Is it ethical to share your customer data ? Data mining(Business Intelligence)

Information is the power as it gives ways to make decisions and conclude our ideas. As per (Morris & Lavandera, 2012), data is now $300 billion a year industry and employs 3 million people in the USA alone. Though still there is debate on the ethical use of the data and its privacy, I personally think it depends on how the data is being used and the purpose of doing so. If it is for the betterment of the civilization, for example, creation of new products, new medical findings through researches than data mining is worth it. But the process has to be transparent and customers should know what is being done with their data.

Companies are trying to know the market well so that they can recommend something better for us, that interest you. Indeed, data generates tremendous value to the business as well as for the people. Similarly, data sharing has a profound and positive impact also. Remember we are in the circular and sharing economy. For example, if you go to the Bank of America to apply for the loan, then they will go through series of our critical data, from social security number to credit score(FICO, Equifax) et cetera, this is to be done for pre-approval process. This sharing of information among the organization not only reduces the chances of fraud but also alleviates the happening of sub-prime housing recession that halted the global economy a decade ago. The sharing of the data helps to preserve the scares resource by using it in the most optimum way. As per  (Lewis & Mckone, 2016) to get the more value from the data, sell it since these data could be helpful for the other companies to come up with new products, i.e. a profitable line of business is created.

Facebook, YouTube, and Amazon would not have recommended the goods and services as per our previous visit if they had not tracked us. For example, if you search the songs of Adele in YouTube, the next time you sign in YouTube, you will get the recommended lists of songs sung by Adele. Indeed, this ultimately benefits the user as it saves times of the customers.

But ironically the user gets frustrated and annoyed when the company does so by without informing the clients. The most recent issue could be the case of data mining and harvesting done by UK based “Cambridge Analytica” where it went through the data of around 50 million Facebook users. A thin silver lining is still to be drawn between data privacy and organization ethics. The things that the company often does in data cloud as micro-targeting or micro-management could often me devastating manipulation. Health Insurance company Blue Cross and Blue Shield bought data on the spending habits of more than 3 million members of its employer group health plan (Hanks, 2018),  rhetorically if the member purchases a plus size apparel the insurance company sends them a weight loss scheme.

The economy has changed into the surveillance economy and there is a rise of new trends of capitalism called “Data Capitalism”. Companies likes Google, Amazon, Uber are making billions of dollars from our activities. They have crystalized data as a capital and has commodify and monetized them. Facebook had most recently performed “mood tests” on its users, the data scientists were tracking their behavior. But capturing the data from the people without their consent and compensation is a crime.

A tradeoff may always remain across the continuum on the ethical use of the data. As mentioned above the general community(consumer) are not getting the fair share of compensation. On the one hand, the companies working on data mining and harvesting are making billions of dollars whereas peoples are compromising their privacy. But I think if the data are being shared for the positive work for humankind it has to be allowed but in contrast, if it is for bad, it has to be abrogated.

References

Hanks, G. (2018). E-Business Ethical Issues on Selling Personal Information. Retrieved from www.smallbusiness.chron.com: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/ebusiness-ethical-issues-selling-personal-information-65718.html

Lewis , A., & Mckone, D. (2016, October 21). To Get More Value from Your Data, Sell It. Retrieved from www.hbr.org: https://hbr.org/2016/10/to-get-more-value-from-your-data-sell-it

Morris , J., & Lavandera, E. (2012, August Thursday). Why big companies buy, sell your data. Retrieved from www.cnn.com: https://www.cnn.com/2012/08/23/tech/web/big-data-acxiom/index.html

Securing data from hackers,continuous monitoring to secure information system , cyber war , ethics, e-policies(Business Intelligence)

A paradigm shift is being observed, companies are into the war competing for the data. I vividly remember, opinioned by Jack Ma in World Economic Forum, (2018), “Data is the human nature”. But to make situation worse, the competition is not only limited with the country but it is being contagious and contaminated globally. On the one hand, the risk of nuclear war could not be declined very soon and sadly to aggravate the situation, we are already into the data war, “the cyberwar”.

