Improving the Value Chain With Corporate Social...

The realm of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is to increase business profitability and opportunities by making improvements in terms of operational effectiveness throughout the value chain (Rangan, Chase Karim, 2012). This increasingly popular CSR among corporate and academic leaders is synonymous to the â€Å"shared value† framework, whereby organizations seek to co-create economic and social value. According to Ridurnolu, Prhalad and Rangaswami (2009), corporations from the United States recognize the business value of revolutionizing new manufacturing and technology that cut operating costs while minimizing impacts on the environment. This CSR domain focuses on operational efficiency and also building revenue, with the initiative to be determined by the ability to improve the corporate bottom line while at the same time returning social value. To achieve that, the strategy is to reengineer a corporation’s entire value chain, which stems from natural resource e xtraction and sourcing to manufacturing, shipping and product delivering. An example would be Nike’s establishment of their Code of Conduct which oversees its entire production supply chain. Nike’s code consists of requirements that their employees be given basic rights such as fair compensations, safe and healthy work environment and ethical treatment in the workplace (Nike, Inc, 2010). According to Angeles (2014), the company also launched an environment management information system that reduces the negativeShow MoreRelatedUnilever s Strategy For Sustainable Growth912 Words   |  4 Pagescontroversial issue. Unilever has been accused of profiting off of those less fortunate in an effort to improve the bottom line. Can Unilever’s approach to environmental improvements be seen as a strategic plan for increased sales, corporate social responsibility or both? Acceptable for a for-profit company to profit from proverty? This question can be changed into a powerful statement. Unilever doesn’t view its Sustainable Living Plan as profiting off of poverty, but rather to improve the qualityRead MorePersonal Motives For Corporate Social Responsibility933 Words   |  4 Pagesfor Corporate Social Responsibility (Graafland, J. Mazereeuw-Van der Duijn Schouten, C. 2012) analyze the motivations of directors to take responsibility for the labor, environmental and social aspects in business. It distinguishes the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) by conducting a survey consisting of a sample of 473 executives. What is more, the motives are classified as three types: â€Å"financial motives†, which is external, â€Å"ethical and altruistic† which are internal. the corporate socialRead More Case Analysis Essay1282 Words   |  6 Pagesthe world. During the transformation to a global corporate enterprise, IBM maintained its core values and principles. As a leader in the industries in which it serves, IBM entered its second century in business dedicated to its culture of fairness and corporate citizenship. IBM utilizes a consistent approach to technology and innovation, and has a positive impact on the communities in which it operates. IBM is passionate about social responsibility, interested in making a positive change in societyRead MoreThe Ethics And Code Of Workplace Practices1683 Words   |  7 PagesIn the business world ,fiscal command frequently triumph over the values, the values of social responsibility and ethical behavior as corporations endeavor to relieve costs and reduce contingencies in future ,nowhere is that drive for certainty and cost reduction is more enthralling then in the corporate supply chain, the global market place demands that supply chains be fleet-footed and scatter ,an efficient supply chain is responsible for changing the organization priorities by keeping theRead MoreStarbucks Ethical Behavior1546 Words   |  7 Pages Behaviour of star bucks Over the last two decades social corporate responsibility has become an increasingly important factor in the business world. Corporate Social Responsibility is concerned with treating the stakeholders of a company or institution ethically or in a responsible manner. â€Å"Ethically or responsible means treating key stakeholders in a manner deemed acceptable according to international norms â€Å" Hopkins (2011).By social corporate responsibility we mean that businesses and organization thatRead MoreSustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility at IKEA928 Words   |  4 Pagesinfluenced by the demands of customers and stakeholders. The business approach and corporate philosophy of an organization is easily altered due to economic pressures, technological improvement and stakeholder needs and demands. Going green or being