The Positive Effect of Globalization and Modern Technological Revolution - Essay Example

? Contemporary Issues in Business and Management Table of Contents Introduction and Background of the Study 3 Analysis of Several Contemporary Issues4 Permissive Defaults 4 Profit vs. Privacy and Data Quality 5 Advertisement and Social Responsibility 6 Evaluation 8 Ethical Issues 8 Corporate Responsibility Issues 8 Conclusion and Recommendation 9 Reflection 11 Introduction and Background of the Study Due to the extensive use of computer technology, privacy has become one of the topics of discussion today. The concept of privacy can be defined in both legal and philosophical ways. The right to control of the individual’s information is known as the privacy. Over the past several years, the utilization of computer technology has increased dramatically due to the positive effect of globalization and modern technological revolution (Lober, 2012, p.40). Recently, major proportion of the population shares their personal information through online. Data like medical records, credit card purchases and other important materials are recorded in several significant powerful databases. A contemporary issue can be defined as the issue that has a specific relevance to the present time. It can lead to several management problems and challenges, such as ethical issues, corporate and social responsibility issues that can affect the business performance of the organization (Rosenfield, 2006, p.43). The leading firms around the globe are trying to capitalize on the opportunities that have been established and reformed due to globalization and advanced modern information technology. Now-a-days, the business organizations are trying to bring innovation in their business process in order to achieve competitive advantages within the competitive global market. Facebook is the largest global social networking site. Over 500 million global people are connected with each other through this social networking site. The organization was established in the year 2004 (Elefant and Black, 2010, p.34). In due course of time the organization has been able to connect a large percentage of global population as its members. Moreover, several small and large business organizations are using Facebook as the medium of advertising. Social media promotional strategy has become one of the effective advertising tools for the organization. However, the study will reveal Facebook’s several contemporary issues associated with the business ethics and social responsibility management. Analysis of Several Contemporary Issues The organization argues that there is no wrong in the social media promotional strategy. According to the organization, they already have recommended on their site to check in security settings before liking any page or status. The Facebook users are aware of the Facebook advertising activities (Mullerat, 2011, p.149). Since the year 2004, the organization has made numerous controversial moves related to privacy. The study will discuss and analyze several trends and prominent privacy incidents that have occurred over the organization’s lifetime. Permissive Defaults The organization used to select certain default privacy settings for the new initial sign ups. These settings are generally customizable, but several users of Facebook never bother to adjust the privacy settings. At the initial stages, the website has default privacy settings. At that point of time only college students were allowed to register as the website users. The organization has been able to increase its customer base in global market by implementing several unique business strategies (Poynter, 2010, p.253). A complaint was raised against Facebook that the organization is trying to sell the personal information and data of its users to other marketing organizations against money. The Advertising Standards authority has disclosed a code of advertising that has included the social responsibility clause. It aims to restrict the advertisers not to break the spirit of the rules. Initially, the organizations around the globe were posting free advertisements. However, in order to become more popular the organization has changed its default privacy settings in the year 2007 so that all the Facebook users can see the basic profile information of several users including their photos and names. Moreover, the information was visible to people within the network of users including detailed information and photos (Al-Deen and Hendricks, 2011, p.32). In the year 2010, the default settings of the social media network had tweaked again. Now-a-days, all information is visible to the entire website users by default except photos and wall post. Profit vs. Privacy and Data Quality Social media promotion has become one of the significant, potential and successful promotional activities. Facebook has provided the facility of online advertising to several leading and small global and glocal organizations. The organization is the leader in terms of global user base. However, the organizations had tried to target this huge potential untapped market since 2007. It became one of the successful promotional strategies for the organizations. Data quality refers to the specific level of trustworthiness of the information (Black and Roberts, 2011, p.241). Now-a-days, the traders and business organizations are mainly focusing on the social media advertisements. Huge number of people is using Facebook as their communication medium. Therefore, it has helped the organization to target a group of people through social media promotional strategy through Facebook. A controversy was created regarding the confidential data sharing. There are several ways to share information which helped Facebook to increase profit. Facebook has attracted several global organizations to start promotion through Facebook. Therefore several scam websites has got the chance to increase their profit by maximum click by the Facebook users. This