North Korean is blamed for performing a hack to steal cryptocurrencies of South Korea (Kharpal, 2018), similarly, Russia intervention in US presidential election 2016 could not be forgotten till. So, protecting data in the organization as well as in a country level is of paramount importance. But tradeoff exists in between the data protection and ethics. The question hammers how far should the manager go to check and balance data secureness. The risk can generate from internal sources like employees and management or also from external sources like hackers and cybercriminals or so-called cyber mafia. The protection mechanism concentrates in two continuums, i.e. the people and the technology.

Firstly, the questions pop, how are our employees performing, are they manipulating or tampering the data? Since employees are the one who has easy access to the pool of data, their unethical approach and misconduct will be detrimental. So, as stated by (Baltzan, 2014), the company should have well defined “Epolicies” which clearly states the company code of conduct. It specifies and states the ethical computer use policies, information privacy policies, acceptable use policies, email privacy policies, social media policies, and workplace monitoring policies.

As per the article entitled “Insider Threats as the Main Security Threat in 2017”, Alphabet, Google’s parent company has sued its former engineer Anthony Levandowski, currently working for the Uber. The company has accused him of copying more than 14000 internal files to the new company. The danger of insider threats goes dipper as they can go undetected for years, employees can easily cover their actions and often sometimes it is hard to prove them guilty. So, fighting against such information breach could be through background checks, watching employee behaviors, controlling user access and educating employees. Companies can use internet monitoring technologies like keyloggers; that records every keystroke and mouse click, cookie; a small file that resides in the hardware with the data of various site visits, hardware keyloggers; adware, spyware, weblog et cetera.

Whereas as mentioned above educating employee is also unequivocally important, they have to be taught well. Often, they are miss led by hackers through spamming, spoofing, skimming, denial of service activities. If they mistakenly click into some undisclosed links sent in their email, it could erode overall data mechanism of the organization.

Secondly, the technology will help the company to protect from the unauthorized use and access from an insider and the hackers. The issues of identity theft, phishing, spyware, adware, and pharming are in raise, the authentication, and authorization mechanism will help to confirm the issuers before giving them access to the company's data pool. It could be done through specific ID and passwords, tokens, smart cards, biometrics verification. Further through encryption, the company can hide its message which makes the hacker impossible to read the messages. It is done through private and public key.

As per (Baltzan, 2014) content filtering prevent the suspicious emails containing virus and spam from spreading. Similarly, most of the company uses the firewall to protect the security breach. It can be hardware or software that works as a gatekeeper for the company. It stays in-between the company’s server and external web network and analyzes the information leaving and entering the company’s network.

Data protection is a critical issue as it provides competitive advantage to the company, and could be done through the appropriate implementation of epolicies and effective use of technologies.

References

Baltzan, P. (2014). Business Driven Information System, 4th Edition. McGrawHill.

Kharpal, A. (2018, January 17). North Korea government-backed hackers are trying to steal cryptocurrency from South Korean users. Retrieved from www.cnbc.com: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/17/north-korea-hackers-linked-to-cryptocurrency-cyberattack-on-south-korea.html

Concept and Discussion on Value Drive Business , Information Technology, Management Information System(Business Intelligence)

In contemporary business environment, competition has become inevitable. Any business, rather be it in manufacturing or service sector has to face cutthroat competition within and across the firms in an industry. If they lack behind to deliver value and come across the expectation of existing and prospective customers, the company will lag. Any organization rather it is related with the IT or non-IT sector, it must be fast and proactive to make precise decision as it helps to build consumer as well as producer surplus. These could be brought by the effective use of the MIS system.

A perfect apotheosis to share would be Amazon.com, the company which initiated to sell the books online became the richest of the globe vide its ability to create value-driven business model. In the simple layman view, the value could be created in the business through proper utilization and composition of robust business philosophy and agile information technologies, these amalgamation supports the decision maker with more evidenced-based, objective and scientific data.

Once the MIS is installed into the business, it starts with the very basis of data accumulation and storages through transaction processing system. Its example could be cash teller where customers make the payment for their purchases. These are structured and are looked after by operational level managers. These move upwards in the hierarchy where the managers are to perform analytical intelligence and decisions are semi-structured. They perform what-if, sensitivity, optimization, and goal setting analysis, these are also called Decision Support System(DSS). And these output goes to higher strategic management level as an input. These Executive Information System(EIS) along with information from external sources gives executive level enough report to make strategic decisions and action plans.