eco-friendly is one such demand. IKEA is among the top sustainability leaders in the Scandinavian region. The company is able to confidently respond to questi ons of responsibility raised by consumers, employees, and investors regarding eco-friendly productsRead MoreCase Study Of Levi Strauss825 Words   |  4 Pageswomen, children, and men. There are high performing organizations like Levi Strauss that strive to ascertain processes, functions or offerings that are important to their business such as improving human resource management, knowledge management and investing in human capital and corporate social responsibility to evaluate their efficiency and effectiveness in contrast to leading competitors and innovators. To promote continuous improvements Levi Strauss drives profitable business results by leveragingRead MoreThe 21St Century Has Led To Businesses Having More Corporate1471 Words   |  6 Pageshaving more Corporate Social responsibility (CSR) than before. CSR will help businesses to add value to their company. A business should know the importance of the value chain along with using CSR and not just look at profits. Custo mers like to do business with companies that are responsible inside and outside of an organization. When business fail with using CSR they will lose customers because customers like to do business with responsible businesses that show corporate social responsibility. Read MoreA Business s Only Responsibility1013 Words   |  5 PagesA business’s only responsibility is to produce profit. To what extent do you agree with this statement? Businesses should take social responsibility in addition to producing profits. Corporate social responsibility refers to a business practices that involves participating and make benefits to society. CSR is a way of companies benefiting themselves so; business should also take social responsibility instead of only taking profit. This is because taking on social responsibility benefits both theRead MoreCorporate Social Responsibility at Carrefour1122 Words   |  4 PagesCorporate Social Responsibility (CSR) at Carrefour Introduction: In an era of globalization, international trade deregulation and continual push-and-pull between industry and environment, it can be extremely difficult for a multinational corporation to maintain a competitive business model in balance with a meaningful sense of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). This is especially true for the largest retail companies in the world, which typically depend on the retention of extremely low

Knowledge Sharing Free Essays

Creating a knowledge sharing culture in organizations today is a norm. Please comment. The most valuable asset with any organization is intellectual capital i. We will write a custom essay sample on Knowledge Sharing or any similar topic only for you Order Now e knowledge. Hence it is inevitable for organizations to create, nurture and develop this asset to achieve sustainable advantage in the market. Organizations can leverage the power of knowledge and bring innovation in their product and service offerings, achieving higher customer satisfaction, higher revenues, profits etc. Ultimately it helps the organization meet its business objectives. A knowledge sharing culture encourages people to work together more effectively and collaborate to share information. It makes the organizational knowledge more productive. Hence creating a knowledge sharing culture has become a norm in organizations Why is sharing knowledge important? Can you list a few reasons? As mentioned earlier, the only sustainable competitive advantage is knowledge and continuous innovation. To achieve this, knowledge sharing is important.Today’s age is characterized by employees with high mobility. The concept of lifetime employment does not exist any longer. People change jobs for professional advancement and career growth. Hence when employees leave the organisation, their knowledge also walks out of the door with them. To retain the knowledge base within the organization, there has to be a knowledge sharing culture within the company. As more and more organizations operate in the global space, the boundaries of country, geography, culture etc cease to exist.The culture of knowledge sharing can ensure that expertise learnt and applied in one part of the organisation can be leveraged in another. The pace of change is accelerating, be it in technology, business or social. As things change our knowledge base erodes. Information becomes obsolete very soon and requires constant upgradation. Knowledge sharing comes to the rescue once again by not only conserving the knowledge base, but also upgrading the same What is the role of technology in sharing knowledge?Knowledge Management is fundamentally about