Four Important Business Concepts that Are Shaping Today and 20 Years from Now - Research Paper Example

If one searches the pages of history it will be evident that no society ever became affluent without the support of the government. The Western civilization also developed economically when the government took charge to resolve the situation by establishing private property rights and eliminating anarchy with the help of law. This helped the society very much and brought prosperity. Though government is necessary but it is always not sufficient to bring prosperity in a nation. Without government the world would become disarrayed with little protection of property rights. It can only be eliminated by collective action of local, state and federal government. It also enables to develop the transportation system, to lower the trading costs and a reliable medium for exchange can be created for increasing the gains from trade. So, it can be stated that the early growth of government is associated with increase in the levels of income and increase in positive growths. (Saxton, 1998) It is very important to understand that failure can be observed in a free market at different time periods and it should have the ability to correct itself. The method of correction should be eliminating the less performing investments and businesses which dragged the market down. But the US lost their belief in the natural correction mechanism of free market at the time of financial crisis and started to correct the market by artificial measures. The existence of SEC or Securities and Exchange Commission alone gives an indication that the US economy is not a free market. Following the market crash of 1929 the Federal government took steps for preventing the fraud corporations from performing audits of these companies. The federal government of US also regulated the market at the end of the 19th century. FDA (Food and Drug Administration) was created to control and regulate the companies those who were not maintaining the purity law. A minimum wage for the nation was also established by forming the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938. All these show that the Federal government of America has a great influence on the market by regulating it, which in turn makes the American market limited in nature and it does not exhibit a pure capitalist system (Clark, n.d.). The above mentioned government regulations are also invariable during the phase of calm and prosperity. But, they tend to crop up during the times of crisis; year 2008 is a good example of a managed economy. In addition, the federal government also intervened during ‘takeover of Mae and Mac’ and the ‘buy in of AIG’. The federal government also formed the CAFE regulation as mandate about the fuel consumption issue (Richman, 1988). These things show corporations cannot exercise or regulate the market but government with its authority can regulate market according to their will. So, if government wants to regulate the market there is no scope of rejection about the issue. These clearly indicate the regulatory power of the federal government and also shows American market is still not a purely capitalist market (Clark, n.d.). 2. Labor movement in America played a significant role in history. People came to America as laborers as servants or slaves. Although during the period of revolution the unions were merely a temporary band of people, this helped to set the stage for the modern day unionization of the workers. For these unions laborers enjoy many benefits today. These unions mainly advocated hikes in labor wages and shorter working hours. But the most concerning issue was after achieving the goals, these unions used to disintegrate. America was growing and so was the demand of labor. At that time many inventions and innovations occurred and a transition was also evident in America i.e. change of American society from an agricultural society to an industrial society. This transition was termed as the Industrial Revolution and this situation generated demand for more labor (Murray, n.d.). During the Industrial Revolution period the demand of labor was very high which initiated the inclusion of more laborers in the workforce. With increase in laborers in workforce there was a need of unions to protect the rights of the laborers from being mistreated by their masters. But the employers used to find the loopholes of law and used to take undue advantage. This encouraged the workers to form National Labor Union in 1866 to protect themselves from exploitation. Another notable labor union AFL was also very active. Afterwards, Congress created U.S. Department of Labor to protect rights of the workers. This resulted in formulation and implementation of different labor acts like Clayton Act, Sherman Act, Public Contracts Act and Fair Labor Standards Act to standardize the minimum wage, child labor provision, and overtime pay, etc. Social security Act, Equal Pay Act and Civil Rights Acts were also introduced later for protecting the labors from exploitation (Murray, n.d.). OSHA or Occupational Safety and Health Administration acts as a system which assures the safety of American Workers. They help to set and enforce standards, provide training, educate, develops partnership and encourages improvement continuously for safety and health of the