Data integration process automatically connects information from various department enabling the end user with the holistic view. It creates easy collaboration among the department, increases employee efficiency, and delivers accurate information in the real time. Dutton, (2003) in his article entitled “Enterprise architecture: how to drive business value from IT” has emphasized the importance of IT in creating the value of the business. It has stated three tires of infrastructures, i.e. access infrastructure, process infrastructure, and service infrastructure to drive the business. The MIS helps to effective use and utilization of the raw data by creating meaningful and useful information. For the purpose, effective planning and controlling mechanism, the identification of critical success factor(CSF) and key performance indicator(KPI) help to make business strategies for the competitive and comparative advantages (Baltzan, 2014).

The models and framework helps to get the business mapping and provides the birdseye view of overall business process. These could be As-Is process model; which depicts the current business scenario and then after could be To-Be process scenario; which sketches the business process after the amalgamation of IT, analytical and business intelligence. These helps the manager to use automation (Operational level), streamlining (Business level) and Business process reengineering(strategic level).

Bibliography

Baltzan, P. (2014). Business Driven Information System, 4th Edition. McGrawHill.

Dutton, N. (2003, October ). Enterprise architecture: how to drive business value from IT. Retrieved from www.computerweekly.com: http://www.computerweekly.com/feature/Enterprise-architecture-how-to-drive-business-value-from-IT

Understanding Business Driven MIS and its Difference from Information Technology(Business Intelligence)

The Information Technology(IT) is the collection of hardware and software including the network and internet interactions. These systems help in the creation of the information.  The right choice of IT helps to achieve success and innovation in the business. Whereas, Management Information System(MIS) is the set of data, computing devices, and decision-making models that support the various hierarchy of organization to make operational, business and strategic decisions. It is the study of people, technology, organization. These two disciplines are complementary. The state of information technology used by the institution helps it to make the MIS, indeed I believe these are positively correlated.

Jack Ma, CEO, and founder of Alibaba.com is the fourth richest person in China, once told that “Data is the human nature”; the paramount to make a rational judgment. For the purpose, his company has already invested $15 billion in Research and Development (R &D). The investment made by companies like Amazon, Alibaba.com. Google, Microsoft are creating a breakthrough in latest IT through Artificial Intelligence(AI) along with human computing, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality which is the very basis for heightening the level of MIS.

MIS helps in the collection, storage, analysis and retrieval of information to the end user so that they can make informed and rational decisions (Baltzan, 2014). It includes software, data in the form of the database, hardware system, decision support system et cetera. Amazon Customer Relationship Management(CRM) software could be a classic example of effective use of MIS giving it a value driven business model. Through the effective use of software and hardware technologies, the MIS generate Transaction processing report(TPS), Decision support report(DSS) and Executive information system(EIS)

The MIS fundamentally holds and concentrates in the system theory, throughout the organizations, and across the departments. There is a sharp demarcation of Input-Process-Output, these generated results facilitate decision making and problem solving. The amalgamation of information technology into the business helps to drive the performance of the business through the creation of required information for decision makings (Markgraf, 2018). E-commerce and E-business helps in restructuring and re-engineering of the business process leading to streamline overall process, it not only reduces the operational expenses of the organization but also provide competitive and comparative advantages.

Bibliography

Baltzan, P. (2014). Business Driven Information System, 4th Edition. McGrawHill.

Markgraf, B. (2018, March 9). The Role of Management Information Systems in Decision-Making. Retrieved from www.smallbusiness.chron.com: http://smallbusiness.chron.com/role-management-information-systems-decisionmaking-63454.html

Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability: “A Review of Google LLC CSR Initiatives, Barriers and Steps Taken for Accomplishment”(Volume II)

Introduction

The Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR) is the organizational plans and policies which are context-specific that considers the stakeholder's expectation and the triple bottom domains (economic, environmental and social) (Feng, Wang, & Kreuze, 2017). In layman terms, it is the process of giving back to the society by the organization. Though diverse school of thoughts for and against the CSR prevails, in the recent corporate environment most of the business entities are amalgamating CSR into their methodologies. This paper is objectified to analyze the CSR initiative of Google LLC, the methodologies incorporated to make it sustainable, the action undertaken to make it happen and barriers that came across their implementations.