people and information not technology. But there seems to be no way with which one can share knowledge effectively without using technology. This applies to small as well as large and geographically dispersed organizations. In the past it was impossible to share knowledge or work collaboratively with co-workers around the globe. But today, it is technology that has made knowledge sharing a reality. If implemented well and if people are trained in its use, knowledge sharing technology is good. Not only can you find the information and knowledge you need quickly and effectively but you can post your knowledge on the system for access by others in the organisation. Not only within the organization, web based advanced technology allows us to collaborate with anyone anywhere in the world to achieve our objectives. However, one must keep in mind that there are many pitfalls to the effective use of technology. Too much information, from a variety of sources, whether reliable or not leads to knowledge overflow. One must be able to use it diligently and carefully.Inculcating Innovation through Knowledge Sharing There are various opportunities provided to employees which enable them to come out with creative approaches and innovative ideas and share the same at an organizational platform. One such initiative was a contest to generate implementable innovative ideas in product/services, enhancements, process, and technology or in any other area that can lead to deliverable results. The best ideas were rewarded and suggested features/enhancements etc were implemented. This had a motivating effect on employees and ensured that they egularly come up with such solutions, thus keeping up the knowledge sharing culture.Such campaigns also lead to increased bonding motivation among the employees and encourage them to keep themselves updated, alert and conscious of various aspects of increasing efficiency effectiveness Open communication, exchange of dialogue, transparency in dealings, various formal and informal meetings, open house forums etc have inculcated the spirit of knowledge sharing within our organization. Thus the employees feel confident and motivated to contribute towards the growth of the organization. How to cite Knowledge Sharing, Papers

Viral Envelope Virus

Question: Write an essay on Viral Envelope Glycoprotein Studies? Answer: Human emerging virus With the rapidly changing environment and climate and changed human demographics viruses are emerging rapidly with more adapting capabilities. It is helping them to infect human population in harsh condition. New strains and pseudotypes of viruses are emerging for occupying expanded ecological niches, thereby producing different disease syndromes in different parts of world, where these viruses are penetrating populations as novel virus. As a result vaccination cannot be possible. Emergent viruses are the viruses which gain the capacity to form new disease causing or pathogenic strain with facilitating pathogenicity in a new niche. Many new viruses are also causing infection, for example Ebola virus, which has been emerged after 2010 (Brault 2007). It is the single member found in the species Zaire ebolavirus, genus Ebolavirus and family Filoviridae. The virus has a negative-sense RNA genome within the tubular viral envelop and their viral envelop is covered with matrix and nucleocap sid components. In different news, it has been revealed that, genetic mutations in Ebola virus strains creating escape variants, which is blocking the ability of antibody-based treatments of Ebola virus infection (Eurekalert.org 2016). These escape variants which were rescue of the mutated viruses were isolated during treatment with cocktail antibodies (Eurekalert.org 2016). These new emerged rescue strains were sequenced and two clusters of changes had progressed with permanent change in genome without disrupting the major viral functions along with the ability to cause infection. The neutralization reaction identified that, these mutated strains were using control replication. Therefore, selection of different target domains while making therapeutic cocktails is important for minimizing viral escape (Holmes 2013). Corona viruses belong to two subfamilies including Coronavirinae and Torovirinae, in the family Coronaviridae, in the order Nidovirales. Under electron microscope the virus is seen to be with a fringe of large, bulbos surface projections, which creates an image of royal crown. These viral projections known as viral spikes determine the host tropism. It consists of a positive single-stranded RNA genome within a nucleocapsid of helical symmetry (Holmes 2013). This virus causes SARS with infection in upper and lower respiratory tract of human. There are five different corona virus