Individual Assignment #5

Sandra Taylor became a professor for socially responsible business here at Chatham University in August 2018. She is also currently a book author. Her latest published book is titled The Business of Sustainable Wine. Ms. Taylor has also been the president and CEO for Sustainable Business International LLC since 2008. She has expertise in environmental sustainability, public relations, corporate social responsibility, sustainable business operations, and proactive risk management. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/sandra-e-taylor/

When Sandra Taylor came to our class, she gave an informative lecture on corporate social responsibility. In our textbook, corporate social responsibility is defined as the approach that an organization takes in balancing its responsibilities toward different stakeholders when making legal, economic, ethical, and social decisions. Part of being a socially responsible company is to run the business in a sustainable manner. Sustainability is the principle of providing products today that don’t compromise the ability of future generations to meet their needs. 

To relate this topic to something I have learned from current business news, I read an article from Entrepreneur titled “Small Businesses That Consider Social Impact Will See One to Their Bottom Line.” There are a large number of disasters occurring all over the world today. As a result, “social impact” has been gaining popularity. There are organizations that focus on the social impact without a business agenda, and there are “world-changing” companies that pursue both social impacts and business goals at the same time. In this day and age, it is become more and more difficult, almost impossible, to run a business without considering the social impact your business has on the community and the rest of the world (Faagba, 2018).

This lecture also relates to an article from The Wall Street Journal called “‘Investing for Good’ Meets the Law.” In this article, it is explained that trustees of pensions, university endowments, and trust funds are being pressured to do social good while investing other people’s money. The pressure is coming from student activists, the United Nations, and Black Rock CEO Larry Fink. Larry Fink believes that environmental, social, and governance investing will not only do good for the world, but it will also improve returns for beneficiaries (Schanzenbach, 2018). 

Faagba, A. (2018, May 04). Small Businesses That Consider Social Impact Will See One to Their Bottom Line. Retrieved December 11, 2018, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/312028

Schanzenbach, M. M., & Sitkoff, R. H. (2018, December 09). Opinion | 'Investing for Good' Meets the Law. Retrieved December 12, 2018, from https://www.wsj.com/articles/investing-for-good-meets-the-law-1544396424?mod=searchresults&page=1&pos=2

Individual Assignment #4

For this assignment, I attended the Accounting and Information Systems Networking Mixer in September. Before the panelists gave their presentations, there was a mixer where I spoke to various people in the fields of robotics accounting, robotics auditing, artificial intelligence, and MIS/technologies. These are not fields that I am interested in pursuing, but I thought it would be interesting to hear about. The panelists were Thomas Bartos, James Marino, and Dan Desko. Thomas Bartos is the chief financial officer of the artificial intelligence firm, Cognistx. James Marino is the process improvement consultant at PNC, as well as, the accounting and information systems adjunct instructor here at Chatham University. Dan Desko is an audit, security, and risk professional at Schneider Downs. 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-bartos-38207416/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesemarino/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/dan-desko-cisa-cissp/

            Dan Desko spoke about cybersecurity and the challenges that accompany the job. An article by Security Magazine suggests that human error may be the weakest link in the fight against cyber vulnerabilities. It was said by famous cryptographer Bruce Schneier that professionals attack people, not machines. According to the Cyber Risk Culture Survey, more than 90% of all successful corporate cyberattacks that occurred in 2017 happened because of employee error. Security lapses are not always a result of employees trying to sabotage the company. They are often a result of ignorance on the proper ways to protect themselves and their corporate network. In order to fix this issue, companies should enforce employee training and implement proper vetting protocols. 

https://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/89664-human-error-we-meet-again

            James Marino is the instructor for accounting and information systems at Chatham University. In our textbook, accounting is defined as the process of measuring and summarizing business activities, interpreting financial information, and communicating the results to management and other decision makers. Accounting is often referred to as “the language of business” because it communicates so much information to owners, managers, and investors. In the chapter about information systems in our textbook, the author describes a number of systems used for different reasons. Operations support systems are used by lower level managers that run day-to-day operations. There are also transaction processing systems that receive data and converts them into information for various users. These are just two examples of different information systems.