Discussion

Initiated 20 years back by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google LLC is stationed corporately at Mountain View, California. As echoed by Jack Ma, a founder of Alibaba Group at World Economic Forum, 2018 “Data is the power”, Google has also concretized its overall operations on those global data that it gets, so called the “Big Data”. But Yannis Varoufakis, former finance minister of Greece has argued, Google is building its data repository(capital) in the social inputs that we add, each time we use the Google globally (Dennis, 2017). Hence, it would not be wrong to except global CSR initiatives from the company.

            It could not be denied, Google has always been awesome when it comes about CSR and its sustainability approaches. A paradigm shift can be observed, (McPherson, 2017) states companies are undertaking newer initiative on CSR, basically the global behemoths are breaking down the organizational wall and advocating for global solutions around the issues like poverty, illiteracy, climate change, human rights et cetera. Rhetorically, hyper-competition has not only made the product and services outdated, unequivocally, CSR initiatives are also being obsolescent. CSR is not only about philanthropy, but these school of thought is also replaced. Each time, the companies must think beyond the box, invoking and initiating newer approaches to CSR and its sustainability.

Timeline retrospection of Google CSR activities

            Google LLC is well positioned in the global arena when it comes to handling its employee, the perks and benefits packages, the energy efficient operational activities and the profitability, these alignments of company aligns with Milton Friedman concept of CSR for profitability (Thiel, 2016). Now, Google is moving beyond the silver lining where the companies used to be euphoric for stock price and earning per share. Google is analyzing, practicing, learning, collaborating and cooperating numerous CSR initiatives which juxtapose the essence of “Trippel Bottom Theory” and “The Stakeholder Theory”.

A global vocalist of circular economy and contractor of green energy.

An equally important domain of CSR and sustainability is environment, Google has been carbon neutral since 2007. The Reputation Institute, pioneering in Reputational Intelligence(RI) grades the global companies on the basis of workplace, citizenship, and governance. Google ranked the first position with the score of 75.4 (Miceli, 2015). Google has committed more than $ 1billion for renewable energies and it claims, its data center only uses 50% of the energy in comparison to other data centers. These not only promotes environment but also reduces the operational expenses of the company.

Google is shifting from linear to the circular economy (Ellen MacArthur Foundation, 2015), its initiative to focus on reuse, recycle, remanufacturing and refurbishing is acknowledgeable. In 2017, the company diverted 91% of waste from the global data center operations away from landfills (Google, 2018). Similarly, as per the report, the Google is world largest purchaser of renewable energies, totaling of 3 GW, it has incentivized local communities and government to invest in renewal energies ultimately leading to develop ancillary industries and helping create hundreds and thousands of jobs. These activities of Google emphasizes the environmental domain of “Trippel Bottom Line” theory.

Google on the social progress:

The company through its “Google.org”, a charitable sister concern of Google is working with Pratham Books since 2013 in India. Total funding made till date is $3.85 million. The Project entitled “Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver” is an open source technology where openly licensed stories are translated into the native language making it easier for the students, guardian, and teacher to read. India is culturally diversified; the books are not published in all the local language and also people can’t afford to purchase the books. The project aims of having more than 500,000 active users(Google.org), these will help to cope with higher illiteracy rate prevailed in margined area of populated India.

Another overwhelming project is “Learning Equality”, which helps in taking the digital content offline for the students without the internet. The “Kolibri Platform” organizes the content in the cloud-based library, which can be downloaded and used offline. The project began in 2016, till date the company has supported $7.3 million. The project covers India, Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa. These endeavor of Google stresses in social wellbeing, socio-economic dimension of CSR and Sustainability. 