strains. Three corona virus species found co-circulating in Camels in Saudi Arabia. After the SARS outbreaks, virologists has been reviewed their interest in corona virus. Till 2000s, only the two strains HCoV-229E and HCoV-OC43 were known for corona virus. A third stain was discovered, SARS-CoV, which infects human. After 2004, three research labs reported the fourth human corona virus independently, as NL63, NL and New Haven corona virus. In early 2005, fifth human infecting strain was discovered in patients suffering from pneumonia and named Human corona virus HKU1 (Liu et al. 2011). In September 2012, the novel sixth strain was identified, which is officially now known as the Middle East respiratory syndrome corona virus (MERS-CoV). This strain of corona virus promotes severe respiratory infection with shock, acute kidney injury and coagulopathy. Recent studies have been identified MERS-CoV infection associated with neurologic symptoms including altered level of consciousness along with coma, ataxia and focal motor deficit. Bilateral hyperintense lesions on the white matter and subcortical areas of frontal, temporal, parietal lobes, basal ganglia and corpus callosum were identified with gadolinium enhancement (Eurekalert.org 2016). Therefore, besides the acute respiratory syndromes, CNS involvement should be considered with better extent and this area needs more research. Viral glycoproteins The Ebola virus (EBOV) contains glycoprotein, which are important for - its attachment and entry into the host organism. It has been revealed that, Ebola virus glycoprotein (GP) is the only viral protein, which is found in a mature Ebola virion; it indicates that, this protein is important for the attachment of the viral particle to the host during entry (Eurekalert.org 2016). However, expression of GP includes dramatic morphological changes within cells which include cell rounding and detachment. It can be identified as the cytopathological changes in the Ebola virus affected cells. Joseph (2010) focused on the mucin domain, which is the highly glycosylated domains in the Ebola GP protein. The study focused on the mechanisms of cytopathological changes created by the viral GP within the affected cells. The cell-biological approaches revealed that, the mucin domain forms a glycan shield on the plasma membrane, which disrupt the function of host proteins, which are in the vicinity of the viral GP. It also revealed that, the GP-mediated shielding of the MHCI complex at the host cell surface does not provide stimuli for the activation of the CD 8+ T cells (Brault 2007). In addition, it was also found that, GP of Ebola virus shielded its own epitopes by steric hindrance at the cell surface, thereby blocks the antigen binding on these epitopes. Finally, the novel way of evading host defence was discovered in this study (Dolnik et al. 2004). In the case of Corona virus glycoprotein, it is known as the S glycoprotein. This glycoprotein project from the nucleocapsid as viral projections or spikes. This glycoprotein spikes are type I glycoprotein. This glycoprotein is the main target of vaccines against corona virus-related respiratory tract disease. The corona virus spike glycoprotein has major roles in tissue tropism determination, cell-to-cell spread and viral entry (Moore et al. 2004). Additionally, the HE glycoproteins are the second type of smaller spikes, which are found on type II corona virus, which shows the hemagglutinating and esterase activities, it also show similarity with the influenza C viruss hemaglutinin-esterase fusion protein. The emergence of novel strains of the virus enhanced the potential of the vaccine development with more innovation. The pandemic in 2003 for SARS-CoV reinforced virologists to focus on this virus-related vaccination (Wright et al. 2008). A group of scientist developed the recombin ant SARS virus-like particles (VLP) vaccine. This vaccine was created by combining the SARS spike (S) glycoprotein and the influenza M1 proteins, which was expressed in the baculovirus insect cell expression system (Perera et al. 2013). These chimeric SARS VLPs have the similar sized morphology like the wild type glycoprotein. With the help of mouse lethal challenge model the SARS VLP vaccines immunogenicity and protective efficacy were measured. The result showed complete protection of mice from death. SARS-CoV VLPs are highly immunogenic and induce the production of neutralizing antibodies, thereby providing protection against lethal challenge (Voynov and Caravella 2012). Pseudotyped viruses The psedotyped viruses are the resultant viral particles after viral pseudotyping. These viruses are mainly related to the production of viral vectors. The pseudotyping is the method for production of viral vectors or