workplace. As mentioned earlier, U.S. Department of Labor also actively works in the protection of labors in America. They generally formulate different acts and take steps to conduct inspections to observe all the employers maintaining the norms of the Acts. If the norms are not maintained there are severe penalties (Employer Rights and Responsibilities Following an OSHA Inspection, 2005, pp.1-2). Now in the US the most concerning issue which is developing within the ranks of organized labor is on the context of their future movements. As, from these past three decade it is observed that US as well as through the globe environment for the labors are very much hostile and it is also true for the working people. Now-a-days, labor unions and trade unions are only supposed to uplift the spirits and their movement also does not show much concern for the progress or the social uplift of the labors. The neo-liberal globalization has changed the approach of capitalism for the working class as well as for the whole society. Neo-liberalism also influenced some changes in the thinking of the major political parties and guided for a shift in the political Right. So, current scenario needs a new approach in strategizing, forming tactics and new vision for unionism. It might appear that, after emergence of OSHA and US Department of Labor at the forefront to protect the labors the future of labor unions are looking bleak. But these labor unions are also very much needed, though they have to be more active and they have to change their strategies to help the labors. They should also cooperate with OSHA and Labor Department and observe are these federal systems working properly to ensure the rights of the labors. In this way the Labor Unions can sustain and the labors will also be able to voice their opinion in US (Fletcher, Bronfenbrenner, & Dewitt, 2011). 3. The high growth rates of the BRICs show this group of nation has risen from their former economic condition. If we observe their share of global output it comes to light that it has doubled in the last 10 years to 15%. Population of these BRIC countries is also high and it comprises 40% of the global population (Cameron, 2011, p.2). China and India are the two most populous nations among them, whereas the other two nations namely Brazil and Russia are minnows. China is the dominating force in terms of economy among the BRIC nations. China’s PPP or Purchasing power parity became 19% in 2009 from 8% of 1980. China holds 61% of the BRIC output which is up from 42% in 1990 (Cameron, 2011, p.2). Among the BRIC countries the story specially revolves around China and India. This shows that these BRIC nations had emerged strongly in the economic front and the economic power has shifted from the old developed nations, mostly from Western European nations and Japan to these emerging countries. The recent financial crisis enabled India and China to emerge as strong economic powers (Cameron, 2011, pp.2-3). Moreover, supremacy of America on the other nations of the world due to their economic strength has eroded over time (Saxton, 1998). Furthermore, the economic downturn of 2008-2009 has crumbled American economy. The yearly real output in US is growing slowly than the earlier decade. The output slowdown is not unique to US and if we observe the growth rate of Asian countries like China and India has increased much more than that of US (Saxton, 1998). In future due to the demographic factor and the growth of technology as well as the direct investment their share of global goods transaction and GDP will increase than their recent level. This conclusion highly depends on the institutional and political structure of the global system. The BRICs are also expanding their horizon in the intellectual domination whereas the Western countries like America are still going through a set ideology. This will break the hegemony and displace these old systems with their innovative ideas. This may raise conflict within the new players and the old powers. As India and Brazil have a democratic view, whereas Russia and China have authoritarian characteristics. These two democratic countries show close resemblance of economies with the capitalist system. These things show the emerging BRIC nations are adapting themselves with global economy to emerge as developed nation either by creating a system which will enable them to grow or by using their resources of technology and intellect to outperform countries like America which is still going through the same old system. It will affect America by bringing down their business performance globally due to their less advance technology and innovation, and these BRIC countries will also enter the American market and plough in high profits due to their superior skills and intellect in offering services as well as superior products with advanced technology with less price. They will become the cost leaders due to their high store of natural resources and skilled workforce (Almeida, 2009). This BRIC economy will also enable the US with some opportunities to perform business in the BRIC countries. As the market of the BRIC countries are opening up and it will enable the American retail giants and the other FMCG goods manufacturer to enter the market (The BRIC Promise, n.d.). 