Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Environmental Ethics And Environmental Safety - 895 Words

Environmental ethics can be formally defined in many sources as the study of human interaction with nature. In a business sense, however, environmental ethics is concerned with the business’ duty or responsibility to protect our overall environment. Our society is beginning to become more involved with the environmental movement. Because of this, people are more concerned with the companies and businesses that they support in regards to their concern towards our environment. Some argue that businesses should be attempting to protect our environment over and above what is required by United States Law. Doesn t it seem the only ‘ethical’ thing to do? In this paper I will elaborate about environmental compliance obligations, businesses and environmental ethics movements, as well as what companies have been trying to do to become more ethical when it comes to our environment that goes above and beyond the law. The survival and growth of ‘green businessesà ¢â‚¬â„¢ in the U.S. is increasingly large. Environmental compliance obligations are monitored by the EPA, or the Environmental Protection Agency. Their basic mission is quite simplistic in that they need to protect human health and the overall environment. â€Å"EPA, state, local and tribal agencies work together to ensure compliance with environmental laws passed by Congress, state legislatures and tribal governments† (Introduction: Environmental Enforcement and Compliance, n.d.). These groups all work together to ensureShow MoreRelatedEthics, Public Health, And Environmental Safety3018 Words   |  13 Pageswe define biotechnology and consider best practices in agriculture, both in the United States and around the globe. With the advent of genetic engineering and the adoption of transgenic crops, a new set of questions regarding ethics, public health, and environmental safety has grown from a theoretical concern to one that must be considered as genetic engineering play s an increasingly large role in our everyday lives. As genetically modified (GM) food has entered the marketplace, these ethical questionsRead MoreEthics And Its Impact On Society, Ecosystem, And Wellbeing Of People And Environments1488 Words   |  6 Pagesengineering codes of ethics worldwide exhort engineers to consciously place the general public interest specially others. So as to meet difficulties of the times, engineers must outfit themselves with both moral obligations and attention to the legal ramifications for the choices made throughout course of their professional obligations. Sustainable development policies usually embody Associate in nursing moral theory with reference to technological amendment. It avoids the problem of ethics and assumes environmentalRead MoreEthics And Professional Codes Of Conduct878 Words   |  4 PagesEthics and Professional Codes of Conduct (Unit 10), Trump won the president in this month. After two months, Donald Trump will be the official president. However, the concerns about his ethics is upcoming to everyone’s mind. As we known, The Trump Organization runs a lot of business all around the US. When Donald Trump moves into the White House, he ll be the most controversial president in America history. After Trump is the president, his business interest is related to the politic. But thereRead MoreEthics and Corporate Responsibility1691 Words   |  7 PagesEthics and Corporate Responsibility Legal, Ethics, and Corporate Governance Jekilan Hill-Barrett Professor Weekley November 23, 2014 Ethics and Corporate Responsibility The stakeholders within PharmaCARE are all the individuals and groups that are affected by the company’s decisions. The employees that may suffer from the lack of environmental safety or abuse of the production location allowing the organization to payless to workers for their hard work. The consumers of theRead MorePlanning Stage At North West Shelf818 Words   |  4 Pagescompany. Environmental degradation however, is permanent, and clearly represents more pain for the marine life and people living around than the pleasure for the few stakeholders who could have benefitted from the NWS doing well. Certainty goes to Woodside and pleasure, as the completion of project will bring more revenue and helping them capture more of a competitive market. Fertility is clearly in pain’s favour, because if automakers began to make a habit of cutting corners on safety featuresRead MoreEthical Implications Of Ethical Consumerism1552 Words   |  7 Pagesof the ethical consumerism movement is that you ‘know’ what you are buying and that you buy things that are produced ethically because not ‘knowing’ leads to abuse and exploitation.