Summary
The paper presents a strategy assuring Google’s validity and sustainability in a globally changed environment. The study suggests that modern world is characterized by persistent changes in various domains of human activity. Thus, it is expected that in 2060 the countries of the world would be having different patterns of economic development favoring knowledge based economies instead of industry based ones. Moreover, climate change, land limits and lack of water supplies may impose additional obligations on the companies. Such obligations would be a norm since the global climate change affects all people of the world and is expected to deteriorate companies’ proficiency. Analyzing these trends, the paper proposes a valid strategy assuring Google’s sustainability in the future and its global positive impact. Such influence is achieved through global integration into worldwide industries and governmental organizations assisting their activity. At the same time, the profound technologies assure anonymity of the company and restrict the attempts of the governments and organizations from imposing pressures on the company. As a result, Google is expected to be the leader of the IT companies of the world and have advanced sustainability.
Introduction
The modern world is characterized by rapid changes is all spheres of life. From the one hand, it is the result of an ongoing process of globalization. However, there are numerous other processes, which may crucially affect any domain of human activity. Among them, one can name changing ecology and the processes associated with it as well as social processes and conflicts. Likewise, peculiar changes are expected to be from innovations in the sphere of digital technologies, reduction of natural carbohydrates and other industrial and social spheres. Moreover, there is a persistent threat of a global financial crisis, which may be caused with any of the indicated threats or their combinations. It is evident that in such conditions people and businesses should have profound flexibility in order to meet the changing demands of the world. One presumes that this flexibility may be the result of adequate predictions and esteems based on the analysis of the facts and conditions in the selected spheres. This approach allows tracing basic trends for the development of the business, which enhances its adaptability, validity, and sustainability. The continuity of a business may be assured by any of the indicated factors, which makes it reasonable to perform the investigation aimed at assuring sustainability of a company in global business. The company addressed in this paper is Google, which is the leader in information technology business as well as the participant of numerous business initiatives. Analyzing the current global trends and conditions this study presents the scenario set in 2060, which discusses its functioning in predicted conditions. This approach allows assuring sustainability and profitability of Google in possible future economic, social, ecological and technological situations.
Factors Affecting Sustainability of a Business
First, before providing any concrete scenario for a business set in 2060, there is a need for analyzing the factors, which may affect the sustainability of a business. Thus, it is evident that the society functions within different domains meaning that it has social, economic, historical, ecological, financial and other contexts of development. The paper suggests that any of them may drastically affect any business disregarding its size and sphere of activity. Consequently, there is a need for tracing the basic factors which are likely to affect Google’s sustainability and profitability. Apparently, one of the basic aspects, which deserve primary attention, is policy, which means that governmental laws and regulations may be critical when predicting the future of a business. Thus, scholar argue that people rely on policy in many areas of life, which brings them assurance in their expectations and assures legal predictability. At the same time, scholars indicate that “regulations can fail to work… in other cases market incentives may be sufficient, without the need for regulation… often, implementation is the problem”. The vivid example of the way in which policy may affect Google and other IT companies is the recent regulation released in Russia. Thus, there is a report that the update of the Russian law obliges IT companies working with Russian customers and users locating their servers locally. Such policy is not unique in the world with the examples of Germany and Brazil. These countries increase the control of the Internet with the aim of assuring the state safety. At the same time, human rights activists argue that these measures may compromise individual and business safety meaning that it might fall under control of the governments. Therefore, this factor should be considered when designing a future sustainability project for any company.
Furthermore, there is a need for characterizing the influence of environmental factors because any business operates in the physical environment and requires adequate physical resources and conditions. Scholars argue that the disproportionate increase of populations in urban centers stresses existing natural water supplies and aggravates the problem of water sources. That is why future companies should invest in technologies improving the obtaining of drinking water and its filtration. These measures would assure comfort existence of the community avoiding the problem of a global shortage of drinking water. The next issue, which requires thorough attention, is the problem of waste disposal and recycling. Scholars indicate that “a huge quantity of plastic waste is disposed of each year and is mostly either discarded in landfills or incinerated”. Consequently, plastic waste is expected to be one of the widespread problems of the future because of its enormous disposal time and contamination factors. Moreover, the IT industry is associated with a widespread usage of electronic equipment, which, in its turn, is the source of e-waste after usage. In this respect, scientists claim that electronic waste is a grave problem because of the danger of toxic contamination because of the constituent chemicals. That is why companies should address the waste problem introducing up to date recycling technologies and combating the amount of waste left by their ancestors.
