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Course Contents:
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Supervision of employees in different countries
Investment in international services like banking, advertising,
tourism, retailing and construction
Transactions involving copyrights, patents, trademarks and process
technology.
The business across the borders of the countries had been carried on since times
immemorial. But, the business had been limited to the international trade until the
recent past. The post World War II period witnessed an unexpected expansion of
national companies into international or multinational companies. The post 1990s
period has given greater fillip to international business. In fact, the term international
business was not in existence before two decades. The term international business has
emerged from the term international marketing, which in turn, emerged from the term
‘export marketing’.
International Trade to International Marketing: Originally, the producers used to
export their products to the nearby countries and gradually extended the exports to
far-off countries. Gradually, the companies extended the operations beyond trade. For
example, India used to export raw cotton, raw jute and iron ore during the early
1900s. The massive industrialization in the country enabled us to export jute products,
cotton garments and steel during 1960s. India, during 1980s could create markets for
its products, in addition to mere exporting. The export marketing efforts include
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creation of demand for Indian products like textiles, electronics, leather products, tea,
coffee etc., arranging for appropriate distribution channels, attractive package,
product development, pricing etc. This process is true not only with India, but also
with almost all developed and developing economies.
International Marketing to International Business: The multinational companies
which were producing the products in their home countries and Marketing them in
various foreign countries before 1980s, started locating their plants and other
manufacturing facilities in foreign/host countries. Later, they started producing in one
foreign country and marketing in other foreign countries. For example, Unilever
established its subsidiary company in India, i.e., Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL).
HLL produces its products in India and markets them in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka,
Nepal etc. Thus, the scope of the international trade is expanded into international
marketing and international marketing is expanded into international business.
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• Most of the international business houses segment their markets based on the
geographic market segmentation. Daewoo segmented its market as North
America, Europe, Africa, Indian subcontinent and Pacific markets.
• International markets present more potentials than the domestic markets. This is
due to the fact that international markets wide in scope, varied in consumer tastes,
preferences and Purchasing abilities, size of the population etc. For example, the
IBM’s sales are more in foreign countries than in USA. Similarly, Coca-Cola’s
sales, Procter and Gamble’s sales and Satyam Computer’s sales are more in
foreign countries than in their respective home countries. The population for the
year 2000 indicates that: USA’s population would be 300 million, Mexico’s 126
million, Brazil’s 205 million, Indonesia’s 223 million, Pakistan’s 138 million,
Nigeria’s 154 million and Bangladesh’s 146 million. The size of the population,
sometimes, may not determine the size of the market. This is due to the
backwardness of the economy and low purchasing power of the people, In fact,
the size of Eritrea an African country is roughly equal to that of the United
Kingdom in terms of land area and size of the population. But, in terms of per
capita income it is one of the poorest countries in the world with estimated per
capita income of US $ 150 per annum. Therefore, the international business
houses should consider the consumers’ willingness to buy and also ability to buy
the products In fact, most of the multinational companies, which entered Indian
market after 1991, failed in this respect. They viewed that almost the entire Indian
population would be the customers. Therefore, they estimated that the demand for
consumer durable goods would be increasing in India after globalisation. And
they entered the Indian market. The heavy inflow of these goods and decline in
the size of Indian middle class resulted in a slump in the demand for consumer
durable goods.
• Wider Scope: Foreign trade refers to the flow of goods across national political
borders. Therefore, it refers to exporting and importing by international marketing
companies plus creation of demand, promotion, pricing etc. As stated earlier,
international business is much broader in scope. It involves international
marketing, international investments, management of foreign exchange, procuring
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international finance from IMF, IBRD, IFC, IDA etc., management of
international human resources, management of cultural diversity, international
marketing, management of international production and logistics, international
strategic management and the like. Thus, international business is broader in
scope and covers all aspects of the system.
• Inter-country Comparative Study: International business studies the business
opportunities, threats, consumers’ preferences, behavior, cultures of the societies,
employees, business environmental factors, manufacturing locations, management
styles, inputs and human resource management practices in various countries.
