Participation and Action as a Global Citizen in the Workplace

Corporate citizenship is a term used to describe how a business has fulfill its responsibilities towards the society for meeting the ethical, economic, environmental, legal responsibilities placed on them by the stakeholders. Many companies, such as Citibank, Mcdonalds, Mircrosoft and HP have taken their role as a corporate citizen to describe their social initiatives.

 

Citibank is one of the corporations that have incorporated the concept of global citizen in its business. Citigroup has launched different programs to support the protection of human rights. Their rules and policies towards their stakeholders, such as employees and customers are guided by the principles suggested by United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The company ensures that all of the employees are treated equally regardless of their age, nationality or sex, so employees can work in a free from discrimination zone.

 

Hewlett-Packard Development Company (HP) also illustrates an example of corporate citizen. The company has applied their knowledge in science, technology, engineering and mathematics to make an impact in education of the society. It has been inspiring students from different countries to use technical ingenuity and address the current global social issues. The company also makes an effort to reduce the environmental impact of their global IT supply chain and launched recycling programs and reduces any waste produced during their production.

 

The article “Implementing global corporate citizenship: An integrated business framework” illustrated the key elements or component on the attainment of corporate citizenship. For example, a good company should take their role and held responsibility towards issues like to protect the environment, encourage human rights, reduce the economic inequality, respond to the public concerns, reduce global warming effect, have an effective supply chain management and etc. Every company should has responsibility towards their stakeholders and communities, to be a good corporate citizen, they should make an effort to protect our interconnected world and make positive change in different aspects.

 

Challenges to Global Citizenship

In recent decades, globalization is a term that all of us are familiar with. The ideas behind global citizenship are recognized by most of the people. However, it is not always easy to take actual practices regarding to the attainment of global citizenship.

 

In the article “Theorizing Global Citizenship”, a several barriers to the attainment of global citizenship were identified. For example, is it possible for us to have global citizenship prior to national citizenship? The differences between national governance and global governance are national governance usually focus on their own narrow national interests and only maintain their own national identity. For global governance, they foster a global identity and regards universal human rights as an important issue. A typical example is China, where people only have own national identity, seldom have an open mind to foster a transnational identity. In some communist countries where human rights are not sustained, how can we expect the people to develop a de-facto double citizenship in a global sense? The lack of human rights are also affected by poverty, the world is surrounded by problems like scarcity and economic inequalities, it is impossible to develop global identity if we cannot solve the issues, however, there is a certain level of difficulties in eliminating the poverty, this cause one of the main obstacles for the attainment of global citizenship.

 

In the article, “Education for Global Citizenship and Social Responsibility”, Education is also another challenge that for us to be a global-level citizen. My own educational experiences did not allow me to understand or reach the global issues before joining this course, I seldom contribute or participate in the world actively. I only encountered knowledge from textbooks in high school and seldom have global consciousness on what is really happening in the world. However, after I came to Australia to have university and go travel in different countries, personal experiences allows me to have a new perspective and lead me to question or evaluated the new information I came across. In my opinion, I would agree that formal education is the foundation for us to develop global consciousness, however personal experiences and active engagement and participate would be more important.

 

Travelling is also a self-education process which one may develop its own perspective of global sense. However, we should learn how to travel as a traveler rather than a tourist. Daniel Vera has raised some good points of defining what the difference is between travelers and tourists. Tourists are like most of the people, they join customized tourists tours, live in luxury hotels and have good food. But travelers are global citizens or inherently engaged citizens and will look into the culture of the place beyond their comfort zone.

 

Most of the people rarely experience the culture in a truthful perspective during travel. For me, the one of the first time I’ve been a traveler is when I came to Australia. I came to Australia three years ago for studying, and I’ve experience the unique culture and beliefs here and participate freely in Australia’s national life. I found out that the culture have a big different from my home country, Australia is more peaceful and people are more polite, they all have a spirit of equality and freedom of speech and I’ve learnt how to understand other person and try standing in his/her shoes.

Travelling is civic engagement where we can learn how to engage with a variety of communities and allows us to develop new connections, relationships or sensibilities. It gives us an opportunity to explore within ourselves and understand our values.

World Issues of Concern to CGs

The lecture in week 6 raised different thematic areas of issues of Global Concern, including the global economy, human development, environment and natural resources, peace and security and global governance.  

