Team work report

Report on team process

Our group was composed by four members that were Carolin Tzschaschel, Fernando Rocha, Renan Pelosi and I. First of all, when the teacher divided the groups we discussed about how we could make sure that we would have time and a place to do the meetings and work together. So we decided to create a group in the mobile software called by WhatsApp and also in the Facebook to make the communication easier. Secondly, we knew that we would have just two classes then we decided to do three classroom meetings before the presentation. The first meeting occurred in the day 15 of January, the second meeting was in the day 21 of January, and the last meeting was in the day 23 of January.

In the first meeting we discussed what should we present to the class and what was the main point that we would focus on. Our group came up with the idea of do a research about four companies that are considered as global corporations in the world. We discussed about which kind of companies it should be and also what kind of aspects we would analyse. The first decision that we had made were about the kind of companies should be about energy, food, clothes and transportation. We have choose those areas because they are presented in everywhere in the world and also they affect many people. After decided that, we had to divide the area that each team member would research and explain in the presentation. We just had a conversation about which topic each member was feeling comfortable to talk about. Therefore, I have got the energy area that is related to my university course (Renewable Engineering), Carolin got the food area, Fernando got the Clothes area and Renan got the transportation. Our group also divided the introduction and the conclusion for the first and the last member, Fernando and Carolin, in order to make it easier and with good flow of ideas.

After the first meeting we keep in touch by using the WhatsApp software to discuss about our presentation. Then we decided to do another meeting to complete the presentation and also show which company each team member had choose plus some material that we research about it. The second meeting occurred on the day 21 of January. In that day we were in the university library showing to our group what we have got after our research. Each team member came up with a company and a brief abstract about it business as shown below.

Fernando Pelosi: Jetstar is an airline, which provides everyday low fares flights across Australia, New Zeeland and the Asia Pacific region.

Carolin Tzschaschel: Mondelez International is the world`s largest manufacturer of chocolate, candy and biscuits and the 2^nd largest maker of gum and coffee. They sell their products in over 170 countries.

Fernando Rocha: Nike is an American multinational company engaged in the design and development of footwear, sports equipment, apparel and accessories.

Airton Matos: ExxonMobil is an American multinational oil and gas company and is consider as the world`s 5^th largest company by revenue and the biggest refinery in the world.

 After that we discussed about each positive and negative point of the companies that we had chosen and we started talking about the preparation of the PowerPoint presentation. Our group also came up with three main factors that we called by pillars that a good global citizenship corporation must have. They are economy, environment and community pillars. The first one was economy, but we decided to avoid the explanation because it was clearly enough that the companies had a really good economic plan and they were among the bests companies in the world. The environment pillar is one of the most important because it is clearly related to the global citizenship. For example, as a global citizenship we need to preserve our natural resources in order to offer it for our future generations. 

All the companies had a good plan for the environment pillar, for instance Nike has products made by recycled materials; Mondelez also do recycling of the materials utilised and programs that promote the biodiversity; Jetstar is using aircrafts that consume 20% less fuel and ExxonMobil has some environmental programs such as goals to reduce the footprint of oil and gas exploration and energy research efforts in order to maximize the efficiency and reduce the waste and greenhouse gas emissions. However, ExxonMobil is also involved with oil spills and according to Fortune Magazine it is considered one of the 20 worst corporate air polluters (http://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherhelman/2013/06/10/americas-20-worst-corporate-air-polluters/2/). In terms of the Community pillar, all of them also have good programs and goals against the poverty in the world, sexual diseases, humanitarian programs and social awareness.

 In the last meeting each member came up with a different style of presentation and their slides but we decided to use the one that Fernando came up, because it had a better design. After it we had put all the slides in the same file and we did a division of the time that we would need to present. We also complete the design of the poster (http://i.imgur.com/I9dwDQu.jpg?1 ). We had two guys in our group that worked with graphic design so the poster was the easier part of the work for them. Renan and Fernando created the poster using special software and Carolin and I we helped with the ideas and opinions about the design. Our poster it is composed by the basic information of each corporation and the global corporative citizenship scale that we gave to each company. We also decided to do not use the economy pillar in the poster because it was not necessary to mention.

Our meetings were helpful for our development as a group because we had time enough to discuss and explain our ideas about the course and the presentation.

We did not have enough time to do a deep research about those companies; however we found much information that helped us to create our final conclusion about what makes a company a global citizenship corporation.

First of all, it was possible to see that all the team members found positive aspects about the companies. However, we realised that the positive aspects were really easier to find than the negative. One question that came up to our meeting was, ``Why is so easy to find the good points and so hard to find the negative points? `` You might fall in that trap and think that it is because they do not have enough negative points to exposed, but our group realised that it was, actually, something related to control of the negative information against the huge corporations. For instance, in the case of ExxonMobil, I have found many positive aspects in terms of global citizenship corporation, such as programs that helps poor people in poor countries, scholarship for poor kids, programs that help the development of the science and technology, fight against diseases and discrimination, educational championships, programs to motivate the women as a global leader and etc. You can also find a lot of histories and information about how ExxonMobil it is a good global citizenship corporation in their website (http://corporate.exxonmobil.com/en/community/corporate-citizenship-report/global-stories). 

However, we need to keep our eyes wide open because even though they are showing some good programs and strategies to help people and act as a global citizenship, we also need to pay attention in what is behind all of this. We realised that almost all of the biggest companies in the world have really good programs to `help` poor people, but in the same time they also have much more bad things than good to the humanity and the world in a general way. For example, Exxon is responsible to one of the most damage oil spill in the world that occurred in Alaska 1989 and killed more than a billion of fish and more than 300 thousands birds. They are involved with problems related to human rights and illegal foreign business as well.

We can conclude that it is possible to be a really good global citizenship corporation and some of them are doing it well (e.g. Nike, Coca Cola, Mondelez, Jetstar, etc.) however many companies are trying to show a good side of being a global citizenship corporation in order to attract more investment and hide their negative points, such as ExxonMobil, that are involved with some bad points that put their image in doubt.

In the overall all the companies have got a good score in our scale because all of them have programs to help the social and environmental awareness. However, we still think about why the bad information is so hard to find in the internet? Do they hide it? Is it possible? What a company would do in order to hide their weakness and negative aspects (that sometimes overcome the positive)? Are they real global citizenship corporations?

To be considering as a good global citizenship corporation it must have a balance between the economy, environment and community pillars. In the currently world even though some companies do not care about the global citizenship it has become an important factor since the past decade that makes the difference in the world.

Working in a group was a good experience to show that when we have more people thinking about the same thing we can have more chance to broad our minds and enjoy new ideas and experiences. Working as a group is an important factor when we talk about global citizenship, because the world is too big for hold it with just our arms.

Our group was well organised and we completed the assessments in time, as well as the presentation. Every member did their part in time and attended the meetings as well as agreed before. I would say that our team members did a good job working as a team.