Google on inclusiveness and equality

Data is the human nature, it’s a power for decision making throughout the continuum. Google supports organization that uses data science and innovative new approach to understand inclusion and justice for all. In America, 1 in 3 black American can expect to be imprisoned in their lifetime (Knafo, 2013) which is also stated in the Google’s website. Center for Policing Equity(CPE) projects empower the law enforcement agencies with data and tools to improve relation with communities they serve and track the national statistics on police behavior against the public. The project began in 2016 and has invested $5000,000 till date, these project intensified Google’s principle of enhancing and supporting social responsiveness and transparency.

Responding in crises

The application like Google Person Finder has helped to track and find people in the time of disasters. As per the Google.org, in an average, a refugee spends 17 years in exile. Since 2015, the company has invested more than $20 million in grants supporting innovative solutions to support refugees.  It includes giving refugee access to connectivity and devices, building mobile platform to provide refugee with reliable information, deploying portable media kits with educational contents for refugee students.

“Project Loon” is Googles internet connectivity through the balloon project. Its success will make the internet available to the most remote and difficult terrains where the traditional optical fibers would not reach. Numerically, still, 4 billion peoples are away from the internet from internet accessibility. 

Progressing to make workforce more diversified

            Though sexism and racism never had happened in Google, it has been hard for the internet behemoth to reduce the gender gap. Still, majority of the higher positions of the organization charts are occupied by males. “Thomas Returns” a Canadian Mass media company created the diversity and inclusion(D&I) Index, the company stated diverse companies are more innovative and productive and has better financial returns but ironically, the Google was not able to be within the top 25 of the index (Mc Girt, 2017). But still, the company is constantly working to make the workforce more diversified, as per Google diversity report 2018, 30.9% of the workforce is female and 69.1% male similarly, 74.5% of leadership representation is occupied by male and 25.5% by female.

Google on environmentalism

The company has signed 2.5 gigawatts of wind and solar energy worldwide and its investing $2.5 billion in renewal energy (Wang, 2016). Working in an integrative manner is the essence of Google working methodology. The company most of the time coordinates and collaborates with other firms and industries to produce innovative and social uplifting products and services. “Prediction” reduces the carbon emission, it is an application developed by Google which will help automobiles determine where we are driving. Google satellite services provide the information to the indigenous tribes about deforestation so that they can tackle the issue.

                                      Sustainability of Google CSR initiatives

Deloitte, multinational consulting firm states sustainably is the responsibility for the impact the firm exerts on surrounding, environment, business, and social terms. Similarly, as per Burtland Commission Report sustainability is meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs (Delai & Takahashi, 2011). We can infer that sustainability is consuming the resources in the responsible manner so that it will positively impact the upcoming progeny or generations.

Googles’ sustainability is based on the smart use of the scarce earth’s resources. Rather its CSR initiatives are related to environments, social or economic dimensions, they are functioning in an optimistic manner. Since 2007, Google has spent more than Euro 3.2 billion to build and operate four data centers in Europe. As Google grows, its communities also grow, it comes with added jobs to the community which enhances the standard of living. Since 2017, its global operations are operated by 100 percent renewal energies (Google, 2018). The circularity through reuse, recycle, refurbished and remanufacturing has supported the Google to prolong the life and use of the products. As per Google sustainability report, 2016, 22% of components Google used were refurbished, 36% were remanufactured and as per Google Sustainability report, 2018 18% of the servers were remanufactured, 2.1 million components were sold in the secondary market.

The used of heighten level of technologies like artificial intelligence(AI), Block Chain along with the pool of big data has helped Google to go beyond its internet business. The company is collaborating, cooperating and coordinating with any local, regional, NGO’s, INGO’s and government to come across positive social impacts. Google Maps provided 1 billion km of transit results per day help liming the carbon emission by helping drivers get the most optimum route. The report further states, the Google data center in Europe has supported economic activity worth Euro 490 million per year in their GDP.

The incorporation of the circular economic model has intensified the use and reuse of technical and biological resources, the same way socio-economic progress in the rural communities of underprivileged through Google supports can be seen. The above-mentioned projects like “Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver”, “Learning Equality” and “Center for Policing Equity(CPE)” has brought social welfare. In overall, all CSR initiatives have brought social, economic and environmental augmentation in a sustainable manner.

