Operations organizations, local community

Although any educational institution can establish a futures institute, there is no better place to position one than at a local commimity college. Not only is there potential to prepare existing students to use a futures focus and to think differently, but there exists the opportunity to introduce 21st century ideas into the thinking and operations of organizations in the local community. 

Companies want to assure customers of the high quality of their products and services. This has led to the implementation of quality management systems and standards, such as ISO 9000. In addition, responsible organizations have to take care of the well-being of their employees, working environment, the impact of operations on the local community and the long-term effects of their products. This has led to the implementation of, e.g. EMAS, ISO 14000 and OHSAS 18001 international occupational health and safety management system specification (Leva 2003 Wilkinson and Dale 2007). 

The key to the rapid development of the Internet was the evolution and expansion of networks - collections of computers which can communicate with each other. They operate at various scales such as local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs) and these can be connected to the Internet, which is a complex network of networks (Fig. 45.1). The Internet is loosely organized no one group runs it or owns it. Instead, many private organizations, universities and government departments pay for and run discrete parts of it. Private organizations include commercial online service providers such as America Online and CompuServe . 

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