understand that nowadays there are a lot of reality shows, people broadcasting their everyday lives in social media websites, however, I would feel uncomfortable knowing that when I am trying to have a private conversation that there is a possibility of someone listening in to my private conversation or tracking my every move.  There needs to be some restrictions on what data companies are allowed to collect and determine what data needs to be restricted.  I also think that by allowing companies to microchip their employees may sway their decision making process when considering personnel for employment at their company.  The hiring process may be bias if new applicants refuse to be microchipped. 

Reference:

Graham, J. (2017, August 10). You will get chipped - eventually. Retrieved from https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2017/08/09/you-get-chipped-eventually/547336001

Question 1

The first video hits very close to home for me.  I work for a paper company, so naturally the company has a fairly large environmental impact.  Sustainable forest management is very important to the paper industry as well as every other forest product industry.  Without sustainable management of renewable resources, industries would have a much harder time operating.  Groups like the Nature Conservancy that bring all parties together to determine the best way to manage are resources are necessary to ensure that people have the resources necessary to continue the progression of society, otherwise we would have to go back to an agrarian system that simply could not support the world’s population.  Paper and other forestry products have taken a lot of bad press in the past fifty years despite evidence showing that sustainable forestry creates products that have a lower total carbon dioxide cost than non-wood alternatives.  A 2014 study published in the Forest Products journal found that using wood construction products ends up with a carbon savings over using non-wood materials in the same applications (linoleum or ceramic floors vs. wood; metal framing vs. timber, etc…) (Bergman, Peuttmann, Taylor, & Skog 2014).  My employer participates in sustainable forestry by only purchasing timber from private land under contracts that essentially make it profitable for people and small groups to own their own forest land (the owners typically use the land themselves for hunting). 

 

Question 2

Privacy is a very important issue facing both businesses and the public.  A company wanting to insert a microchip into their employees seems to cross a personal line for me.  I am a strong believer that my employer’s need to know information about me ends at the end of the workday, aside from my commitment to report any crimes of which I am found guilty as agreed upon at the beginning of my employment.  Even if I trust the company completely now, the next owners of the company would also be purchasing my information without my consent and could potentially use that information in any way.  I have similar reservations with police bodycams and the emergence of facial recognition technology; just because the current administration says that they would only use the information one way has no bearing on future administrations and changes in the law.  Once someone else has that information, they have it forever.

 

Bergman, R., Puettmann, M., Taylor, A., & Skog, K.E. (2014) The Carbon Impacts of Wood Products. Forest Products Journal, 64(7/8), 220-231.  DOI: 10.13073/FPJ-D-14-00047

Question 1:

After reviewing the first video case study and in concurrence with Mark Tercek, for any business to maximize stakeholder value is for them exercise both their corporate and social responsibilities. Nature supplies manufacturing businesses with all their raw material needs to develop and produce goods, we can take care of nature by lessening the environmental footprint that would be less cost-efficient but companies that in fact go greener can up their popularity amongst their stakeholders. From the reading in chapter 2, businesses have to maintain 4 levels of social responsibility which includes economic, legal, ethical and lastly philanthropic which covers issues such as eco-friendliness. A philanthropic business known for its charitable contributions to society is often awarded by supply and demand which helps survivability of the business as its primary stakeholder. Additionally for companies that are eco-friendly their often spoken highly of by secondary stakeholders such as the media and social media. According to the Journal of Managerial Sciences, customers now are more environmentally aware of the products they purchase and are more influenced by green products and are more willing to go out of their way to pay the premium price as it tends to satisfy their conscious (Zubair Tariq, M. 2014).

Question 2:

Chapter 3's video case study discusses the use of microchip implanted in their employees and that the younger generation are less concerned about tracking and privacy invasion where the older generation are more concerned with the technology for opposite reasons to include long-term health issues if any and the lack of legislation governing the technology. I am personally concerned with the invasion of privacy and the endless tracking and monitoring that these technologies impose. Younger generations might disagree because they already share their personal lives via social media. Chipping an employee goes against ethics, if employees mandate chipping as part of employment I believe that to be questioning the foundational values of their integrity, by wanting to know where they've been, who they've been talking to and what business they partake in after office hours as a mean of controlling the company's proprietary information. I think chipping is unnecessary and unethical, its not anyone else's business what I do, where I go and who I talk to when I'm off the clock so as long as it's not illegal.

 

Zubair Tariq, M. (2014). Impact of Green Advertisement and Green Brand Awareness on Green Satisfaction with Mediating Effect of Buying Behavior.

                      Journal of Managerial Sciences, 8(2), 274–289.