† It can be seen as a drastic measure to end corporate abuse, environmental violation and pollution, human slavery, etc. Some people see it as another way for businesses to manipulate a market of concerned consumers who are willing to spend more money purchasing ethically sourced goods. There are different contextualRead MoreChallenges Of The Business Environment Essay1373 Words   |  6 Pagesall its customers, by keeping them happy and satisfied (Farfan, 2016). Code of Conduct Changes Apple Inc. has made many changes to its Code of Conduct in recent years, those changes include changes in â€Å"labor and Human Rights, Environmental Impact, Ethics, and Health and Safety,† and in doing so, they utilized several references to prepare their Code (Apple.com, 2016). When it comes to Labor and Human Rights – Code of Conduct, Apple Inc. takes into consideration antidiscrimination, fair treatment, preventionRead MoreCase Study : Royal Dutch Shell1003 Words   |  5 Pageshas participated in non-governmental organizations including UNICEF, World Bank and Oxfam Intermon. This has led her in expertise about development management and human rights. Dealing with issues such as the involvement of corporations in major environmental disasters such the oil spill that occurred in Niger delta by shell. Her title â€Å"Royal Dutch Shell in Nigeria: Where Do Responsibilities End?† explains the problem of fractured responsibility coupled with harm produced by col lective action. Her journalRead MoreBp Case Study931 Words   |  4 Pagesproblems, and their lack of innovation and sustainability. While BP has taken steps in the right direction to fix its reputation it is far from being done. This paper will show that to fix the company’s reputation they will need to enforce their new ethics policy from the top down and build shareholder trust again. They will need to invest more in their sustainability by creating new innovative ideas, committing more money for research and current programs, as well as the creation of new policies andRead MoreStarbucks : A Global Business Essay1384 Words   |  6 Pagesthe locality of the store. Starbucks brand coffee, ice-cream, and cold drinks are available for purchase at local and nationwide grocery stores. As a business, Starbucks endures to employee business standards and practices that produce social, environmental, and economic benefits for the hundreds of communities throughout national and in ternational stores. Starbucks continues to demonstrate its commitment to the welfare, economic improvement and sustainability of the people and places their products

Tuesday, December 17, 2019

Rap And Hip Hop Music - 1177 Words

Rap and hip hop music has evolved politically over the last decade; these genres have become major forces and influential factors for North American youth and young adults. Nas, a popular rap star, sold 1 million copies of his first album Illmatic by Dec. 2001, and by 2004 Nas released his 7th platinum album Street Disciple. The album street disciple contained a very political song titled American Way. The song showcases the negative outlook rap has against politics in its early stages as a genre. In addition, Lakeyta M Bonnet’s Book Pulse of the People: Political Rap Music and Black Politics, expresses the way hip hop music acts as a catalyst for the involvement of urban minorities in politics. While Paint the White House Black an†¦show more content†¦Although the government tries to regulate it, they simply cannot and the two disciplines continue to clash. When Nas begins he talks about the black vote and how the black community does not take voting seriously. As a result the upper class automatically has the advantage in the poles because they are more likely to vote. He makes the argument that regardless of who votes the choices are only â€Å"Satan or Satan† (Nas 2004). He links the American government to Satan which brings the listener back to his view of the nation from the poverty stricken ghetto he grew up in. The reason people relate to Nas is because his music is real and describes real life situations from the shoes of African Americans, and minorities. However, his view is only negative toward the government. Nas continues on to say that his voice and his opinions would have been silenced ten years ago so the community must continue to push for their rights, take control of who’s in control. Nas speaks on how the government cannot handle the hood and does not know how to improve the situation so they over use the police. The police enforce the law which is broken daily in these â€Å"hoods† using violence and brutality to solve issues. Nas ends this verse by hoping for a true representative from his community in the government he wants â€Å"hood councilmen† (Nas 2004). Nas dives into race at the beginning of the second verse. He addresses women and how

Monday, December 9, 2019

CSR Practices in Tesla Motors Samples for Students Myassignmenthelp