 

These issues have significant effect to the whole world directly or indirectly. To ease the problems, we can vote or elect leaders who are able to help to solve the global issues. For example, U.S. President Obama addressing Global warming issue as a priority and attempt to deal with a cap and trade program or a clean energy standard that required people to use low carbon electricity as substitute. He also shows an inclination to help the global economy and the inequality, human rights problem in the world. We can also influence others to be a global citizen by telling them about the world issues and get your family and friends involved. Donations to organization that promoting actions on global issues can also help our world, for example, the Global Children

s Organization nurtures children traumatized by war, terrorism or intolerance by giving them summer camps or programs that help with their future and build a peaceful world.

 

In both the lecture and  Sandra's response, boycotting has been raised as an action to  solve the global issues. However, Sandra's action of boycotting the products from Israel may only hurt the small business or famers instead of the government or big company. Although boycotting may raise public concern about the incident, disputes may also arise between countries. In my view, to help the weak parties, may be it is more important to fight the right battles and voice our opinions in the right and effective way.

 

We should all be a global citizen and aware of all the global issues that are happening now in the world. We can achieve that by developing personal and social responsibility, promoting global diversity. It is important since it can help us to identify the universalities of the human experience and increase out identification with fellow human beings and sense of responsibility towards them. Education students with this concept can also strengthen their commitment to serve, contribute and benefit to the society and the lives of their members. To be a global citizen also put 'international' as the central to quality education and emphasizes that internationalization is a means, not an end. These are the reasons why everyone have to pay a little effort to be a global citizen, especially when facing the environmental and global warming issues, since it is a way to give back to Mother Earth and support Rights of Nature. We all have to be more environmental friendly to build a brighter, greener and sustainable future for our generations but not destroying it and consume all the resources selfishly.

 

Nelson Mandela could be an exemplary global citizen with a steadfast belief in human rights. He devoted his life to humanity and built the institutions of a true democracy and remain a uniting figure in racially diverse countries. He promoted the protection of human rights which could be improved by principles of peace, racial equality, reconciliation and freedom. His contribution inspired people not only in Africa, but all over the world and generations. We could all set Nelson Mandela as a model of Global citizen and tried to learn from him.

 

Although one may think that we cannot have significant influnence towards the global issues, if everyone of us pay a little effort in change the world, we can pave a sustainable way for our future and make our world better and peaceful.

 

Global citizenship & Global Ethics

We are all shaped by different and complex cultural background. Our interpretation, behaviours, social values and assumptions can be difficult to understand by an outside perspective. Cultural exchange and cultural awareness can provide a lot of opportunities for us to explore the new culture, for example, the language, food, music, history or even people's perspective and attitudes. Even within the same culture, peoples' behaviour, values and beliefs could be varying enormously. If we ignore the impact of cultural differences and only consider our way as the best one, misunderstanding and disputes may easily raised. Thus, we should learn to see or value things from another culture's perspective. Cultural awareness can help everyone of us to explore and interact with people from other cultures and make a harmony atmosphere.

 

There are no specific rules or regulations for us to be cultural diversity, but there are a few cross-cultural awareness we should considered. First, we should be aware of our own cultural influences. Second, we should be aware of making assumptions about others' cultural and applying generalisations to anyone. Third, we should be aware of not to judge others' values, beliefs or behaviour by using our own culture standards or before any evaluation. Understanding others

 culture may takes times, the easiest way to get to have cultural exchange is to speak to people from others' country, learn ones' language, or go travelling.

 

There is different definition of the term 'global competence'. It was defined as "having an open mind while actively seeking to understand cultural norms and expectations of others, leveraging this gained knowledge to interact, communicate and work effectively outside one's environment" by the international panel of experts. Some Catholic may think to add "for the purpose of promoting human solidarity" at the end of the sentences, and some argue that the definition merely focused on intercultural competences. To be global competence, certain knowledge, skills, attitudes and experiences are required. We should able to understand the interconnectedness of peoples and systems, and have a general knowledge of history and certain world events, and have an open mind to accept and code with the different cultural values, beliefs.

