Executive Summary
This paper focuses on how the HP Inc. uses information technology to embrace sustainability in the form of Corporate Social Responsibility. The concept of sustainability is a matter that has gained traction in a variety of industries and sectors over the past two decades. Several nations have articulated policies that are centered on the sustainability, thus using it as a framework to base integrated strategies concerning the environment, the economy as well as the quality of life. The HP Inc. has employed various technologies to maintain an appealing face to its customers both in its domestic market and abroad. It has come up with such technologies such as the i-inclusion, e-government, e-inclusion among others which have tremendously increased its market appeal to the clients across the global. The technology that the HP Inc. uses has enabled it to enhance the livelihoods of the other people across the globe, both the technologically endowed and the technology starved communities, hence, bridging the gap of technological disparity. The CSR and the IT that the HP Inc. has integrated has made it remain relevant in the competitive global business arena and has kept it going. Noteworthy is that the integration of the IT has enabled the company to make effective responses when it comes to the decision making that has turned out to have a positive impact on the company’s business operations. The key example being the partnership of HP with the three electronic manufacturing companies namely; Sony, Braun, and Electrolux to form a private recycling company in Europe. Not only that but the company also employed a novel technology in Europe to develop a non-cancerous trivalent organic chromium that enabled it to reduce the manufacturing costs of the hardware for its merchandise computers.
Global IT Issues and Sustainability and Response Decision Making
Modern technology is very significant since it has enabled different companies to expand globally with ease than the previous period. The digital globalization is enabling the businesses to construct themselves when an opportunity arises, and they consider that there are numerous advantages. The global technology opens employment for the workers in different countries around the world. It is making the companies leverage the talents easily, exploit their, assets, capabilities and resources entirely from various backgrounds and countries. The Global IT is an overall global talent acquisition. This paper discusses how the HP Inc. has integrated the global IT issues and the matters of sustainability in responsive decision making in the international business.
The HP Inc. can create a brighter future through the integration of IT to make life better for everyone in all the regions of their operations. The company believes that technology is only meaningful if makes life better for all people around the globe and in so doing, it makes the word a better place. Sustainability in this sense is a powerful force for innovation in the business operations of the company. Sustainability will only serve to support the priorities of the organization ranging from designing and providing the company’s core products and services to creating breakthrough technologies such as the 3-D printing (www.hp.com, 2002). Therefore, it is sustainability that can inspire the company to reinvent and help shape the future while ensuring that it delivers value for the esteemed clients and the company. The company can only get better performance in the global business arena if sustainability becomes central to its vision to not only use the existing technology but to create novel technologies that will serve to enhance the lives of everyone, everywhere. The company has a dedicated team of Corporate Social and Environmental Responsibility in the Corporate Affairs organization that was established in 2001 to coordinate the numerous activities of the HP Inc. The objective of the Corporate Affairs organization was to live up to the company’s aspirations of becoming a global leader in technological innovation and contribution to the global community(www.hp.com, 2009). The company is living up to that aspiration nearly two decades after it set that noble aspiration and it is engaging and cooperating with the societies globally to invent sustainable information access solutions that create useful and significant values around the globe.
According to Nidumolu, Prahalad, and Rangaswami (2009), the HP Inc. has made significant milestones when it comes to the Corporate Social Responsibility both in the native country and abroad. For example, the company has helped to shape numerous environmental regulations in Europe and uses milestones to its advantage as necessary to gain insightful business decisions. Moreover, the company used diplomacy through the corporate social responsibility in 2006 when it persuaded the European Union regulations on the use of Chromium to manufacture computer hardware. The company used diplomacy and persuaded the EU regulators to withhold the ban on Chromium until such a time when it completed its trials on organic trivalent chromium (Nidumolu, Prahalad, and Rangaswami, 2009). When the company succeeded in developing the organic chromium, it demonstrated business ethics towards the community in which it operates. The development of the non-cancerous trivalent chromium element helped the HP Inc. to save money, and it transferred the technology to many vendors who completed the supply of new coatings for the computer hardware parts, which helped to reduce HP’s costs.