Immediate action required to implement initiatives

CSR requires action so that the formulated plans can be implemented well.  CSR budgeting is an evidence-based planning, it helps the organization to have prior plans, procedures, and strategies to implement CSR initiatives. The company should not attempt to solve all the issues in diversified sector all at a once. It has to be systemic and progressive and should be feedback read loop.

As per Google environmental report (2018) it has envisioned its priorities and incorporated environmental accountability into its corporate philosophies, the company is designing energy efficient data centers, providing sustainable workplaces, empowering users with technology, managing water stewardship, embedding circular economy and engaging the supply chain on human rights and safety and environment concerns.

 Defining the message, properly setting the target area, assessing the resources and expertise accounts for the success of CSR initiatives (Bamford, 2017). After reviewing numerous literature review and article published in McKinsely Quartely(2009), below are some of the actions required to carry CSR in well-planned manner.

Define your messaging and map CSR initiatives

Google CSR initiatives focus on the sustainability. It has clearly given a message to its stakeholder about its CSR actions. It helps to define the target scope and anticipate outcome. Google focuses on environmentalism, inclusiveness, sustainability, and equality.

Set the target area

              Setting the target helps to capitalize the resources in the same track. From the very beginning, Google targets in minimization of the energy consumption, substituting fossil fuels by renewal energies, refusing and recycling the materials and emphasizes the use of data and technology for prompt decision making.

Produce CSR reports

Google publishes various CSR report entitled sustainability, inclusiveness, circular economy et cetera. These report helps to create transparency and fairness in its CSR initiatives.

Coordinating with governmental and local agencies

Google advancement in Taiwan for renewal energy created new frontier depicting their commitment to alternate energies and decreasing footprints. The Taiwanese government amended its Electricity Act to allow the direct purchase of renewable energies from the producer

Nevertheless, human bias often happens, it can be within and out of the company, it hampers the CSR initiatives. Google conducts Unconscious Bias workshops to all “” Noogler (new Googler) to inform them the negative impact of biases. 84% of the Google’s people manager has taken unconscious bias training (Google, 2018). It has also carried series of interactive lab to discuss about racial biases and impact of stereotypes. The company made the parental benefits gender-neutral so that the new parents, regardless of gender, receives up to 12 weeks of paid leave. Google is prompting more women inclusion in technical positions, Google project, “Made with Code” promotes, invests and funds to reduce the gender gap which it has been blamed for.

Except the above mentioned, Google could take following actions to implement its CSR initiatives in multi-stake dimension.

·       Regardless of any political change, the organization should remain committed to the CSR and its sustainability.

·       Behemoth like Google, Amazon, Facebook should step up across any social issues and act to solve those problems

·       Corporation should shift from corporate social responsibility to social impact

·       Focus on the transition of the company from the linear to circular economy.

·       Lastly, coordinating with INGO’s like the United Nations to achieve Sustainable Development Goal(SDG) as these companies are blessed with the diversity in financial and technical resources that other lacks. 

Barriers to CSR initiatives

(Laudal, 2011) stated the barriers to the CSR vary with regards to the stages in the transformation of the company from small to medium or multinational enterprise. The factors like the cost to benefit ratio, sensitivity to local stakeholders and public perceptions, geographical spread, and government regulation could be influencing factors. Similarly, the lack of resources and complexity in implementing CSR initiatives are also the barriers (Arevalo & Aravind,2011)

Cultural along with government regulation and policy of the host country plays the pivotal role in implementing CSR (Vimala & Kalyani, 2017), Google is not available in China, the strength scrutiny of the government in media has abandoned Google to ripe the benefit from the most populous country in the world. Not only the macro culture and political ideologies heralds as a barrier but also the sub-culture of the local community obstructs often. The conservative political culture of North Korea has made not only Google but any other companies to work and serve there.

Though CSR comes with cost in terms of money, time, energy and expertise, these internal factors have never been a problem since the company is investing billions of dollars each year in CSR and its sustainability. But humans are consciously or unconsciously biased (Thiel, 2016), these could be barriers in implementing CSR. A video where Sergey Brin, a Google co-founder expressing his discontent on Trump's victory after 2016 juxtapose his biases towards Republicans (Wakabayashi, 2018) could often polarize the organization for and against the CSR in the areas encroached by Republicans.

