Wednesday, April 1, 2009

so what have I been up to lately?

Other than marathon six hour long meetings for the club I mentioned two posts ago, spazzing out over the various group projects, homework, papers, and exams I have, nothing much really. ..yet for some reason I seem to find myself busy from day to night. ..weird.

Schoolwork wise, I have a paper due on Friday in which I assess a company's corporate social responsibility efforts. My group chose the overall industry of toys and games, and I chose the wonderful company of Nintendo. Who doesn't love Nintendo? I heartily admit, I loved Pokemon (and maybe do still.. hehe), and the Wii? Brilliant console. I love playing it at my friend's house. As I was doing my research, I was really impressed by some of their social initiatives. They seem to do quite a bit more for their employees than the average global company -- child care leave up to two years? Letting people work two hours a day so they can take care of their child? A "Refresh Leave" system? Pretty amazing. 

I'll stop the discussion of Nintendo's CSR here, because I really should be doing that on my paper! =P But to further the discussion on CSR, what are y'alls views on corporate social responsibility? We had an absolutely amazing two classes today in the comm school, each group presented on a CSR topic of their choosing and held a Q & A session.

We had topics ranging from Conflict Diamonds to Walmart's CSR Auditing to Gender Inequality in the Augusta National Golf Course. I wish I taped the presentations so I could show everyone! (I think my classmates wouldn't be as amused though). They were so professionally done in terms of presentation, Powerpoint slides, and supplemental media. I also thoroughly enjoyed our Q & A discussion section as well. We had debates going on how to best introduce more women into the Augusta club/is it even legal to do so, to the motives behind Walmart's CSR Auditing, and to why conflict diamonds are gaining prominence in a time when they're not such a big issue anymore. Truly amazing class, I looked around today and was quite proud I was in the comm school. This is the type of education you come to UVA for.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Hello,

I just read your blog about your CSR paper and since I am really interested in CSR from electronic companies, I am curious about your Nintendo results. Is it possible that you send me those?

Kind regards,

Matthijs (from the Netherlands)