The products and services of the HP Inc. enable digital infrastructures that the ever growing population and the business enterprises can use productively and affordably. The HP has integrated information technology to its products and services to enhance the human potential by enabling the governments, people, as well as businesses around the world to connect with the world in a productive and affordable way. The company continuously offers a growing and unique set of complementary and end-to-end solutions that are appropriate to different settings ranging from the global enterprises to the rural villages in the remote places of this world. The HP’s IT solutions indeed improve the lives of people and businesses by allowing them to use the intelligent connected devices and settings to access the internet infrastructure and to engage in a new generation of applications that are provided as e-services. For example, HP company was the pioneer in the inventions that help other inventors invent when it created the open standards that provided the platforms that encourage innovation, customization, and integration. Moreover, the e-government services have enabled the company to make exemplary contributions to the increasing participation of the citizens and government transparency around the world.
The HP Inc. has integrated information technology in the form of e-inclusion that enables the societies and the organizations around the globe to work cooperatively and inclusively to enhance the quality of life (www.hp.com, 2002). It is doing this to bridge the gap between the technologically empowered societies and the technologically excluded societies. The e-inclusion program has led to digital globalization which has important business and education implications which can promote sustainability and response decision-making. The combination of modern IT and quick decision making promotes an efficient and incredible global market. They also create an automatic way in which the companies can reach their customers and also get to the various playing field levels. It is enabling small and medium businesses to compete effectively with big and stable companies. Technology reduces the cost structures, removes the entry barriers, and it provides low cost, high quality, and efficient results (Kates et al., 2001). It can enable the development of new and different industries, and the existing companies are not usually in need of the previous massive capitalization. For example, HP’s i-community in India has accelerated the socio-economic development in the Andhra Pradesh rural community in India (www.hp.com, 2002). The HP technological investment in learning has enabled higher levels of student achievement and has created vast opportunities for all people to learn and contribute to their maximum potential to expand its market and transform the society. Integrating such technological advancements into the business has enabled the HP company to maintain its sustainability in the market and fostered its decision-making processes in the corporate world. IT integration is allowing the company to be competitive with various technologies and regulations, and they can easily sustain themselves towards gaining the market share and achieving competitive advantage. By using information from the new technology, the company can make significant decisions regarding matters that are currently affecting them.
For any business to be successful, it needs to develop and sustain a corporate culture that is ethical. Firms can achieve this by having various core ethical values that they can infuse through their organizational policies, practices, and processes. By using the Internet, the company can manage to gather information on how they can successfully introduce this values so that they yield positive results. They can also attain the culture by establishing a formal ethical program, proving ethics training, including the code of ethical conduct in that program and having an ethics officer in the organization (Kates et al., 2001). Moreover, the ethical dimensions of the HP should relate to the environmental ethics as far as matters of sustainability and environmental justice are concerned. For example, in 2002 when HP learned about the Europe’s Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment that would require the manufacturing companies to pay for the recycling costs commensurate with the sales it teamed up with Sony, Braun, and Electrolux to form a private recycling platform in Europe. This move was sustainable to the HP Inc. since the government-sponsored recycling programs would be expensive. In the private recycling partnership with the three electronic manufacturing companies, HP managed to save more than one hundred million dollars in a span of four years ranging from 2003 to 2007. Moreover, this private partnership that came up with the idea of recycling improved HP’s reputation with the customers, legislators, and the electronics companies in the industry.
Hewlett Packard’s activities can cause environmental damage, and they can also endanger the residents’ health. The activities include the disposal of waste electrical products especially lithium batteries which are highly dangerous to human life. By using modern technology, the company can gather new information on how similar companies operating in different countries have been able to reduce the environmental effects. HP Inc. can learn new techniques of disposing of their waste products without risking the health and life of the citizens. The new approaches can also make the environment human-friendly.
A company operating in a country where there are unrest and environmental degradation can encounter international pressure (Funtowicz, & Ravetz, 2011). The foreign governments, environmental group and human rights organizations can put a lot of pressure on the enterprise to address the arising problems and behave responsibly towards the citizens. The company can receive excoriation from the media houses because of these problems. The international agencies can address the existing problems by using global technologies. They do not need to waste time to organize face to face meetings so that they can discuss the current challenges. They can do it through Skype or by using other advanced technologies.