One more problem of the future is facility location and land use. It is evident that high technology industries and businesses tend to favor industrial locations. As a result, cities become overpopulated and inconvenient for people to live. In this perspective, businesses may require additional locations increasing the network space and avoiding problems with logistics. Despite this factor might be more a problem to industrial businesses such as beverage, metal production or mining, IT companies functions not only in the virtual space. For instance, Google requires physical space for its workers as well as technical equipment. Moreover, due to the outstanding standards, the company seeks for spacey locations assuring the comfort of employers and clients. Additionally, servers, workstations and processing centers of the company require placement in places with advanced infrastructure. This requirement means that there is a persistent need for specific climate conditions as well as the stability of power supply assuring the continuity of the business. Such measures are obligatory since the company stores enormous amount of data. For instance, Google owned approximately 900,000 servers in 2011. This means that a company had an energy footprint of 220 megawatts of power or 0.01% of total worldwide electricity use. Moreover, the boost of the reputation of cloud computing, remote virtual machines and remote workstations these numbers are estimated to grow. Thus, the company expects to run up to 10 million machines in the future. Consequently, the described initiatives are expected to require a significant amount of locations assuring physical placement of servers, workstations, and assigned technical personnel. At the same time, the energetic footprint of the company would drastically increase meaning that the company would benefit from energy saving technologies.
Another global issue that would face any company in the future is the climate change. It may drastically affect the working conditions for the staff as well as equipment. It means that possible reduction or increase of the temperatures and the characteristics of the environment may restrict or distract working people. As a result, their efficiency drops, which, combined with difficult conditions for database operation, harms sustainability of the company. Therefore, there is a need in addressing the society the issues of global climate change resistance. Google is an IT company, which has millions of clients and users around the world, which means that it may stimulate people towards climate initiatives. Due to the fact that Google owns one of the most popular social networks, video hosting service and has its operating system it may assure persistent social influence. Therefore, it has a possibility for changing the human perceptions of climate change and shifting their daily behavior adapting global responses to the issue.
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Furthermore, a critical domain, which requires addressing in the proposed policy, is human resource management. The reason for considering this aspect is that it is experiencing pressures of change even now. Thus, scholars claim that among modern hazards for human resources are shifts in the economy, globalization, domestic diversity and technology. One of the basic reasons for the new requirements for human resources is that the world’s economies are gradually changing “from a manufacturing to a service or knowledge-based”. Apparently, the vast majority of specialists obtained their knowledge and skill working in economy of industrial era. This period is characterized by physical allocation of resources, manufacturing processes and transformation of raw materials into goods meeting the demands of the customers. Moreover, these processes require HR specialists searching narrowly defined specialists, supervisor’s control of the workers emphasizing short-term results. Likewise, the traditional industrial sphere of human resources requires direct communication. At the same time, it is expected that in the future HR practitioners should seek for employers with advanced personal knowledge and skills focusing on their retention. The reason for this is that future organizations encourage creativity, autonomy, self-improvement, independent decision-making, and innovations. Additionally, modern IT sphere is characterized by the shift towards electronic human resource management because of its flexibility and convenience. Consequently, Google should devote significant time and resources to update the qualification of its HR specialists and address future challenges of knowledge-based economy.
Therefore, the paper suggests that future scenario planning may seriously assist in responding the described issues in the future. The reason for this is that in case the company is aware of the future challenges it has enough time to restructure its business meeting the requirements of the future. Thus, in case Google implements its future policy it would perfectly fit in the social, economic, financial and technical state of the global society of the future. As a result, the proposed strategy would assure sustainable innovation and provide value creation and competitive advantage. One presumes that there is a persistent need for the prediction of future outcomes for various companies because they require flexibility in order to achieve sustainable business characteristics in the future world. The example of such need might be Shell’s plan for 2050, which indicates that “underneath this “business-as-usual” world, the transitions are already beginning: governments and companies are positioning for longer-term alternatives; regulatory frameworks are being debated”. Consequently, it is evident that Google should follow the global tendencies in order to provide relevant services and be a competitive IT company.