Question: Discuss about the Corporate Social Responsibility or Sustainability Practiced by the Companies. Answer: Introduction This report focuses on the corporate social responsibility or sustainability practiced by the companies in current market. For discussion, famous company of car industry Tesla Motors has taken. In present time, car industry is the fastest growing industry in the market. Tesla Motors are the famous company which was founded in the year 2003. The company basically deals in manufacturing, designing and wholesaling of the cars components (Tesla Motors, 2017). Now, aim of the company is to provide electric vehicles to reduce the impact of CO2 gases in the atmosphere. The strategy of Tesla Motors is to be the best technology company in the car industry by developing affordable electric cars for the consumers. Aim of the company is to reduce the dependency of customers on petroleum-based vehicles. This report is focused on the CSR activities of the Tesla Motors which are shared values and ecosystem innovation. Along with this, this report provides a theoretical approach in terms of CSR acti vities (Tyagi, 2011). Theoretical approaches The theories of sustainability have come from the chain of innovation and transformation. Basically, the concept of corporate social responsibility is the process of globalization and impacts every organization as there are many social problems which have to face by organization while expanding the business in to global market. Now, CSR is the concept of global plan which is considered as the social contract between the society and business. CSR practices are important for every organization for being accountable for the long-term need of the people and environment (McKnett, 2013). In the case of Tesla motors, there are two approaches of CSR. There are many researchers who have analyzed the practices of CSR in the business. CSR in the business activities enables the company to gain many benefits in terms of tangible and intangible benefits such as increase brand value, risk reduction, secured license to operate, cost decrease retention of customers and improved employee recruitment w ithin the company. There are two complementary theories by which effectiveness of CSR practices in Tesla motors can be measured (Matten, Dirk Jeremy, 2008). The description of those theories is described below. Stakeholder theory This is the most important theory in CSR practices which depends upon the roles and responsibilities of the company towards stakeholders. This theory provides new way to the firms to think about the stakeholders. According to stakeholder theory, stakeholders are key concern of the organization which involves customers, employees, suppliers, shareholders and government. Basically, CSR practices focus on the social and environmental concerns so; there must be collaboration between the stakeholders and the organization on the voluntary basis. In the CSR practices, it is important for the companies to understand the importance of interaction with external and internal stakeholders. Based on the research in support of CSR, it is the accountability of the organization to identify the interest of various stakeholders rather than focusing on financial or economic requirements. Figure 1: Various Stakeholders (Source: Tyagi, 2011) The arguments in the stakeholder theory depend upon assumptions that company should focus on maximizing profit through managing the interest of stakeholders. According to this theory, Stakeholders must be active in the decision making process of the organization. In case of Tesla Motors, CSR practices in the company are implemented on the basis of interest and demands of the stakeholders. Tesla is the biggest automobile company in the world and it identifies the needs of stakeholders on the top most priority. By effective corporate social responsibility, company is able sustain long-term development in terms of manufacturing electronic vehicle in the market. In Tesla Motors, important stakeholders are shareholders, employees, customers and society (Mangram, 2012). In these, the most important stakeholders are employees and shareholders which are chosen in the report. Shareholders- Shareholders are the most important group of stakeholders in Tesla motors who are supportive to achieve the business goals and objectives. Main interest of the shareholders in the company is to maximize the profit of the business in the market. They are important because they affect the capital of the company. For understanding and addressing the core interest of shareholders, Tesla is planning for electric vehicles under the guidance and approval of the shareholders. The plan of electric vehicles is helpful in reducing the cost incurred in fuel and petroleum because electric cars will be very cheap in cost. In current time, customers are very concerned for surrounding environment so, with the idea of electric vehicles, company will be able to maximize the profit in the market. Providing electric cars to reduce harmful gases is also the part of corporate social responsibility of Tesla motors which is helpful in improving the performance of the company in the car industry (Hardester, 2010). Employees- This group of stakeholders has the interest in the career development, equal treatment and opportunity and high wages. They are very crucial as they always impact on the production and capacity of services in the business. To identify the interest of the employees, Tesla has many activities related to CSR i.e. global learning, sustainable workforce, and global leadership programs. To protect the productivity, health and capabilities of the employees, company has initiatives in terms of sustainable