Adopting the CSR sometimes could not be a linear and continuous process (Pistoni, Songini, & Perrone, 2016), they are often retaliated by the impacted sector. The “Paris Climate Agreement” was an ever-taken greatest CSR initiation for claiming down greenhouse gas but it was vehemently opposed by Trump administration. Moreover, Google is the strong advocate of “Net Neutrality”, the Trump administration pushed to roll back “Net Neutrality”, which in reality is benefiting the small and medium size business to maintain their online presence.

For the company like Google, the cost has never been an issue since CSR is the circular flow of give and take which benefits all the involved stakeholders. The more the company is into the CSR, the more it innovates itself. The philosophy of sustainability, environmentalism, circularity and minimum resource utilization has helped it to innovate newer technologies like Artificial Intelligence(AI), self-driving vehicles, Augmentation and virtual realities which has enhanced the brand image and equity of the company.

Conclusion and Recommendation

The methodologies of CSR and sustainability should change with time, as per the changing economic, environmental and social preferences and privileges. Google’s approach to CSR reconciles with the “Trippel Bottom Theory” and “Stakeholder Theory”. It is more progressive, and each time company is creating new CSR to impact the social life of peoples rather be it through new technological breakthrough or philanthropy or social innovation. For the purpose, it has strategized accordingly, manage resources, fit in expertise and also collaborated with various governmental and non-governmental national and international entities. Lastly, barrier arises while formulating and implementing CSR and it could be endogenous as well as exogenous. In the case of Google, the human biases were more of internal type whereas political ideologies, cross-cultural difference fell into the external domain

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Vimala, G., & Kalyani, S. (2017). Exploring Approaches to Drivers and Barriers of Corporate Social Responsibility Implementation in Academic Literature. SHS Web of Conferences 33.

Wakabayashi, D. (2018, September 12). Leaked Google Video After Trump’s Win Adds to Pressure From Conservatives. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/12/technology/leaked-google-video-trump.html

Wang, U. (2016, October 12). How Google is using big data to protect the environment. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com: https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2016/oct/12/google-environmental-sustainability-data-kate-brandt

Comparing and contrasting roles of corporations, government, and local communities in social responsibilities and competitiveness.

The corporation, government, and local communities play crucially important role in enhancing the social responsibility and competitiveness. All their activities are interrelated and create the holistic result in the society touching economic, environmental and social domain.

The corporation or business entity basic responsibility steams in delivering their product and service at their best, i.e. qualitative products at a competitive price. Treating their employee fairly and in a democratic manner and maintaining books of accounts transparently and paying taxes to the government, being not involved in any adultery and black marketing is also important. If the business entity does not come across this responsibility, it will decline the social welfare and wellbeing of the community and will decrease its competitiveness. Elizabeth Holmes, CEO of “Theranos” a Silicon Valley startup promised to revolutionized  blood testing, she stated the false statements to lure the investor and raised over $700 million and the company is now paying it badly, she is federally charged with lawsuits (BBC, 2018) and the company is liquidated

The government plays a regulatory, guardian and watchdog role. And its role should be pervasive through the country. The government brings various rule, regulation, laws, and policies for the capacity enhancement, i.e. industrial policy, tax laws, literacy police et cetera. It has to be equally sensitive and inclusive for all the citizen of the country. Should focus on raising awareness, improve transparency, foster social investment et cetera. The collected tax should be used in the transparent and uncorrupt manner and have to penalize if anyone goes acts the rule of law. European country Finland score global image for caring its citizen and expats, its education system is best ranked in the world and is the least corrupt country of the world. A careful and responsive government foster social justice, reduces social discrimination, reduces poverty and makes its citizen happy. Venezuela, the country with the largest oil reservoir, is economically down, the hyperinflation has crippled the life of people. Medicines, daily consumable goods are in shortage, 2.3 million people have left the country since 2004 (BBC, 2018). The lack of government foreign affairs policy and unfriendly relation with the global political and trade arena has brought extreme sanction. This has led to decrease the living condition of its people, had created social injustice, increased poverty and mortality rate has increased.

