Abstract Science Construction’s business is in planning, developing and building road projects. The major of its clients are municipalities, city governments, and other public sector entities. While the bankruptcy rates for these clients is very low, when economic downturns happen, their ability to pay in a timely fashion also suffers. This leads to businesses such as Science Construction needing to take on additional debt and to find creative methods in order to stay afloat during times of recession. Methods such as selling accounts receivables at discounted rates and taking larger lines of credit through banks and other lending institutions are some of the ways organizations can remain viable when their cash inflows have turned into a trickle. Science Construction is asking the Turkish Courts to postpone their bankruptcy proceedings for a year while they attempt to restructure. Through this, suggestions such as forcing shareholders to pay their debt to the organization, gaining credi
Technology is a vital force in the modern form of business globalization. Technology has revolutionized the global economy, become a critical competitive strategy, and globalized the world. The technology revolution is sweeping the globe and the transition from manual to electronic delivery of services both in public and private sector leads to the advancement of the business community throughout the world (Lamba & Malhorta, n.d.). Ultimately, it’s the Internet’s presence throughout the world that is behind the IT globalization.
Information Technology being consistent and accessible means so is the internet. This, in turn, means the storage of large amounts of information and ubiquitous access to the information. Astronomical types and amounts of calculations on the information, as well as instant communication from a large distance in any format (text, video, audio) at low cost. Things can be automated and scripted. Given the preceding internet involvement, Information Technology’s role in globalization in the following ways:
Unlike conventional information sharing, now information is not limited to one place in a physical copy. Everyone has access to Wikipedia. And in today's world, knowledge is the biggest asset. And IT thus provides a level playing field for all;
Communication between countries, groups, communities, etc make them intertwined and interdependent;
It created a big single uniform market throughout the globe. Since it's a virtual market and everyone can access it. Hence exports and imports are hugely influenced since it makes demand and supply meet;
Employees and employers in this field can be large distance apart, and resulting international services helps in bringing parity to the wages across nations. The gap fills faster than it would otherwise have. Eg. India, here IT industry exports to developed countries and wages gap has been shrinking;
Distance does not matter. Better people to people connectivity and better exposure helps in human capital formation;
Keeping digital records helps to avoid countless hassles and possible hurdles. Eg. Passports are verified through databases which are intergovernmental. Thus ensuring security and hence allowing easy cross border movement;
Technology reaches the less developed nations, thus they don't have to reinvent the wheel and thus they come close to the developed nations in terms of technology;
Finally, when different countries are uniform, the world becomes a global village, which would be the ideal state of globalization (Khan, 2017).
The digital divide is a term that refers to the gap between demographics and regions that have access to modern information and communications technology, and those that do not or have restricted access. This technology can include telephone, television, personal computers and the Internet (Rouse, n.d.).
Jakob Nielsen, PhD., a User Advocate, summarized the economic divide is not as much of an issue as it was made out to be. He deduced the usability and empowerment divides would have a much bigger impact in the future.
Stage 1: Economic Divide. This divide is rooted to the point that people cannot afford to buy a computer (Nielsen, 2006). In the industrialized world, this point is becoming more redundant and inaccurate as computer prices plummet, dropping by one-fourth of their current price about every five years.
Stage 2: Usability Divide. This divide proposes that technology remains so complicated that many people couldn't use a computer even if they got one for free (Nielsen, 2006) because most of the available services are too difficult to understand. Lower literacy is the Web’s biggest accessibility problem. Senior citizens are second. The only positive movement seen at this point in time was for higher-end users. Websites are less complicated for them because they possess the ability to participate in e-commerce where site owners garner huge profits.
Stage 3: Empowerment Divide. This divide is the hardest one of all because even if computers and the Internet were extraordinarily easy to use, not everybody would make full use of the opportunities that such technology affords (Nielsen, 2006). This divide describes participation inequality where 90% of users are lurkers, 9% are time-to-time posters, and 1% are accountable for most contributions. Other facets of this divide are users lack of ability to truly master the Web and search engines, as well as using their nonproductive time to avoid reading ads from free Web applications to avoid paying for a site without ads.
Information ethics has been defined as "the branch of ethics that focuses on the relationship between the creation, organization, dissemination, and use of information, and the ethical standards and moral codes governing human conduct in society" (Wikipedia, n.d.). It also provides the following functions:
It examines the morality that comes from information as a resource, a product, or as a target
It provides a critical framework for considering moral issues concerning informational privacy, moral agency, new environmental issues, and problems arising from the life-cycle of information.
Information ethics has evolved to relate to a range of fields such as computer ethics, medical ethics, journalism and the philosophy of information (Wikipedia, n.d.).
References
Globalization101. (n.d.). Information Technology. Retrieved from http://www.globalization101.org/information-technology/
Khan, Siraj. (April 2017). How does information technology help in globalization? Retrieved from https://www.quora.com/How-does-information-technology-help-in-globalization
Lamba, Tripti & Malhotra, Harmeet. (n.d.). Role of Technology in Globalization with Reference to Business Continuity. Abstract. Retrieved from http://www.informaticsjournals.com/index.php/gjeis/article/view/2956
Nielsen, Jakob. (November 2006). Digital Divide: The 3 Stages. Retrieved from https://www.nngroup.com/articles/digital-divide-the-three-stages/
Rouse, Margaret. (n.d.). Digital Divide. Retrieved from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digital-divide
Wikipedia. (n.d.). Information Ethics. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_ethics
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