workforce. Along with this, there are some development programs i.e. monitoring the profit and performance of the employees etc. managers in Tesla motors to motivate the employees to achieve the goals in the organization. They provide leadership programs i.e. experienced leader program for the middle level managers. These all programs come under the CSR activities and dedication of the company to address the interest of employees (Ashtiani et al, 2011). Creating shared value (CSV) Creating shared value is the link between CSR and the competitive advantage of the company. Shared value is not only sustainability but it is the new process also to get success. The objective of shared value is to implement the change in the business operations of a company in terms of people, process, strategy, structure and reward. In simple words, CSV is related to getting benefit in the business by using CSR activities (Porter Kramer, 2011). Figure 2: Customer Shared Value (Source: Porter Kramer, 2011) In case of Tesla Motors, there are many reasons of the company to use value principles in the business operations. Provided values by the Tesla Motors are described below: Leader- This is the key reason to create value for the customers. The aim of the company is to improve the lives of the people in the community. Elon Musk is the person in Tesla motors who has created and run the company. He is the leader in the company who believe in generating energy in the sustainable way. Because of his efforts, company is now famous in the car industry. That person has capacity to influence and motivate the culture of the company to get success. Value- Objective of Tesla Motors is to develop and maintain sustainable transportation by offering electric cars to the customers. By providing this value, the mission of the company is to do research on sustainability and provide benefits to the customers. Tesla is now providing benefits to the customers in terms of social and economic benefits related to price (Lantos, 2001). Open innovation- This is another reason to create shared value principles in the business. Open innovation is helpful for the company to attract more and more customers. Innovation of Tesla Motors includes creating transportation sustainable for the travelers. To achieve business goals, it is important for Tesla Motors to create electric vehicles. This is the market of innovation with the shared values provided by Tesla Motors (Maula, Keil Salmenkaita, 2006). Agenda- Values provided by Tesla motors are linked with the overall strategy and agenda of the company. Shared values of the company are connected with the sustainability. This is helpful for the company to run business in the operating market. To achieve long-term goals, shared values are also important for Tesla motors (Karamitsios, 2013). Tesla motors are focused on the innovation for the whole environment. Objective of the company is to give importance for the humanity and customers in the society. To achieve this goal, Tesla will use solar batteries in the electric cars. Along with this, Tesla is developing the system of energy storage devices to develop more and more renewable energy in the environment. Now, in current time, Tesla is appropriate company to reinvent of future ecology. Customers are finding for stylish vehicles with sustainability. So, Tesla is just right in providing such type of vehicles to the customers. The shared values provided by Tesla Motors can be evaluated by some factors i.e. vision, and strategy (Kearney, 2013). Vision- Vision of the company is to provide values to the customers in terms of electric vehicles so that the harmful gases in the environment can be reduced successfully. Strategy- The main strategy of Tesla Motors is to create values factors or the customers and society by new ecosystem innovations. The objective of the company is to create sustainable transportation for the customers. Conclusion This report provides supportive arguments for the CSR activities in the business. By the above discussion, it can be said that Tesla is going on the right way in terms of CSR practices. Tesla is providing values and shared principles and addressing stakeholders interests for the future growth and success. The company is focusing on CSR practices having the aim of providing values and ecosystem innovation References Tyagi, R.K. (2011). A Conceptual Study of Corporate Social Responsibility and Its Persuasion on Employees. pp. 2837 Porter, M. E. Kramer, M. R. (2011). The Big Idea: Creating Shared Value: Harvard Business Review. 89 (1/2). 62-77 McKnett, C. (2013). The investment logic for sustainability. Retrieved on 29th April 2017 from https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_mcknett_the_investment_logic_for_sustainability Maula, V. J., Keil, T. Salmenkaita, J. (2006). Open innovation in systemic innovation contexts. Oxford University Press Matten, Dirk Jeremy M. (2008). Implicit and Explicit CSR: A Conceptual Framework for a Comparative Understanding of Corporate Social Responsibility: Academy of Management Review. 33(2). 