recombinant viruses. In this process the wild type viruses or viral parts are combined with the foreign envelop proteins. In these pseudotyped virus particles, the foreign viral particles are used for altering host tropism. It enhances or reduces the stability of the viral particles (Brault 2007). In addition, the pseudotyped particles do not carry genetic materials, so cannot spread infection or produce the recombinant viral envelop proteins in the successive generations. Therefore, the phenotypic changes carried to the next generations. The pseudotyped viral vectors are used for identification of viral entry and used in antibody production against the viral antigens. A study revealed that infection of receptor-bearing cells is mediated by the spike (S) glycoprotein of the coronas viruses (Struck et al. 2012). Pseudotyping helps to determine attachment sites. It has revealed in the studies that, the receptors are specified and shows angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) activities. Struck et al. (2012) showed that, pseudotyped viral particles with the combination of SIV and murine leukemia virus along with SARS-CoV S glycoprotein are efficient to infect the HEK293T cells, which expresses ACE2 enzyme in a stable manner. Here the pseudotyping helped to reveal that, in the recombinant viral particle, the entry of the viral particle is mediated by the S-glycoprotein of the SARS-CoV virus, whose entire cytoplasmic domain was truncated and altered with the HIV typer 1 envelop glycoprotein (Weiss and Navas-Martin 2005). Therefore, by the help of S-protein-pseudotypes SIV, it was revealed in this study that, the enzymatic activity of ACE2 has no contribution in the infection mediated by S-glycoprotein of SARS-CoV. In addition, it was shown that, catalyt ically inactive ACE2 enzyme blocks the infection by S-protein-SIV and wildtype SARS-CoV. Therefore, the pseudotyping can be used in therapeutic intervention of viral infection. Reference List Brault, A. (2007). Emerging Viruses in Human Populations. Emerg. Infect. Dis., 13(12), pp.1972-1973. Dolnik, O., Volchkova, V., Garten, W., Carbonnelle, C., Becker, S., Kahnt, J., Straher, U., Klenk, H. and Volchkov, V. (2004). Ectodomain shedding of the glycoprotein GP of Ebola virus. EMBO J, 23(10), pp.2175-2184. Eurekalert.org, (2016). EurekAlert! Science News. [online] Available at: https://www.eurekalert.org/ [Accessed 7 Jan. 2016]. Holmes, E. (2013). What can we predict about viral evolution and emergence?. Current Opinion in Virology, 3(2), pp.180-184. Joseph R., F. (2010). A study of the Ebola virus glycoprotein: Disruption of host surface protein function and evasion of immune responses. [online] Available at: https://repository.upenn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1295context=edissertations [Accessed 7 Jan. 2016]. Liu, Y., Massare, M., Barnard, D., Kort, T., Nathan, M., Wang, L. and Smith, G. (2011). Chimeric severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus (SARS-CoV) S glycoprotein and influenza matrix 1 efficiently form virus-like particles (VLPs) that protect mice against challenge with SARS-CoV. Vaccine, 29(38), pp.6606-6613. Moore, M., Dorfman, T., Li, W., Wong, S., Li, Y., Kuhn, J., Coderre, J., Vasilieva, N., Han, Z., Greenough, T., Farzan, M. and Choe, H. (2004). Retroviruses Pseudotyped with the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus Spike Protein Efficiently Infect Cells Expressing Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2. Journal of Virology, 78(19), pp.10628-10635. Perera, R., Wang, P., Gomaa, M., El-Shesheny, R., Kandeil, A., Bagato, O., Siu, L., Shehata, M., Kayed, A., Moatasim, Y., Li, M., Poon, L., Guan, Y., Webby, R., Ali, M., Peiris, J. and Kayali, G. (2013). Seroepidemiology for MERS coronavirus using microneutralisation and pseudoparticle virus neutralisation assays reveal a high prevalence of antibody in dromedary camels in Egypt, June 2013. Eurosurveillance, 18(36), p.20574. Struck, A., Axmann, M., Pfefferle, S., Drosten, C. and Meyer, B. (2012). A hexapeptide of the receptor-binding domain of SARS corona virus spike protein blocks viral entry into host cells via the human receptor ACE2. Antiviral Research, 94(3), pp.288-296. Voynov, V. and Caravella, J. (2012). Therapeutic proteins. New York: Humana Press. Weiss, S. and Navas-Martin, S. (2005). Coronavirus Pathogenesis and the Emerging Pathogen Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus. Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews, 69(4), pp.635-664. Wright, E., Temperton, N., Marston, D., McElhinney, L., Fooks, A. and Weiss, R. (2008). Investigating antibody neutralization of lyssaviruses using lentiviral pseudotypes: a cross-species comparison. Journal of General Virology, 89(9), pp.2204-2213.