Employers should have a concern about their worker's wellbeing, and this can be evident by rewarding them with various social benefits which are likely to boost their motivation. The current generation managers understand that the company’s success can be through the employees’ motivation and their hard work. Information Technology should help the executives not only to have a focus on their profits but also to have a concern for employee’s environmental issues and welfare. An employee with appropriate technological skills should not receive a low wage, and the company should continuously increase their wage depending on their experience. Businesses that have signed to the United Nations standards on human rights have immense pressure to adhere to the above conditions. The pressure is due to the technological advancement which allows investors, customers and employees to have vast information about all businesses that operate around the world. The employers should give the workers an opportunity of accessing technology since they can gain relevant skills which they can apply towards becoming very competitive with other companies.
Research is important for any organization because, though research, HP can discover the underlying issues, their strengths, areas of weaknesses and the proper interventions to adopt. External agencies can conduct the research, or the company can delegate the task to some of its employees. The research agents can do either qualitative or quantitative research to get the information that they need. They can get the information through the filling of questionnaires, polls or other relevant ways (Kates et al., 2001). The exercise of gathering information can be quick and very efficient if they use modern technologies. The devices will help them not to incur the extra costs of printing the hard copies and the burden of carrying them. Global advanced technology will assist them in comparing other previous studies that took place in other states. Analysis and interpretation of the primary results will be quick and can be clearly understood.
In the current business environment, a firm that has a strong belief in their set value will take the necessary actions to introduce social transformation which is consistent with their values even if those actions are risky. The above applies to an organization which believes in the value of modern technology towards the improvement and growth of its business. The HP Inc. has demonstrated that it can adequately adapt to change with the current technological changes so that it can compete with other global companies and sustain its business operations both in the short-term and the long-term (Nidumolu, Prahalad, and Rangaswami, 2009). What the company can do is that its business leaders should always be ready for the potential impacts of technology advancement in the future. Not all technological changes will affect the current economies, but some can significantly disrupt the people’s way of working and living. Some of the things which can impact technology across various applications a decade from now are the mobile internet, non-autonomous and autonomous vehicles, automation of knowledge work next-generation storage, genomics, internet of clouds and much more.
An economy which is stable will make the operations of various businesses to be easy. Some economies are centrally controlled and sometimes directly tied to specific industries. For example, a company can link its economy to the technological industry. The results may lead to imbalance and great harm to the country’s exports and imports and also it can negatively impact different sectors like the agricultural sector. Due to the high level of unemployment, various countries in the global context are facing economic instability. The emergence of various technological companies in the different countries is likely to boost their economy. The hot country can use the modern technologies to learn on how the economically stable states run their activities (Kates et al., 2001). The companies are creating employment for the residents thus improving the economy. By using technology, people in a given country can identify a job opportunity in another country across the world.
All companies should practice corporate social responsibility. HP should ensure that its business operations do not impact the citizens, and if they have a bearing, they should work towards removing the potential harm as it did in Europe as pointed earlier on in the paper. The company can detect the damage they are causing other people by the use of modern devices (Funtowicz, & Ravetz, 2011). They can also technologically take responsibility, i.e., through social media where they can apologize for their wrong deeds. By using technology, the organization can develop their community, for example, they can solicit funds from the potential donors from other countries.
In conclusion, global technology has been of great value to the people and different businesses. They empower companies of both sizes either small or large to quickly roll out products and deliver them to the global market. Employees acquire relevant technological skills which promote the growth of the company. Different businesses are using technology to improve community social responsibility. A company can easily identify the potential political and economic factors which can negatively affect their operations and use their innovative technologies to persuade the policy makers to allow its operations to continue. Acquiring the ethical values and putting them into practice will promote competitive advantage among the existing companies. One can learn those values by using technological devices, and they can identify the values that well-performing organizations have put into place. By integrating global IT and sustainability and responsive decision making, businesses are likely to prosper.
References
Funtowicz, S. O., & Ravetz, J. R. (2011). A new scientific methodology for global environmental issues. Ecological economics: The science and management of sustainability, 10, 137.
Kates, R. W., Clark, W. C., Corell, R., Hall, J. M., Jaeger, C. C., & Faucheux, S. (2001). Sustainability science. Science, 292(5517), 641-642.
www.hp.com. (2002 July). Social and environmental responsibility report innovation, community, sustainability. Available at http://www8.hp.com/us/en/pdf/hp_csr_full_hi_tcm_245_1357664.pdf