404-424 Mangram, M. E. (2012). The globalization of tesla motors: a strategic marketing plan analysis. Routledge. 20(4). 289-312 Lantos, G. P., (2001). The Boundaries of Strategic Corporate Social Responsibility: Journal of Consumer Marketing. 18 (7). 595-632 Kearney, A. T. (2013). The Contribution of the Automobile Industry to Technology and Value Creation. 3-6 Karamitsios, A. (2013). Open Innovation in EVs: A Case Study of Tesla Motors. Sweden Hardester, E. (2010). The profitability of the electric car (Thesis). Brigham Young University Ashtiani, C., Cullen, G., Davis, P., Greenwald, J., Hardigan, P., Eladio, K., Zimmerman, D. (2011). Plug-in electric vehicles: A practical plan for progress. Expert Panel Report, School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University Tesla Motors, (2017). About Tesla. Retrieved on 29th April 2017 from https://www.teslamotors.com/en_CA/about

Monday, December 2, 2019

Mastering Semantic Technology for Success with Ontotext Live Online Trainings

Mastering Semantic Technology for Success with Ontotext Live Online Trainings How It All Started Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.Albert EinsteinDecember 2016. This is when the first live online training in Semantic Technology organized by a bunch of enthusiasts at Ontotext took place. It was certainly not the first training on the subject in the world. But it was an important step in our efforts to proactively communicate the advantages of Semantic Technology.Ever since Ontotext started piling up knowledge in the field, we have been sharing our expertise through trainings. However, these have always been created as a result of specific requests from clients.But in the winter of 2016, we decided to change that. Instead of waiting for people to approach us, we wanted to be at the forefront of educating them about how certain semantic tools could help them solve various data analytics challenges. Here’s our story. A Closer Look at Who We AreFor more than 20 years, Ontotext has been in the business of developing and providing Semantic Technology-based solutions for various domains. As a result, we’ve accumulated (often after some trial-and-error) a lot of valuable experience. This has helped us understand which solutions would work best depending on specific domains and use cases.It has also made us aware of the major pain points that people could come across when adopting Semantic Technology solutions. So, it was almost a matter-of-course that the idea of organizing all this knowledge into a coherent and easy-to-grasp learning journey was born. The Challenge of Designing Have-it-all TrainingsThere are three things to remember when teaching: know your stuff, know whom you are stuffing, and then stuff them elegantly.Lola J. May, Mathematics EducatorOnce you know your destination, you just need to start walking, right? Wrong. Before we could share our experience, first we needed to clearly define the audience that would benefit from such broader training courses. To do that, we had to decide which Semantic Technology adoption pain points we wanted to focus on to best meet people’s needs.Equally important, we needed to determine the format and the kind of content coverage that would be most useful for it. We didn’t just want to go in front of people and talk about what we knew and found interesting. We wanted to shape our expertise to fit what people actually needed to know. And do it in a way that made it easy and intuitive for them to apply when dealing with their own use cases.The Matter at HandAfter some consi deration, we decided that we wanted to focus on two areas where we thought our impact on people’s needs would be most significant.The first was to improve people’s understanding of the importance and the practical advantages of using Semantic Technology when solving various knowledge management and data analytics problems. This is how our Designing a SemTech PoC training was born.The second was to provide the best (and quickest) way for people to delve in and start working with our leading semantic graph database, GraphDB. This is how our GraphDB for DevOps training came about.Ways and MeansOnce the scope of the new training courses was defined, we looked at the pros and cons of different formats.Based on our experience from the tailored trainings, we decided that the best setup for sharing our practical experience and nurturing a community of like-minded Semantic Technology enthusiasts was to offer a live online format to a small group of participants. In this way, we could have more space for interchange and we could keep a close eye on people’s progress.We also anticipated that if our guidance proved beneficial for people, we could establish a schedule of recurring trainings. As an additional benefit, having recurring courses would also allow us to check if we were on the right track.Shaping Our OfferTo teach is to learn twice over.Joseph JoubertWhen we designed the original curriculum for our training courses, we had a pretty good idea of what we wanted to demonstrate the content coverage, the exercises, the individual assignments, etc.However, each iteration of a training was a chance to change