Most of the time, it is seen that the burden of the CSR and sustainability along with social responsibility is only seen in the corporation and government but for the successful flow of the CSR it has to be reciprocated by the community and its dwellers. The responsiveness from the community alerts the corporation and government to be accountable for their deeds. Individual Social Responsibility (ISR); an act of individual becoming responsible in his/her actions is also a fundamental of CSR. If the women empowerment has not been a case in this modern corporate society, “Metoo” had not been ignited. Most of the time, the company want to end up in CSR alone and does not want to be socially responsible (Thiel, 2016), the community should raise their voice. “PETA”, an American animal rights organization raised its voice against the inhumane treatment for animals, they strongly protested the China dog killing tradition. Group Against Smog and Pollution (GASP), is a non-profit citizen group in southwestern Pennsylvania working for the sustainable and healthy environment. It is a diligent watchdog, a lobbyist on many environmental issues.

Corporations, government, and local communities should be equally socially responsible as it brings the competitiveness and responsiveness. If a domain falls short then, this triangularity won't be harmonized.

Bibliography

BBC. (2018, August 22). How Venezuela's crisis developed and drove out millions of people. Retrieved from www.bbc.com: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-36319877

BBC. (2018, March 14). Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes charged with $700m fraud. Retrieved from www.bbc.com: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-43406050

Thiel, M. (2016). The Social Domain in CSR and Sustainability: A Critical Study of Social Responsibility among Governments, Local Communities and Corporations. New York: Routledge.

Importance of personal trust in the success of CSR and sustainability.

The trusts make the customer believe the endeavors of the organization. It is the soft value which is hard to earn by the organization. It is an intangible asset. The trust comes with the legacy and enhances the brand image of the organization. Generally, in context of CSR people tend to trust the government entities more than the business corporation (Thiel, 2016). But often trust creates a biasness and if the biasness is positive, it favors and supports the CSR activities of the organization otherwise it dampens the organizational investment in CSR and sustainability. The trust could be seen a kind of the reciprocation done by the individual towards the organization financial and non-financial activities. The individual trust enhances the word of mouth marketing and referral for the organization.

The social networking behemoth Facebook was doing well, capitalizing in customer trust but the discloser of data breach where the personal information of its users was sold to the research firm, “Business Analytica” breaches the psychological contract its users had with it. These negatively influence the socio-economic domain of CSR and sustainability. Facebook stock price declined, and company lost billion dollars in just a week. The inability of the company to build up the trust with customers are making the company to lose the customers at the alarming rate. (Campanella, 2017).

But sometimes the company has to battle hard to come across and concertized its customer trust. The first trillion-dollar company of the world; Apple, once got into the battle of philosophy with the government of the USA. The company took the stand on the privacy of its customer information and revoked the government request to unlock the phone(the customer had criminal charges of mass shooting in San Bernardino, California). Though this is an exception and extreme cases, most of the time the companies’ investment to build the trust payoff. The public trust towards the cooperation has a significant positive impact in the CSR, it increases the corporate financial performance and corporate social performance (Boulouta, 2013). Similarly, as per the research conducted by social invest, the customers also want to engage in the CSR and 76% of the customer wants to donate for philanthropy, the company they trust (Social Investement, 2015).

Bibliography

Boulouta, I. (2013). The role of ‘public trust in corporations’ in CSR strategies which deliver value for both business and society. 4th Annual Conference in Political Economy.

Campanella, N. (2017, October 30). Customer Support in the Trust Economy: The Importance of CSR. Retrieved from www.getcrm.com: https://getcrm.com/blog/importance-of-csr/

Social Investement. (2015, June 12). CSR, what is the impact on consumers? Retrieved from www.blog.optimy.com: https://blog.optimy.com/csr-impact-consumers/

Thiel, M. (2016). The Social Domain in CSR and Sustainability: A Critical Study of Social Responsibility among Governments, Local Communities and Corporations. New York: Routledge.

Understanding the Dynamics of Leadership: A Case Study on Jeff Bezos and Jack Ma (Westcliff International Journal Of Applied Research, Volume 2,Number 1,Spring 2018)