International business seeks to identify, classify and interpret the similarities and
dissimilarities among the systems used to anticipate demand and market
products’. The system presents inter-country comparison and intercontinental
comparison/comparative analysis helps the management to evaluate the markets,
finances, human resources, consumers etc. of various countries. The comparative
study also helps the management to evaluate the market potentials of various
countries. The study also indicates the degree of consumer acceptance of the
product, product changes and developments in different countries. Managements
of international business houses can group the countries with similar features and
design the same products, fix similar price and formulate the same marketing
strategies. For example, Prentice Hall grouped India, Nepal, Pakistan Bangladesh,
Sri Lanka etc. into one category based on the customers’ ability to pay and
designed the same quality product and sell them at the same price in all these
countries. Similarly, Dr. Reddy’s Lab does the same for its products to sell in the
African countries.
STAGES OF INTERNATIONALIZATION
The internationalization process generally includes five stages, viz., domestic
company, international Company, multinational company, global company and
transnational company. Now, we will study stage of internationalization in detail.
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boundaries. These companies focus its view on the domestic market opportunities,
domestic suppliers, domestic financial companies, domestic customers etc. These
companies analyze the national environment of the country, formulate the strategies
to exploit the opportunities offered by the environment. The domestic Companies’
unconscious motto is that, “if it’s not happening in the home country, it is not
happening”. The domestic company never thinks of growing globally. If it grows,
beyond its present capacity, the company selects the diversification strategy of
entering into new domestic markets, new products, technology etc. The domestic
company does not select the strategy of expansion/penetrating into the international
markets.
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This statue of multinational company is also referred to as multi-domestic. Multi-
domestic company formulates different strategies for different markets; thus, the
orientation shifts from ethnocentric to polycentric. Under polycentric orientation the
offices /branches/subsidiaries of a multinational company work like domestic
company in each country where they operate with distinct policies and strategies
suitable to that country concerned. Thus they operate like a domestic company of the
country concerned in each of their markets.
Philips of Netherlands was a multi-domestic company of this stage during 1960s. It
used to have autonomous national organizations and formulate the strategies
separately for each country. Its strategy did work effectively until the Japanese
companies and Matsushita started competing with this company based oil global
strategy. Global strategy was based on focusing the company resources to serve tile
world market. Philips strategy was to work like a domestic company, and produce a
number of models of the product consequently it increased the cost of production and
price of the product. But the Matsushita’s strategy was to give the value, quality,
design and low price to the customer. Philips lost its market share as Matsushita
offered more value to the customer Consequently Philips changed its strategy and
created “industry main groups” in Netherlands which are responsible for formulating
a global strategy for producing, marketing and R & D.
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competitive advantage.
(iii) Vision and Aspirations: The vision and aspiration of transnational companies are
global, global markets, global customers and grow ahead of other global/transnational
companies.
(iv)Geographic Scope: The transnational companies scan the global data and
information. By doing so, they analyze the global opportunities regarding the
availability of resources, customers, markets, technology, research and development
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etc. Similarly, they also analyze the global challenge and threats like competition
from the other global companies, local companies of host countries, political
uncertainties and the like. They formulate global strategy. Thus the geographic scope
of a transnational company is not limited to certain countries in analyzing
opportunities, threats and formulating strategies.
(v) Operating Style: Key operations of a transnational are globalize. The transnational
companies globalize the functions like R & D, product development, placing key
human resources, Procurement of high valued material etc. For example, the R &D
activity of Proctor & Gamble, and key human resource activity of Colgate are the
joint and shared activity of the units of these companies in various countries.
(vi) Adaptation: Global and transnational companies adapt their products, marketing
strategic and other functional strategies to the environmental factors of the market
concerned, For example, Mercedes Benz is a super luxury car in North America,
luxury automobile in Germany, standard taxi in Europe.
(vii) Extensions: Some products do not require any change when they are marketed
in other countries. Their market is just extension. For example, Casio calculators of
Japan.
(viii) Creation through Extension: Transnational companies create the global brand
through extending the product to the new market. Rothmans Cigarette extended its
product to many European countries and African countries and created it as global
and national basis.
(x) Purchasing: Transnational Company procures world-class material from the best
source across the globe.
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INTERNATIOANL BUSINESS APPROACHES
1. Ethnocentric Approach
The domestic companies normally formulate their strategies, their product design
and their operations towards the national markets, customers and competitors.
But, the excessive production more than the demand for the product, either due to
competition or due to changes in customer preferences push the company to
export the excessive production to foreign countries. The domestic company
continues the exports to the foreign countries and views the foreign markets as an
extension to the domestic markets just like a new region. The executives at the
head office of the company make the decisions relating to exports and, the
marketing personnel of the domestic company
monitor the export operations with the help of an export department. The
company exports the same product designed for domestic markets to foreign
countries under this approach. Thus, maintenance of domestic approach towards
international business is called ethnocentric approach.
