This lab assignment which we started to work on during Thursday's
(Feb 8) class and which will become an integral component of our project,
is supposed to begin to introduce you and the rest of us to
the economic geography of your organization. However, what it really does
may be much less since not all organizations are very explicit on their
Web site about the geographic features of their organization (thus we will
need additional sources). In fact, some organizations may want to hide the
fact that
they have a physical presence in the Seattle area because they want to be
known as truly virtual. Often, there is a competitive motive behind the
hiding of geographically segmented detail of corporate operations. In
other cases, organizations may want to avoid becoming too cozy with the
communities in which they are located in order to avoid any undue claims
to their resources (like being asked for donations). In most cases,
however,
the lack of geographic detail of an organization's operations is simply
due to "benign neglect", the lack of realization that the community around
it might be interested in or depend on such information or that the
responsible people were in their past deprived of taking a class like
Geography 207.
In other words, the possible lack of geographic detail is in itself an interesting result of of this step of your research. Just do not give up, you may have to go beyond your organization's Web page to gain the necessary information about the spatial structure of your organization and its activities.
You may want to download / copy & paste the following table into your own 207 directory to simplify the logistics. A one-sentence description of the geographic facet for each category (inserted on the right side of the table) should suffice in most cases (with a link to the relevant page), Alternatively, you may have to declare "nothing found" or "not applicable".
NAME OF ORGANIZATION (with a link to your organization's Home Page): | |
| Economic-Geographically Significant Statements: | Description of Geographically Significant Facet, Evaluation, Comment on your Organization's Web Site [Please Link the Relevant Page] |
|---|---|
| 1. Mission Statement / "About" Statement: Economic-Geographic Components/References? | |
| 2. Any indication where organizational headquarters are located? | |
| 3. Any systematic or non-systematic presentation of organizational locations: plants, offices, labs, subsidiaries, branches, other locationally- distributed investments, by maps or otherwise? | |
| 4. Any presentation of geographic/spatial distributions of | xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx |
| 4a. clients (customers) or other facets of the marketing geography of your organization? | |
| 4b. subcontractors or other suppliers? | |
| 4c. alliance partners or other business partners? | |
| 4d. specifically international activities of your organization? | |
| 5. Any identifications of locational differences in organizational performance? (by profits, sales, changes in employment levels, number of clients served etc.) -- [please adjust to measures appropriate to your organization] | |
| 6. Environmental concerns, PR, strategies, policies? | |
| 7. Any references to the organization's labor markets? Job availability by location? | |
| 8. Any indication of the organization's responsibility for social issues inside or outside the organization? | |
| 9. Providing information explicitly for the organization's own employees? | |
| 10. Providing information for the community affected by the organization? | |
| 11. Any publication of news related to geographically- significant events (e.g. mergers) in the life of your organization (e.g. under press releases)? | |
| 12. Other geographically- specific information? | |
| 13. Nature, functions and quality of maps used on the Web site? | |
| 14. Others (in addition to the above examples) | |
| 15. Overall evaluation of the way in which the Web site is used by your organization to represent its "economic geography" | |