Help:GlobalCorpWiki Corporate Profile Training Manual

The Global Corp Wiki (GCW) project is a tool for social movements, labor organizations, and human rights groups that enables organizers to coordinate their local projects globally in order to confront challenges in an age of multinational corporations and capital mobility.

The GCW project involves two parts. The first is a website project modeled after open source wikis, focused specifically on multi-national corporations, and is carefully-sourced. These pages will gather and systematize information on corporations (such as financial data, information about social or environmental impacts, etc.) that would be useful for research, campaigns, organizing, and other activities related to multi-national corporations. The corporations currently profiled fall into several major industries (apparel, pharmaceutical, electronics, and petroleum), with noted exceptions (Walmart, Disney). As the project progresses, users will add information.

The second part is a website with a blog and calendar component, that would allow organizations in different locations that are campaigning against the same multi-national corporation to share their experiences and coordinate actions across national boundaries.

This manual is for those working on the first part of the project, the wiki of corporations. The GCW is based at the University of California-Berkeley and is headed by Peter Evans (Sociology), Dara O'Rourke (Environmental Science) and Katie Quan (Labor Center). Technical expertise is provided by SourceWatch, a website operated by the Center for Media and Democracy (http://www.sourcewatch.org). Our partner organizations are based in both the global north and the global south, though primarily in the latter. They include:


 * Asia Monitor Resource Center (Hong Kong)
 * DeJusticia (Colombia)
 * Focus on the Global South (Thailand)
 * REDLAT (Latin America)
 * SOMO: Centre for Research on Multinational Corporations (the Netherlands)
 * SACOM: Students and Scholars Against Corporate Misbehavior (Hong Kong)

Accessing the GlobalCorpWiki

 * 1) Go to any page on SourceWatch.
 * 2) To see a list of global corporations, visit the Category:Global corporations page.
 * 3) In the Search box on the left side of the page, type "globalcorpwiki". You will see a list of all the corporations currently profiled on the GlobalCorpWiki, as well as a template manual to use when editing pages.

Editing the GlobalCorpWiki

 * 1) If you do not already have a SourceWatch account, create an account for yourself by going to the registration page.
 * 2) Choose a corporation from the list of corporations available on the GlobalCorpWiki.
 * 3) If a corporation you want is not on the list, search for it by typing the name of the corporation in the Search box on the left side of the page.
 * 4) If the corporation already has a page and you would like to add information to it, go to that page and then click on the "edit this page" link near the top of the page. For further information on how to edit the page, follow the wiki-editing instructions.
 * 5) If the corporation you've chosen does not already have a page, you can start one using the input form below: Enter the name of the corporation in the form and click on the "Edit article" button to create the article. Initially, it will simply contain the text of the CorpKey Template, which specifies some standard pieces of information that the article should include, such as the company name, year founded, location, revenue, etc. (To see what an article should look like with the template and other information filled in, go to the Flextronics article or one of our other existing corporate profiles and click its "edit this page" link.)
 * 6) When creating and editing articles, remember to save your changes frequently by clicking on the "Save page" button. Remember, this is a wiki, so each article is a work in progress, which means that it's okay to save an article even when it is still incomplete and then continue editing. Also, remember that the wiki keeps a copy of every version that you save of every article, so that even if you make a mistake while editing, you can always revert back to a previous version.
 * 7) The template and this manual are both works in progress. Please note areas that could use improvement in our project and share them with your collaborators, making changes as you see necessary.

Resources

 * Corp-research.org guide on how to do corporate research.
 * Yahoo! finance. Type in company name in "quote" search box; there you can find basic facts, financial information, employment data, and so on.
 * CorpWatch. Here you can find articles related to corporate social responsibility.
 * OpenSecrets.org provides political campaign contributions and lobbying information for the United States.
 * Business-HumanRights.org has information on human rights and business practices.
 * GoodElectronics.org has information on electronics manufacturing, especially related to environmental and labor issues.
 * SweatFree.org's report on how taxpayer dollars are subsidizing sweatshops.
 * Another wiki for tracking corporations. This project is somewhat similar project to GlobalCorpWiki, although it works a little differently.