4. In Cloud Computing the internet is generally represented as the cloud and it represents all the components which enable a network to work. But there is much more importance of this process as this technology helps people to access applications which are located in any other computer or other internet connected devices. In cloud computing, generally another company hosts the application for an individual. This enables an individual to save the costs for maintaining the servers and manages all the software updates. All this services depends on the amount of money an individual pays to serving company. This will enable to cut capital expenditures as the servers will be bought and maintained by other person, even the electricity power charges and the expenses of cooling them will be borne by them. This also provides convenience to telecommuters and travelers as they can use these applications from any location just by logging in within the system. This cloud computing solution comprises of different components. Those are clients, datacenter and distribution centers. Each element serves a specific purpose for this system. Here a complete installation of a machine can be run in another machine i.e. in cloud computing system the software runs in a virtual machine as it runs a server and this technique is known as full virtualization. In this way it allows unique application to run as well as it helps to run with different operating systems. Full virtualization helps in number of ways: (1) to share a computer system in between multiple users; (2) it isolates different users and the program controlling the system; (3) it also enables to emulate hardware to other machines. But in order to get full virtualization specific hardware combinations are needed. Furthermore, the para-virtualization enables use of multiple OS in a hardware simultaneously and using system resources. The entire system i.e. BIOS, drives, etc. are emulated in the full virtualization, whereas in para-virtualization a module of management works with an OS that is synchronized to work within a virtual machine. Para-virtualization generally gives better performance than full virtualization, as in full virtualization all elements should be emulated (Velte, Velte, & Velte & Elsenpeter, 2009, pp. 3-10; Bechtolsheim, 2008, pp.7-13). The advantages of cloud computing are that it enables cutting operational and capital costs and helps the department concerned with IT to focus on strategic projects than keep running the datacenters. Intel labs conveyed that their two centers are totally focused on research of cloud as well as computing. They mainly focused on developing and giving a shape to cloud computing for the future. Intel is spending nearly $130 million in this development program. So along with the previously mentioned ISTCs for visual and secure computing the centers are also encouraging strong bonding for collaboration between the university intellectuals and Intel. Furthermore to strengthen the collaboration ISTCs use open models of IP with results available through technical publications and software releases from open source. All these events show that hardware industry is very much enthusiastic about this concept and they are eyeing it as an innovative and valuable system which will bring a revolution in the IT industry. (Intel invests 30m in cloud computing, 2011) References 1. Almeida, R. P. (2009), The BRIC’s role in the global economy, Retrieved on August 6, 2011 from: http://www.pralmeida.org/05DocsPRA/1920BricsRoleEnglish.pdf 2. Bechtolsheim, A. (2008), Cloud Computing Retrieved on August 6, 2011 from: http://netseminar.stanford.edu/seminars/Cloud.pdf 3. Cameron, F. (2011), The EU and the BRICs, Retrieved on August 6, 2011 from:http://dseu.lboro.ac.uk/Documents/Policy_Papers/DSEU_Policy_Paper03.pdf 4. Clark, J. (n.d.), Is a free market "free" if it's regulated?, Retrieved on August 6, 2011 from: http://money.howstuffworks.com/free-market-economy2.htm 5. Employer Rights and Responsibilities Following an OSHA Inspection (2005), Retrieved on August 6, 2011 from: http://setonresourcecenter.net/OSHA_pubs/osha3000.pdf 6. Fletcher, B. Bronfenbrenner, K. & D. Dewitt (2011), The Future of Organized Labor in the U.S. Reinventing Trade Unionism for the 21st Century, MONTHLY REVIEW, Retrieved on August 6, 2011 from: http://monthlyreview.org/commentary/the-future-of-organized-labor-in-the-u-s 7. Intel invests 30m in cloud computing (2011), The Times of India, Retrieved on August 6, 2011 from: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/news/hardware/Intel-invests-30m-in-cloud-computing/articleshow/9493661.cms 8. Murray, G. (n.d.), A Brief History of Labor Unions in the United States, Retrieved on August 6, 2011 from: http://ellerbruch.nmu.edu/classes/cs255w02/cs255students/GMURRAY/p11/history.pdf 9. Richman, S. (1988), The Sad Legacy of Ronald Reagan, The Free Market, VI(10), Retrieved on August 6, 2011: http://mises.org/freemarket_detail.aspx?control=488 10. Saxton, J. (1998), Joint Economic Committee Study, Retrieved on August 6, 2011 from: http://www.house.gov/jec/growth/govtsize/govtsize.htm 11. The BRIC Promise (n.d.), ATKEARNEY, Retrieved on August 6, 2011 from: http://www.atkearney.com/res/shared/pdf/BRIC_Promise_S.pdf 12. Velte, T. Velte, A. & Velte, J. T. & R. C. Elsenpeter (2009),Cloud Computing: A Practical Approach, McGraw Hill Professional Read More