Managing
Director
Assistant Assistant
Assistant Manager
Manager Manager
South India Exports
North India
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This approach is suitable to the companies during the early days of internationalization
and also to the smaller companies.
2. Polycentric Approach
The domestic companies, which are exporting to foreign countries using the
ethnocentric approach, find at the latter stage that the foreign markets need an
altogether different approach. Then, the company establishes a foreign subsidiary
company and decentralists all the operations and delegates decision making and
policy-making authority to its executives. In fact, the company appoints
executives and personnel including a chief executive who reports directly to the
Managing Director of the company. Company appoints the key personnel from
the home country and the people of the host country fill all other vacancies.
3. Regiocentric Approach
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it markets more or less the same product designed under polycentric approach in
other countries of the region, but with different market strategies.
4. Geocentric approach
Under this approach, the entire world is just like a single country for the company.
They select the employees from the entire globe and operate with a number of
subsidiaries. The head quarter coordinates the activities of the subsidiaries. Each
subsidiary functions like an independent and autonomous company in formulating
policies, strategies, product design, human resource policies, operations etc.
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II. CONCEPT AND DEFINITION OF INTERNATIONAL
MANAGEMENT
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- The maintenance and development of an organization's production or market
interests across national borders with either local or expatriate staff
The primary reason for going international is –there is money to be made by going
abroad. U.S. giants like Mc Donald’s have made massive penetration into foreign
markets. In 1994, Mc Donald’s experienced a 6% gains in its domestic sales, but its
foreign sales accounted for half of its overall volume. With the recent advent of
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technological innovation and the emergence of the newly industrialized countries
(NICs), a convergence has occurred among nation in terms of rates and preferences,
financial systems, and organization design. These convergences along with
complimentary developments are forcing organizations to “borderless” terms. Their
thinking revolves around the following issues: -
Complementary
Convergence in: Development
>Tastes and Preferences >NIC Purchasing Power
>Organization Design >Developing Countries’
>Financial System Ability to Purchase
Good Quality Products
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I. To Achieve Higher Rate of Profits: As we have discussed in various
courses/subjects like Principles and Practice of Management, Managerial
Economics and Financial Management that the basic objective of the business
firms is to earn profits. When the domestic markets do not promise a higher rate
of profits, business firms search for foreign markets, which promise for higher
rate of profits. For example, Hewlett Packard earned 85.4% of its profits from the
foreign markets compared to that of domestic markets in 1994. Apple earned US
$ 390 million as net profit from the foreign markets and only US $ 310 millions as
net profit from its domestic market in 1994. Further in certain cases, international
business can help increase the profitability of the domestic business.
II. Expanding the Production Capacities beyond the Demand of the Domestic
Country: Some of the domestic companies expanded their production capacities
more than the demand for the product in the domestic countries. These
companies, in such cases, are forced to sell their excess production in foreign
developed countries.
III. Growth Opportunities: An important reason for going international is to take
advantage of the opportunities in other countries. MNCs are getting increasingly
interested in a number of developing countries as the income and population are
rapidly rising in these countries. Foreign markets both developed and developing
countries provide enormous growth opportunities for the developing country
firms too.
IV. Government Policies and Regulations: Government policies and regulations
may also motivate internationalization. There are both positive and negative
factors, which could cause internationalization. Many governments give a number
of incentives and other positive support to domestic companies to export and
invest in foreign countries. Similarly, several countries give a lot of importance to
import development and foreign investment. Sometimes, (as was the case in
India) companies may be obliged to earn foreign exchange to finance their
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imports and to meet certain other foreign exchange requirements like payment of
royalty dividend etc.
V. Monopoly Power: in some cases, international business is a corollary of the
monopoly power, which a firm enjoys internationally. Monopoly power may arise
from such factors as monopolization of certain resources, patent rights,
technological advantage, product differentiation etc. Such monopoly power need
not necessarily be an absolute one but even a dominant position may facilitate
internationalization. Similarly, exclusive market information (which includes
knowledge about foreign customers, market places, or market situations not
widely shared by other firms) is another proactive stimulus.