and, hopefully, improve important details from content to delivery. This was mostly thanks to people’s feedback, but also the selected format allowed us to see what worked best and what didn’t.The most important lesson we have learned is that a training is always a work in progress. Each following edition has the potential to be better than the previous one both in terms of what we teach and how we teach it.Eight Editions of Designing a SemTech PoC LaterOur Designing a SemTech PoC training has evolved significantly from the first basic demonstration of what we considered to be the most important techniques. In the beginning, our live sessions focused on cramming as much useful information as possible about data integration (through OntoRefine) and data exploration (with SPARQL). We presented a sample workflow that illustrated how existing resources could benefit from Linked Open Datasets and how to best analyze the available data. As a successful PoC is, in our view, the result of efficient data analytics, we wanted to let the trainees get the feel of such a workflow with the help of some hands-on experience.However, we found that many people struggled with SPARQL. So, with the help of the participants’ feedback, we went through several iterations of redesigning the way we introduced it. We focused on the value of good technical skills in the process of solving an interesting problem. We also introduced a variety of means for data analysis. But most importantly, we decided to simplify the live session as much as possible to make it less difficult for trainees to follow what was c overed and give them more chances to interact.We reworked our use cases and interwove everything we demonstrated into a single story to engage our participants. This made all components of building a PoC easier to understand and refer to at a later stage.We also exported all non-interactive content to the off-line set of additional materials so that participants could study them at their own pace. Instead, we engaged everybody with quick quizzes and discussions on the covered topics.Now, we have a smooth workflow involving a real PoC design that covers all the necessary steps and demonstrates best practices. Shifting our focus to best practices around a single use case story and providing more space for exchange resulted in more lively and productive sessions and happier students.First Steps in GraphDB Training for DevOpsThe GraphDB Training for DevOps is a new course we have designed and started offering this year. It targets developers and operations specialists who interact with GraphDB on a daily basis and need a more in-depth understanding of our semantic graph database. So far, we’ve had only one internal and one public edition of this course, so it’s too early to talk about its progression. But already the internal training has contributed significantly to the improvement of the initial materials.The Bigger PictureA teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.Thomas CarruthersA year and a half later, Ontotext has offered a total of 14 training courses. This includes our two recurring courses: Designing Semantic Technologies PoC and GraphDB for DevOps. It also includes some custom courses for clients such as Semantic Technologies GATE; Linked Data Sources, Robust Text Analysis and Semantic Search; Gold Standard Corpora; etc.We’ve also collaborated with some universities. We’ve provided materials for the courses Knowledge Modelling and Representation and Knowledge Bases for FMI, University of Sofia. We’ve participated in the preparation of the course Knowledge Representation and Reasoning for the Uni versity of Aberdeen and we have contributed to ESSLLI 2018.Our training courses have had participants from many geographical locations. The use cases of the participants who came to improve their understanding of Semantic Technology in order to further their projects have also been quite diverse. Some were developing flexible data models for representing unstructured or semi-structured data from various domains. Others were working in the area of predictive analytics, or were trying to match and structure information across various sources, or were focused on cancer research.Or, as in the case of Culture Creates, the aim was to make cultural events in Canada findable for voice-powered and AI-powered search assistants. This is possible thanks to metadata enrichment, integrating and linking data from various data sources and, ultimately, dumping, structuring and querying that data with Ontotext’s GraphDB.All Roads Lead to the ClassroomAll in all, our experience has shown that by sharing our expertise in Semantic Technology, we can make a difference. Accommodating all types of busy schedules and non-work related commitments, our training courses allow you to join us from any location.The only disadvantage is that you don’t get to have any of our fragrant coffee and delicious cakes while you follow our demos on your screen at home, but, hey, maybe that’s not such a bad deal either?Interested? Go to our training page where you can learn details  or contact the team for specific questions.