 

To make the bridge among different peoples  of the world closer, we should train future members to have a deeper understand of global citizenship. Education to the future is an important process, which included understanding moral values and human rights, it should be universally acceptable and applicable  must take place in the center of education. Everyone should prioritize that universal fact in long term global is much more important than personal interests. In the learning process, we should first understand "who" is a global citizen and know the characteristics of it. Also, we should take responsibility for our actions. Everyone should aware of the wider world, not only understanding the events happening in the world, but also participates in the community.

However, although education is important for global competence, there is limitation too. How can we ensure that the education is effective and sufficient? When should the education of global citizenship start? Education about global citizenship is limited, especially in Asia area like China. It is mainly because people don't see the immediate consequences of these problems, so they tried to distance themselves from the issues. Also, global issues seem immensely insurmountable and depressing, thus people may think that we alone cannot have much influences on them. Third, people may try to avoid political issues that are different from their conventionally accepted traditional beliefs, especially people from a conventionalism culture. Finally, the educators may not usually been taught about the global responsibility and social issues in their own experiences, so if the educator do not investigate and analyze the economic and social institutions in the lives, it would be difficult for them to foster these behaviors in others.

Globalisation & History

Globalisation has gone through different stages resulting to the current status. From the readings this week, it could be seen that there is five overlapping stages in the globalisation process. It can be traced back to the beginning of capitalism in Europe in the end of the Middle Ages.

Globalisation first start in late fifteenth century where expansion, exploration and conquest begin between the nations of northern Europe. The process invloves cultural resources, human and capital to generate wealth for the European and resulted in industrialisation in United Kingdoms, then resulting  in globalisation.

Stages of Globalisation can be divided into 1.) from late 1400s to 1800s, 2.) from 1800s to 1900s, 3.) from 1900s to  late 1900s and 4.) from late 1900s to 2000 and the last stage from 2000 till now. The modern Globalisation state is highly influenced by the technology and computerisation. However, wars and revolutions between empires are the mainly reasons for Globalisation in the early stages.

In the early stages, without technology, people are decentralisation and localism, most of the people stay at their place of birth throughout their whole life. Due to demographic or conquest pressure, ancestors begin to search for a better life by migration. The globalisers in the early stages are usually traders, preachers, adventures and soldiers. Some nations or empires start to send captains or soldiers to explore other places in the world. The trading, exploration and military expansion leads to development of technology and thus the industrial revolution. Communications like telegraph and transportation like ship and rail are formed.

During 1900s, power of United States was raised because of its military power. In the late 1900s, private business brought new technologies which are produced through World War 1 and World War 2, like computers, satellite communications and planes which accelerates the globalisation process across the globe. There is increase activity of manufacturing trading between developed countries.

Globalisation process is significantly affected by technology revolutions. Advances and improvements in the means of transport, communication, information, technologies in recent years have reduced the transaction cost and cost of access to information and allow people to consume the resources effectively and globally.

However, criticism  state globalistion is a trend of Americanisation. In the early 1900s, people in U.S.A. took new immigrants, by teaching them English and adjust to American culture, they are turned into Americans. Globalisation was also  used as an engine of "corporate imperialism" by U.S.A. It seems cultural assimilation is affecting global negatively.

People started to critics that globalization is just imposition culture of Americans to the global levels. Many different brands of drinks, food, restaurants which developed all over the world are all from America, like Coca Cola, Mcdonald. Many countries seems following America and leave its cultures, values, customs behind its authentic ways of life.

The current global stage seems to be a period of Americanisation. However, due to significant rise of power from China, will China be the next wave of globalisation?

What is Global Citizenship?

We are all facing globalisation every day in our lives, in the restaurant, shop, on television, in websites. As there is increasing integration of economics worldwide, globalisation incurred to minimize the boundaries between different countries in terms of trading, culture, political, investments...etc.

Globalisation leads to the notion of Global Citizenship. In my own interpretation, Global Citizen is people who are aware of the issues happening in the world in aspects of social, economic, culture, environment, globalisation. They also have responsibility to everyone in the world, regardless of their nations and the Earth itself, their knowledge are on the global level and are willing to protect the Earth for our future generations by any act of sustainability.

However, there is no single definition of what a Global Citizenship is. A global citizen may be someone who aware of social injustice, who respects different culture, tradition and values. They may participate and have commitment to the social or community whether at local or global sense.

Everyone can be a Global Citizen as long as they are willing to commitment and contribute for the world.