can create an unethical business environment (Reynolds, 2011, p.377). Recently people are trying to reveal personal information as it has become one of the most significant social media trend. It has created a positive feedback loop that has helped Facebook to establish them as the major destination for the communal interaction on the web. Advertisement and Social Responsibility Social responsibility was the most significant global trend before the economic and financial meltdown. The Advertising Standards authority has disclosed a code of advertising that has included the social responsibility clause (Mohin, 2012, p.164). The organization has been able to increase its customer base in global market by implementing several unique business strategies. Initially, the organizations around the globe were posting free advertisements. Among these organizations, several scam websites also have posted advertisements (Heath, 2010, p.651). The aim of this kind of organization is to earn money through per click option. Moreover it has helped Facebook to maximize its business profit. Moreover online business activities and credit card transactions have threatened several Facebook users. Online hacking is the example of unethical business practices of these organizations. The profitability of the advertisers on Facebook increases with the frequency of the shares of that advertisement (Pride and Ferrell, 2011, p.71). It has helped the organization to increase its revenue. These specific advertisements are its common primary sources of income. Looking onto the above factors it can be stated that Facebook has implemented several unique business strategies in order to increase their brand image and business output. Several gaming and scam organizations are also becoming profitable through the Facebook promotional activities (Reich, 2011, p.31). Lack of account security facility is creating several negative factors for Facebook that can hamper the brand image of the organization. In terms of social responsibility, the organization is facing several challenges that can affect the business operation of Facebook (Coombs and Holladay, 2011, p.67). The organization has effectively implemented global business strategy. Several individuals and business firms are connected with each other through this social media network. The organization has implemented vertical organization structure. The organization is more users centric but the management of the organization needs to understand that it is the employees who are bringing innovation and creativity in their global business operation. This organization structure has affected the communication and decision making process. Moreover, it is evident that, the organization is forcing their users to click on the scam websites due to the lack of effective privacy security settings. The organization needs to understand that it is the right of the members to secure their personal data and information. In order to maximize the profit, the organization is allowing several business firms to put promotions in very unethical way (Carroll, Lipartito and Post, 2012, p.81). It is evident that the organization has tried to implement several CSR activities but they have failed to achieve the core objective through these corporate social responsibility activities. In order to maximize the business outcome, the organization has not prioritized its user’s privacy effectively. The social media industry has become highly competitive. Therefore in order to increase the market share the organization operating in the industry is trying to undertake several unethical business practices. Evaluation The organization has made a number of controversial undertakings relating to privacy. The members share personal information on the profile although it followed the default privacy settings in the initial stages of its birth (Basley and Haney, 2012, p.121). Globalization and use of advanced technology like high speed internet, smart phones increased the popularity of Facebook. The organization has been able to increase its member base in global market by implementing several unique business strategies (Cuvilceva, 2012, p.15). In the year 2010, the default settings of the social media network jerked again. Ethical Issues Over 500 million global people are connected with each other through this social networking site. In order to become more popular the organization has changed its default privacy settings in the year 2007 so that all the Facebook users can see the basic profile information of several users including their photos and names (Wankel, 2010, p.275). Due to this strategy the organization has able to maximize its profit. Moreover, providing open space for every organization for the purpose of online promotional strategy has provided the chance to several business firms and scam website to make profit through this social media promotional strategy. Corporate Responsibility Issues Lack of informal organizational culture is affecting the brand image of Facebook. Depending upon the nature of the organization, it can be stated that vertical organizational structure will not help to create a transparent organizational work environment. Moreover several failed CSR activities have created corporate responsibility issues (Beasley and Haney, 2012, p.72). Competitive business strategy of Facebook is the major reason behind these issues. Lack of account privacy, inadequate advertisement guideline and poor administrative strategy have created several problematic corporate issues. Conclusion and Recommendation The right to control of the individual’s information is known as the privacy. The concept of privacy can be defined in both legal and philosophical ways. Privacy can be found as the cultural relative depending upon the cultural and economical factors. Recently, citizens used to share their personal information through online. A Contemporary issue can lead to several management problems and challenges, such