Presentation of the Scenario
This section presents a scenario for Google in 2060, which addresses the basic domains assuring its future sustainability, competitiveness, and validity. It is expected that 45 years is a significant amount of time drastically changing the IT industry. Thus, despite the basic patterns of the society remain unchanged, some peculiar features may emerge. For instance, due to the threats of terrorism and cyber espionage numerous states are expected to restrain the process of globalization and force the companies sharing the data of their clients and users. Therefore, Google balances between the issues of social control and individual freedoms. Unfortunately, some its departments and services in several countries similar to Russia work only partially due to the fact that these states restrict international companies from storing the users’ private data. Moreover, Google should provide new services assuring extended anonymity of the users. Similar to Tor networks it assures the anonymous transfer of data deletes all session information after its termination. Additionally, Google’s devices should be protected from mobile malware endangering the anonymity of the users. The basis for this presumption is modern tendency towards the increase of mobile malware threats. Moreover, company prefers a secure and anonymous location of its servers restricting the attempts of the governments for imposing legal or physical restrictions on the freedom of information. At the same time, it develops its individual algorithms allowing identifying terroristic or cyber threats and notifying the national security departments of the countries. Likewise, the company prefers employing people from distant locations instead of grouping them on sites. These measures allow reducing the expenditures of the company on the staff except technical specialists working on sites. High speed networks of the staff allow videoconferencing with the usage of 3D technologies which simulate physical presence. Thus, digital communication becomes widely practiced as an efficient way of staff management. At the same time, the HR specialists of the company seek for individuals with advanced knowledge and skills in order to implement their innovations in future projects.
Furthermore, Google takes an active part in social initiatives addressing the issue of global warming, waste recycling, and energy saving. Thus, its entire technical base is characterized by autonomous energetic systems working on solar and wind energy. Additionally, the usage of advanced technologies assures extremely high energy saving index. Alongside with this, Google is the leader of the initiatives directed towards safe recycling of electronic and plastic wastes. It influences social masses through its advertising and social campaigns presenting their workers as icons of people demonstrating care of the environment. Additionally, the company has several global climate change agreements with the governments of the developed countries and industrial companies. The aim of these contracts is a provision of the technical support to individuals and businesses willing to assist in global climate change initiatives. As a result, Google is one of the most popular companies in the world with a reputation of a pioneer of a global impact on the environment. Therefore, governments and industries are positively responding its initiatives since it increases their popularity as partners of Google. At the same time, the extended measures regarding anonymity and individual data safety restrict governments and companies from taking control of Google’s resources or data compromise. That is why Google has strong positions in terms of autonomy, security and global impact. As a result, it is free in its decisions and initiatives assuring the democratic improvements of the societies, free sharing of information and knowledge. Moreover, its global impact on the ecology and economy is worth mentioning since it unites numerous previously disconnected social and political resources of the world.
The indicated strategy was selected in order to assure sustainable innovation of the company because Google is a global player on the international market. Therefore, the only way for its sustainable development is the connection with other even non relevant industries assisting with obtained technologies. As a result, Google’s local impact boosts its global proficiency. Consequently, the company has numerous opportunities for changing the world for better such as assuring democracy and assisting in global climate change response. The business model of a company requires change because of the enlisted reasons, which would restrict its development and deteriorate sustainability in the future. Therefore, the selected strategy is one of the most efficient for an IT company because it addresses numerous social domains and unites them.
Conclusion
Summarizing the presented information, one comes to a conclusion that the proposed policy assures Google’s sustainability in 2060. The reason for this statement is that the proposed measures assure its validity regarding the changing characteristics of the world. Thus, the analysis of various social domains indicated that there would be significant changes regarding numerous spheres of businesses and social development. Among them, one can name changing economies, society, governmental policies and ecology. Therefore, there is a need for Google to address these domains in order to assure its efficiency in 2060. Thus, the analysis indicated that the company requires blending with numerous governments and businesses in order to increase its influence on global processes. At the same time, it is evident that the company requires anonymity and independence from the impact of any governmental or non-governmental structure. As a result, Google is expected to become a pioneer of the IT industry, which assures democratic changes in the world and assists in responding the global climate change issue. Therefore, Google’s worldwide connection, anonymity services and global impact would assure its sustainability in the future.
