Sustainability in a Digital World

Sustainability in a Digital World

The digital world is proving to be a promising venture for any business. Most businesses are harnessing the digital market to leverage profits with little capital input. Traditionally, business organizations were thriving by destroying their market and competitors to command a market share and gain more benefits (Rushkoff, 2016). Destroying the market in which your company depends on for survival ends up killing the different entities that maintain the balance of the organization. Competitors, suppliers and employees alike will end up suffering the big blow if the company aims to make profits by unorthodox means that discriminate against competitors. With the new era of technology, this kind of thinking is shifting. New media technologies will help distribute value creation and enable a sustainable economy. It is in addition to the conventional role of digitizing industrial extraction while growing more capital that remains stored in the share price.

Understanding the uniqueness of the digital space is vital. Creating technologies that will enhance this uniqueness while earning a profit will also help in distributing value while creating sustainability across the chain of supply. New media technologies are spreading value by enabling their users to gain from them. When users earn by simply using digital platforms, they can make even more quality products. The products will improve the ratings and quality delivered by the platforms. There is value creation, and the companies stay ahead of the competition.The new media technologies are also distributing value by enabling consumers to enhance their rights and freedoms through content creation and creating jobs(Rushkoff, 2016). With more job creation, the problem of unemployment is solved; there is a sustainable economy. Enhancing the freedoms and rights of individuals will also enable them to interact with different businesses and bring more value onboard. The users will also be gaining importance through business interactions with these other businesses. The value is distributed across different users while creating sustainability.

When the digital space adopts the distributist values, the economic and social-political power breaks down into the smallest available party. Distributism in the digital world works to grow the economy for sustainability. The digital industrialism that our economy has been subjected to has left more people jobless with technology taking over their roles. There exists an otherwise disproportionate relationship between value and capital, therefore, creating an imbalance in the economy(Osburg & Lohrmann, 2017). Industrial corporation uses the digital platform to create a platform for business to thrive but not necessarily value. Value in wealth creation brings profit in an entity and ensures the future of the company is secure.

A general distributist business uses media to optimize the wealth for players in the value chain. The players, in turn, different players work to keep the business thriving by bringing in profits. The use of technology here creates wealth, shared among the partners in the value chain, and the cycle continues. While industrial corporation creates gains while using technology, it enhances the ease of doing business by cutting down on the cost of operations. A digital distributist business model survives on the concept of ownership by different elements of the value chain(Aleman, 2015). This self-sufficiency enhances ownership but renders peer to peer interaction obsolete. Industrial corporation loses economic freedom of ownership, while Distributism seeks to promote it. The industrial corporation, on the other hand, creates ownership to a central point. The digital distributist business decentralizes ownership of profits across the value chain. The company exploits digital media by users to generate gain and channels back wealth to its users, enhancing quality in a repetitive cycle. Industrial corporation utilizes employees to carry out activities that bring more profit and goes ahead to keep the benefits for itself. It demoralizes the employees who do not put their best foot forward, creating losses for the business.

The free market should promote harmony and peace within the world’s economic development. The manufacture of electronics depends on raw materials from different parts of the world. The mining of these raw materials does not factor the promotion of human rights for the miners and the exchange promotes war through trade in firearms, which perpetuates conflict in the mineral producing areas. This Fairphone business model promotes trade in a free market that upholds the dignity of human rights(Hill & Hill, 2017). The company ensures that it sources for raw materials from mines that mine responsibly and support the local communities to promote peace and harmony, which is the aim of a free market.

The design of the phone is also user-friendly. The phone case is an integrated protective case that maximizes useable life, recycling and reusing. The phone owner can easily open the phone, update and repair. Manufacturing such a phone was inspired by the observation that there was economic abuse in the manufacturing of electronics. Initially, the different parts were made by different points before assembling. The factories were employing underage children for a low wage and accommodating them in substandard environments. The company also ensured that the long life of the phone is maintained by availing readily available spare parts instead of throwing away the phone(Hill & Hill, 2017). The reuse and recycle ability of the mobile phone conserves the environment by minimizing wastage that mostly pollutes the environment. The approach by Fairphone to manufacture phones that promote the ethics of the free market has revolutionized the production industry.

References

Osburg, T., & Lohrmann, C. (2017). Sustainability in a Digital World: New Opportunities Through New Technologies.

Hill, A., & Hill, T. (2017). Essential Operations Management.

Rushkoff, D. (2016). Throwing rocks at the Google bus: How growth became the enemy of prosperity.

Aleman, R. (2015). ˜Theœ Hound of Distributism: A Solution for Our Social and Economic Crisis.