Responsiveness, Glocality, And Cradle-to-Cradle Design In The Age Of Responsibility

1. What does it mean to be responsive in the Age of Responsibility? Provide examples, and explain the trade-off between responsiveness and scalability.

2. What is glocality, and how would you apply the concept to any product or service of your own choosing? What is the benefit to business of glocality?

3. Explain the difference between ‘cradle to grave’ and ‘cradle to cradle’ design, and describe a process by which a service or product could become circular.  In other words, how can we look at waste differently, or create products that don’t produce negative externalities?  Can you provide examples of companies that have successfully transitioned to a cradle to cradle process?

Responsiveness in the Age of Responsibility

1. The Age of Responsibility is characterized by Systematic CSR or what Wayne Visser calls CSR 2.0 and it is based on a certain set of principles such as creativity, scalability, responsiveness, and glocality. It was heralded by iconic leaders like Yvon Chouinard of Patagonia, Ray Anderson of Interface, and Anita Roddick of The Body Shop. CSR 2.0 also uses the current social media period as business starts to "redefine its role in society. At the Age of Responsibility, responsiveness refers to business’s quality of reacting positively and quickly to community needs (Visser, 2011). It refers to their gratifying generosity of responding to societal extreme occurrences like the recent earthquakes and subsequent aftershocks in Alaska. The severity of the global occurrences like these ones faced by people all over the world, demands that companies go extra mile to resolve them. CSR 2.0 calls for transformative, uncomfortable responsiveness that aims to know whether the company model itself is part and parcel of the problem or solution to the problem (Visser, 2010).

After it emerged clear that extreme climatic changes are posing a severe problem to the people of Alaska, companies and community reps have merged efforts to create a Climate Action Plan to mitigate the situation. These groups are formed to fight against artificial practices such as greenhouse gas emissions which in one way or the other perpetuate climate change. They also seek for federal funding on behalf of the afflicted people who need urgent assistance to relocate in safe places and/or get access to medical aids. What is more, companies in Alaska are working collaboratively with Federal agencies and other partners to integrate climate change into the state’s vision of the future.

Responsive in the Age of Responsibility also implies a great deal of transparency, not only through joint reporting mechanisms like Carbon Disclosure Project and Global Reporting Initiative, but also sharing crucial intellectual resources (Visser,  & Tolhurst, 2017). A good example is WIPO, World Intellectual Property Organization which encourages creativity by promoting the protection of Intellectual Property (IP) all over the world. The mission of WIPO is to champion for the development of effective and balanced International Intellectual Property (IIP) system which allows creativity and innovation for the benefit of all and sundry thus spouting the long tail of Corporate Social Responsibility.    

The main problem with CSR projects is that not all of them go to scale. In most cases, when the PR-plaudits have been attained and sound-bites, the majority of company embarking on CSR undertakings cease from taking further actions (Visser, 2016). They become best practice examples and shining pilot projects and they are continually repeated on global Corporate Social Responsibility conference circuits, without any apparition of the way they may change the core businesses of their instigators. However, the trade-off between this principle of scalability and responsive in the Age of Responsibility enables companies to be truly responsible for societal projects requiring their interventions. Even achieving their PR-plaudits and recognition, businesses still continue expressing their heart-warming generosity to alleviate unbearable occurrences such as poverty, pollution, and global warming.

Examples of responsive initiatives

2. Glocality is a business’s identity which is shaped by the power of media and its mounting impact on time and speed (Windsor, 2018). It refers to the capacity to live and experience life in a given society, while associating itself in an entirely different one (Visser, & Tolhurst, 2017). This terms, glocalization, originated from the Japanese terminology dochakuka that means global localization. Currently, it is used to refer to the rising market advantage of global corporations and local business. Masoud, (2017) notes that it is the success of the little guy in the façade of globalization and a chance for inspiring entrepreneurs to tap into their local homeland markets and then scale. Glocalization can be viewed as a lean-to of “Think Global, Act Local” faction which is all about taking bigger responsibility as citizens of the world and how much individual impact can affect practices and policies on a broader scale (Mohle, 2016). In the context of CSR, the ideology of glocality recognizes that most corporate social responsibility issues appear as dilemmas, instead of easy choices. In a multifaceted, unified CSR 2.0 world, businesses (as well as their critic) shall have to become far more refined in comprehending local circumstances and figuring the suitable local solutions they demand, without neglecting global principles.     

From the above description, glocalization of a product or service refers to its global development and distribution but also adjusting to accommodate the consumer or the user in a local market (Onkvisit, & Shaw, 2017). Take for instance transportation services by Uber Company. If tasked with the duty of applying the concept of glocality to this service, I would first aim at its complete adaptation into various local markets. This process can easily be conducted using social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Google+ which are renowned for the huge traffics. Transport services are needed by everybody and so all users of Uber services can get something out of them. With this in mind, the entire glocalization process would be tailored to conform to certain local laws, consumer preferences or customs. By “glocalizing” Uber transport services, I will have created much greater interest to the final user, an individual who ends up consuming the services. This is because whilst it is a service that everyone can use and has use for, as a global service, its localization makes it more specific to a person, his/her context, as well as their needs. My glocalization campaigns would involve ethnically friendly media and ad campaigns to incentivize the acceptance of Uber services in a select local market (McMonagle, 2016).  

