Nokia Video

In the class we watched a documentary about the company Nokia trying to shift its production towards China. During the film we watch the adventures of Ms. Hanna who is the main employee on the mission of analyzing the various supplier alternatives and then reporting and presenting the outcomes to the board members. We watch only one of the supplier alternatives which was in fact not selected by Nokia to form business relations. There are many interesting points and inferences I had drawn from the movie, and in this entry I will try to depict them in addition to addressing the two questions given in the class.

The main question is that is it possible to import the moral and ethical standards from Finland (Europe) to production system (business life) in China?

Most of the video contains scenes like how poorly Chinese workers are living. They may be regarded as somewhat modern slaves with all their boring and monotonous duties, unpaid overtimes, no labor rights, no labor contracts, poor housing conditions with unhealthy bathrooms, toilets and kitchens,  no rights for emotional feelings, and much more which we all have seen reminded me the famous (nationally) Turkish TV series "Arena" we used to have when I was a child. The brave journalist was discovering and revealing all the illegal and filthy activities of many companies or workstations from a wide variety of industries from drug dealers to bakers, from white women traders to museum administrations. But the difference was they used to be filmed by hidden cameras, naturally. In Nokia movie I sensed the same feeling that the Finnish lady and her Chinese advisor are trying to investigate and depict every problems they can observe and point the findings out to the camera. This situation is also in correlation with my personal experiences from living abroad in Europe, namely it is quite common for a person coming from a developed country to directly and immediately catch the problems or inefficiencies (sometimes stated as low hanging fruits) they see when they arrive in a less developed country. I believe the important thing is how to make use of that findings. In short term it is quite economically rational for firms from developed countries to make the investigations like Nokia has done and then analyze the findings and choose the best supplier best fits or promises to be able to best fit the company standards. But since we are living in the post-colonial age, as an individual I would like to see the deeper issues as well. In the 21th century the humanity have started to talk about other interests than finance; environment and sustainability are two of them. I don't know if one day organizations from developed world will arrive in non-developed world for improving their standards not just for maintaining their own organizational images but in addition for environmental and social responsibilities. Development should be global if a sustainable global growth is intended. Otherwise I think Nokia's selection of suitable Chinese supplier is just a small thing in whole the system. I think so because at market and sector level it is unclear that significant percentage of customers will decide not choose Nokia because it has connections is China, since there are almost none which does not have some their facilities in China. This is somewhat a norm for our modern industrial world. I see this video, as well many similar things from the corporate world, as a sustainability game in order to convince the society that company cares about sustainability. It is hard to define the boundaries and see the real picture.

SES

The social economical system I am going to introduce is located in Aegean coast of Turkey. The name of the place is Alaçatı and it is inside the borders of the third largest city of Turkey, İzmir. Alaçatı is actually a village of Çeşme town. Çeşme has for a long time been one of the popular holiday places in Turkey, and for the last decade Alaçatı has become the first place among Çeşme's villages. The area called Çeşme has several other holiday places within half an hour reach from the town center.

Alaçatı can be characterized for its local, constant and stable wind. The geography has a special feature that the valley and the river feed the local wind and at the coast relatively strong blows occur. For that reason even before Alaçatı was as famous in local tourism as today it has been known by the windsurfer's from all over the world. The reason why the village has become this famous has different reasons than the local weather. Roughly I can summarize the reasons as; old stone houses and tiny streets, specialized restaurants offering both local and innovative cuisine, growing number of artist who live in the village.

Actualy as you can see in the map above, Alaçatı has to be thinked of the composition of two different interests; first one is the windsurfing tourism which is located on the bay, and second one is the ethnic tourism which is located ten minutes of driving away from the bay. However for the last two years there has been projects which mainly focusing on exanding the second type of relatively luxurious tourism onto the calm and protected sports tourism. The aim of the project recent projects is to transform Alaçatı into a canal town like Venice in Italy. There have been made a lot of promises and naturally a lot of discussions and complaints.

For the surfers Alaçatı is also a paradise, especially for the beginners. This is because of the shallow waters that expand into to sea about 100 meters, which enables for beginners to practice more effectively and delightfully. Advanced surfers especially during the stormy weathers also enjoy the bay. There are several competitions held one or two of them internationally recognized.

Port Alaçatı which is the name of the marina founded 15 years ago have lived through a significant expansion in the last decade. The expansion had side effects on the surfing tourism due to the increasing traffic inside the bay, and also smells caused by the decontamination activities of the facilities. Port Alaçatı is also the major player of the canal paradise project.

As a SES Alaçatı can be summarized as follows:


Resurce System:

• Alaçatı

Resource Units:

• Wind
• Sea and Beach
• Authenticity

Users:

• Beginner Surfers
• Advanced Surfers
• Daily economy tourists
• Luxury tourists
• Yachters
• Local residents

Governance System:

• Municipality of Alaçatı

Currently it can be stated that Alaçatı is in the Reorganization phase of a system. The new policies involve debating with different interest groups. The effects of the new constructions have to be analyzed carefully if the richness of the area is wanted to be sustained.

Learning Experiences with EMS

The developing an Environmental Management System (EMS) during the class was a good experience for me. Since I am new in social sciences it was quite interesting to have a group discussion about a subject about which we all had limited information and prior knowledge, and no valid data. Nevertheless as the Production Department team we could come up with acceptable answers to the questions. It was interesting to observe that the vision statements were partly common for all four groups and every team had added one more vision statement which was more focused and slightly different than the others. The answers given to information needed and information provided and routine collection show that it is possible to some extend coordinate the information flows and exchanges with the ideas stated during that very short time. For some of the information needed where there is no ready information provided the flows should be negotiated and formed if this study were to be extended and applied to a real life case.