Strengths Worth Coveting
February 7, 2008
Nongovernmental organizations have four strengths that corporations would be well served to heed. They are legitimacy, awareness of social forces, distinct networks, and specialized technical expertise. The public bestows the first,and the second is a function of the NGOs’ mission. The latter two refer to competences that NGOs have developed by venturing where corporations usually don’t go.
Legitimacy. According to a poll conducted by the Edelman public relations firm, both Americans and Europeans said they found NGO spokespeople more credible than either a company’s CEO or PR representative. Some fraction of the public, especially in Europe, sees NGOs as dedicated first and foremost to serving an aspect of the general social welfare. While many companies produce direct benefits to society–those in the pharmaceutical and food industries being obvious examples–the public interprets those benefits as by-products of the companies’ profit motive rather than as the direct result of their desire to feed or care for their fellow human beings.
Suspicion of companies’ motives can become so entrenched that the soundest solutions aren’t given a fair hearing. The fate of Shell Oil’s Brent Spar storage and tanker offloading system is one such example. After conducting a thorough analysis of what to do with the platform, Shell concluded that towing it into the deep water of the North Atlantic and then sinking it was the best alternative from an environmental standpoint. (It would also be £40 million cheaper than dismantling the platform on land.) Outraged by the plan, Greenpeace organized a boycott of Shell products in the UK and sent protesters to occupy the facility. Ultimately, Shell succumbed to public pressure and hauled the rig ashore for dismantling.Greenpeace subsequently admitted that it had overstated the amount of oil residues in the tank and thus the harmful environmental effects of scuttling.
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Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
Turning Gadflies into Allie
February 4, 2008
Multinational companies are the driving force behind globalization, but they are also the source of many of its most painful consequences, including currency crises, cross-border pollution, and overfishing. These remain unsolved due to two kinds of failures. For one, such issues are, by their nature, beyond the scope of individual governments to avoid or resolve. For the other, transnational organizations, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, have proved unequal to the task.
Into the breach have leaped not-forprofit, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) of concerned citizens.Realizing that news of cross-border problems can also cross borders, NGOs have sponsored angry protests in Seattle, Davos, Göteborg, and Genoa. While these are perhaps the best-publicized demonstrations of nongovernmental organizations’ activism, they are hardly the only ones. NGOs have seized on all forms of modern persuasion – from advertising to boycotts and even sabotage – in order to influence public sentiment toward global traders, manufacturers, and investors.The NGOs hope that they can effect policy changes in this way.
In many NGOs’ view, companies that incorporate offshore to avoid taxes or that send jobs overseas demonstrate a lack of allegiance to their country of origin. At the same time, by failing to bring with them the labor and human rights standards prevailing in the developed world, these companies appear unconcerned with the welfare of the countries where they do business. Yet their economic power frustrates official efforts to control their activities.
Read more
Turning Gadflies into Allie
February 4, 2008
Multinational companies are the driving force behind globalization, but they are also the source of many of its most painful consequences, including currency crises, cross-border pollution, and overfishing. These remain unsolved due to two kinds of failures. For one, such issues are, by their nature, beyond the scope of individual governments to avoid or resolve. For the other, transnational organizations, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, have proved unequal to the task.
Into the breach have leaped not-forprofit, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) of concerned citizens.Realizing that news of cross-border problems can also cross borders, NGOs have sponsored angry protests in Seattle, Davos, Göteborg, and Genoa. While these are perhaps the best-publicized demonstrations of nongovernmental organizations’ activism, they are hardly the only ones. NGOs have seized on all forms of modern persuasion – from advertising to boycotts and even sabotage – in order to influence public sentiment toward global traders, manufacturers, and investors.The NGOs hope that they can effect policy changes in this way.
In many NGOs’ view, companies that incorporate offshore to avoid taxes or that send jobs overseas demonstrate a lack of allegiance to their country of origin. At the same time, by failing to bring with them the labor and human rights standards prevailing in the developed world, these companies appear unconcerned with the welfare of the countries where they do business. Yet their economic power frustrates official efforts to control their activities.
Read more
Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
Getting to “Just Enough”
February 1, 2008
If you pay attention to the four categories and their relation to one another, you can enrich the potential for any activity to satisfy you on numerous dimensions, whether at work, in your leisure time, or in some other aspect of your life. The high achievers in our study were able to accomplish great things for themselves and others by recognizing they had multiple goals that were critical to their idea of real success and by being fully committed to whatever activity they were engaged in. By switching and linking, they limited their attention to one task, and when other needs pressed, they were able to make lightning fast changes of focus and emotional energy. Instead of feeling cheated because they couldn’t get it all, they were renewed by following the cycle of attention to each category.
How do you know when it’s time to stop your work in one category and switch your attention to another? That’s where the concept of “just enough” becomes critical. Conventional interpretations of “enough”don’t capture its full potential. People tend to use the term to express dissatisfaction, as in, “That’s it! I’ve had enough!”or as a code for mediocrity or passivity, as in,“If I’m just happy every day, that’s enough.”We mean something else by enough, closer to its root definition: occurring in sufficient quantity or quality to satisfy demands or needs. If you have a firm idea of the big picture in your kaleidoscope of success, it becomes easier to determine and appreciate “enough” in any one activity.Without losing your energy for high aspirations, you set reachable goals.“Just enough”is the antidote to society’s addiction to the infinite “more.” Seen in that light, it becomes a vehicle for actively making choices that allow you to do and get more, not less, through achieving satisfaction in more areas of your life.
Posted by Maximillian | Filed Under Insight