The concept of glocality and its benefits

Whilst glocalization is coined to explain the way transnational companies can tap into local hometown markets, it can as well be used to explain the way local corporations can acquire huge market share in their local economies, and possibly, wind up going global themselves (Freiling, & Laudien, 2015). Companies with, clearly defined niches, splendid branding, and a procedure for measuring and growing value can grow up across many customer segments, industries, and even geographic boundaries once they “glocalize” their products.

3. The world is manufacturing more and more commodities and such many environmental associations have risen to encourage recycling programs as a resolution (Riley et al, 2018). Actually, some cities like San Francisco have established compulsory recycling and compost proposals to decrease their waste production. Whilst environmental experts in general approve recycling initiatives, most of them are worried that just throwing one’s waste into the blue bin shall eventually not be sufficient to save the planet from the impending menace. Although recycling is a convenient alternative to discarding in landfills, it still takes energy to change over recycled scraps into new commodities (Tagliaferri et al, 2016). The linear routes which commodities in the contemporary society most usually follow is referred to as “cradle-to-grave” since goods commence their lives with a give purpose and the moment they have completed that particular purpose are disposed off. On the other hand, activists of the Zero Waste Group support the “cradle-to-cradle” cycle. Items that follow this cycle or course are repurposed after completing their initial anticipated purpose. Cradle-to-cradle takes off the natural world’s scheme wherein one organism’s waste emerges as a invaluable nutrients for another one.

Companies in the US are example of corporation taking cradle-to-cradle courses. DesignTex Fabric and Shaw Industries are example of companies renowned for taking the cradle-to-cradle approaches with the materials they use. Typically, rugs are made of non-recyclable materials and are as a result sent straight to the dumpsite the moment they are no longer useful. DesignTex nevertheless, makes their carpets with Climatex Lifecycle, which is a non-hazardous, pesticide-free material which can be utilized in gardens because it is made from a natural material. Shaw Industries, which the globe’s leading carpet producer, has been manufacturing Cradle-to-Cradle licensed commodities for a long time, and it now makes up 64 % of the corporation’s net sales. At the core of the business’s success is Nylon 6, the only 100% closed-loop, cradle-to-cradle filament at present obtainable in the carpet industry.

Applying glocality to a product or service

To try our way hard towards Zero Waste on an individual level, companies can go for goods which require less packaging and people can be encouraged to go for only foods they know they will eat in order to keep away from leftovers ending up in the garbage bin (Zaman, 2015). Coming along with own mug for a drink say coffee, a reusable bag at stores, and mass shopping are as well approaches to take the zero waste way. And when one has waste, he/she should try to find approaches to repurpose it, rather than put it in a (trash or recycling) bin. In so doing, we could be creating a setting with no negative externalities.

References:

Freiling, J., & Laudien, S. (2015). Competence Building in Transnational Companies: The Role of Regional Headquarters in Subsidiary Coordination. In Transnational Corporations and Transnational Governance (pp. 247-270). Palgrave Macmillan, London.

Masoud, N. (2017). How to win the battle of ideas in corporate social responsibility: the International Pyramid Model of CSR. International Journal of Corporate Social Responsibility, 2(1), 4.

McMonagle, S. K. (2016). Advertising producers' localization of global brands: Glocalization, storytelling, and audience construction. Temple University.

Mohle, B. (2016). Think global, act local. Queensland Nurse, The, 35(1), 3.

Onkvisit, S., & Shaw, J. J. (2017). The ‘glocalization’of product and advertising strategies. Strategic International Marketing: An Advanced Perspective, 23.

Riley, P., Baker, D., Liu, Y. D., Verronen, P., Singer, H., & Güdel, M. (2018). Extreme space weather events: from cradle to grave. Space Science Reviews, 214(1), 21.

Tagliaferri, Carla, Sara Evangelisti, Federica Acconcia, Teresa Domenech, Paul Ekins, Diego Barletta, and Paola Lettieri. "Life cycle assessment of future electric and hybrid vehicles: A cradle-to-grave systems engineering approach." Chemical Engineering Research and Design 112 (2016): 298-309.

Visser, W. (2010). CSR 2.0: From the Age of Greed to the Age of Responsibility. In Reframing corporate social responsibility: Lessons from the global financial crisis (pp. 231-251). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

 Visser, W. (2011). The age of responsibility: CSR 2.0 and the new DNA of business. John Wiley & Sons.

Visser, W. (2016). 19. The future of CSR: towards transformative CSR, or CSR 2.0. Research Handbook on Corporate Social Responsibility in Context, 339.

Visser, W., & Tolhurst, N. (2017). The world guide to CSR: A country-by-country analysis of corporate sustainability and responsibility. Routledge.

Windsor, D. (2018). Defining Corporate Social Responsibility for Developing and Developed Countries: Comparing Proposed Approaches. In Corporate Social Responsibility: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications (pp. 1-27). IGI Global.

Zaman, A. U. (2015). A comprehensive review of the development of zero waste management: lessons learned and guidelines. Journal of Cleaner Production, 91, 12-25.