as ethical issues, corporate and social responsibility issue that can affect the business performance of the organization. The organization has been able to increase its customer base in global market by implementing several unique business strategies. There are several ways that have helped to share information that has helped Facebook to increase profit. Facebook attracted several global organizations to start promotion through Facebook. Therefore, several scam websites has got the chance to increase their profit by maximum click by the Facebook users. This can create an unethical business environment. Recently people are trying to reveal personal information as it has become one of the most significant social media trend (Blowfield and Murray, 2011, p.326). A complaint was raised against Facebook that the organization is trying to sell the personal information of its users to other marketing information organization against huge amount of profit. Therefore, the Advertising Standards authority has unveiled a code of advertising that has included the social responsibility clause. Vertical organization structure has affected the organization communication and decision making process. Moreover it is evident that the organization forced their users to click on the scam websites due to the lack of effective privacy security settings. Facebook has created a social pressure for several global organizations to start promotion through Facebook (Pavie, 2009, p.22). Therefore, several scam websites has got the chance to increase their profit by maximum click by the Facebook users. This can create an unethical business environment. Recently people are trying to reveal personal information as it has become one of the most significant social media trend. Facebook has implemented several unique business strategies in order to increase their brand image and business output. Several gaming and scam organizations are also becoming profitable through the Facebook promotional activities (Weiss, 2008, p.37). It is feasible that the organization has tried to implement competitive strategies in order to increase market share, but it is evident that the organization is facing several challenges due to the unethical business structures. The following recommendation plan will help the organization to overcome the issues. Firstly, the organization needs to operate sustainable business practices. It should aim to become more popular and so further focus can be put into increasing the number of members. They need to maintain transparency in their business process. Ethical business practices will help the organization to increase its user’s base. It can be recommended that the organization should implement premium account strategy for the purpose of social media promotion of business firms. Effective cost control and CSR strategies will help the organization to increase its brand reputation. Finally, it can be recommended that the organization needs to implement horizontal organizational structure to make the organizational decision making process more flexible. Reflection The first thing before taking up this paper was to closely figure out the mistakes in the first paper so that these mistakes are not repeated in this paper. After careful consideration of all the mistakes the approach of the paper was drawn and the next steps to produce a better paper came on the pipeline. Since the first assignment was not up to the level of expectation, the new report has been completed taking into consider the comments made by the tutor in the other assignment. All the respective comments have been incorporated in this assignment which makes the assignment much more concrete and informative to read through. The initial phases of this assignment start with dealing with the question set out in the instructions. The very first point was missing in the other paper. The companies selected for this assignment have been selected very carefully so that all the required information is available regarding the companies. All the instructions have been followed and therefore this assignment is much better defined and well constructed. The background reading of the companies have been cut short so as to incorporate more information with the allotted pages. This gives the opportunity to research more on the topic of the paper. But this does not mean that necessary points regarding the companies have been ignored. The paper follows all the required detailing regarding the companies under consideration. The first assignment ignored the mentioning of the external factors but this assignment aimed to follow the exact comments and so the portion of external factors is informative. A major focus on this assignment has been put on proper citations. It can be found out that the information are cited accordingly which rules out any issue of non citations. If there is any contradiction within the paper it has been resolved effectively taking into account the pros and cons. The sentences hold proper meanings and every word which may hold a dual meaning has been made meaningful. Each of the information has been incorporated to make the paper interesting to read which would make the tutor eager to read the assignment more thoroughly. It cannot be ignored that the comments and the hints made by the tutor in the previous assignments are the main points which were thought of while writing this assignment. Therefore it can be thought of that the tutor will be much more satisfied with this piece of work as it contains more detailing, more information and most importantly more interesting. The conclusion has been drawn according to the analysis which ends the paper in a better fashion. Therefore it can easily be said without the respected comments of the tutor it would not have been possible to reach to the desired outcome. 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Business Ethics: A Stakeholders and issues Management Approach. Stamford: Cengage Learning. Read More