The New York Times released an expose yesterday, January 26th, on the human costs of manufacturing electronic devices in China (read it here). While the Apple iPad was the device spotlighted in the article, the journalists also mentioned that Dell, Hewlett-Packard, I.B.M., Lenovo, Motorola, Nokia, Sony, Toshiba and others are also guilty of enabling mistreatment of workers through their production in China. You can read Apple CEO Tim Cook's response here.
How do you think this fits into Simon Mainwaring's ideas about re-purposing the ideas of profit and creating sustainable capitalism? If the very devices that are supposed to give us access to the social media tools that will allow us to hold corporations responsible for their behavior through our purchasing decisions are compromised, can we still make "good" choices about what to buy?
In a related question, how many of us make buying decisions based on where something is produced? How realistic is it for us to imagine buying everything we consume from manufacturers located in countries where there are reasonable standards for workers and workers' rights?
Finally, can you connect any of these issues to what you're doing with your organization?
Another link about the cost of business with some major players in technology and how it affects humanity.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_cost_of_doing_business.php
Our ignorance to this topic when purchasing these products causes a continuation in this type of behavior between companies and employees. With what we know, the best we can do is further expose this issue and put pressure on companies to create a more sustainable and humanitarian approach to make good decisions in the future.
I believe that most consummers, including myself, are still very ignorant to these manufacturers. I'm willing to spend more money on products towards companies who have reasonable standards. I'm curious to see how that would impact the cost of living alone if all businesses started practicing reasonable standards.
This has little to do with my organization outside of using social media to get information out.