VI. Severe Competition in the Home Country: The countries oriented towards
market economies since 1960s had severe competition from other business firms
in the home countries. The weak companies, which could not meet the
competition of the strong companies in the domestic country, started entering the
markets of the developing countries. Moreover a protected market does not
normally motivate companies to seek business outside the home market. For
example Indian economy was a highly protected market before liberalization in
1991. Not only the domestic producers were protected from foreign competition
but also domestic competition was restricted by several policy induced entry
barriers, operated by such measures as industrial licensing etc. After
liberalization, competition increased from foreign as well as domestic firms.
Many Indian companies are now systematically planning to go international in a
big way.
VII. Limited Home Market: When the size of the home market is limited either due
to the smaller size of the population or due to lower purchasing power of the
people or both, the companies internationalize their operations. For example, most
of the Japanese automobile and electronic firms entered US, Europe and even
African markets due to the smaller size of the home market. ITC entered the
European market due to the lower purchasing power of the Indians with regard to
high quality cigarettes. Similarly, the mere six million population of Switzerland
is the reason for Ciba Geigy to internationalize its operations. In fact, this
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company was forced to concentrate on global market and establish manufacturing
facilities in foreign countries.
VIII. Political Stability vs. Political Instability: Political stability does not simply
mean that continuation of the same party in power, but it does mean the
continuation of the same policies of the Government for a quite longer period. It
is viewed that USA is a politically stable country. Similarly, UK, France,
Germany, Italy and Japan are also politically stable countries. Most of the African
countries and some of the Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Pakistan and
India are politically instable countries. Business firms prefer to enter the
politically stable countries and are restrained from locating their business
operations in politically instable countries. In fact, business firms shift their
operations from politically instable countries into politically stable countries.
IX. Availability of Technology and Managerial Competence: Availability of
advanced technology and managerial competence in some countries act as pulling
factors for business firms from the home country. The developed countries due to
these reasons attract companies from the developing world. In fact, American
companies, in recent years, depend on Japanese companies for technology and
management expertise.
X. High Cost of Transportation: Initially companies enter foreign countries
through their marketing operations. At this stage, the companies realize the
challenge from the domestic companies. Added to this, the home companies enjoy
higher profit margins whereas the foreign firms suffer from lower profit margins.
The major factor for this situation is the cost of transportation of the products.
Under such conditions, the foreign companies are inclined to increase their profit
margin by locating -their manufacturing facilities in foreign countries where there
is enough demand either in one country or in a group of neighboring countries.
XI. Nearness to Raw Materials: The source of highly qualitative raw materials and
bulk raw materials is a major factor for attracting the companies from various
foreign countries. Most of the US based and European based companies located
their manufacturing facilities in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Iran and
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other Middle East countries due to the availability of petroleum. These
companies, thus, reduced the cost of transportation.
XII. Availability of Quality Human Resources at Less Cost: This is a major factor,
in recent times, for software, high technology and telecommunication companies
to locate their operations in India. India is a major source for high quality and low
cost human resources unlike USA, developed European countries and Japan.
Importing human resources from India by these firms is costly rather than locating
their operations in India. Hence these companies started their operations in India
and other similar countries.
XIII. To Avoid Tariffs and Import Quotas: It was quite common before globalization
that governments imposed tariffs or duty on imports to protect the domestic
company. Sometimes Government also fixes import quotas in order to reduce the
competition to the domestic companies from the competent foreign companies.
These practices are prevalent not only in developing countries but also in
advanced countries. For example, Japanese companies are competent competitors
to the US companies. USA imposed tariffs and quotas regarding import of
automobiles and electronics from Japan. Harley Davidson of USA sought and got
five years of tariffs protection from Japanese imports. Similarly, Japan places
high tariffs on imports of rice and other agricultural goods from USA. To avoid
high tariffs and quotas, companies prefer direct investment to go globally. For
example, companies like Sony, Honda and Toyota preferred direct investment in
various countries by establishing subsidiaries or through joint ventures in various
foreign countries including USA and India. Xerox, Canon, Phillips, Unilever,
Lucky Gold Star, South Korean Electronics Company, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Shell,
Mobil etc. established manufacturing facilities in various foreign countries in
order to avoid tariffs, import duties and quotas.
REASONS PART II
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IV. ENTRY BARRIERS
Tariff Barriers
• Customs duties enforced on imported products (final products or
intermediate products)
• Different tariff rates for different countries and different products
• May be adjusted by political influence from trade associations
Non-Tariff Barriers
Non-tariff barriers to trade are trade barriers that restrict imports but are not in the usual
form of a tariff. These include all other entry barriers, e.g., transportation costs, slow
customs procedures, etc.
They are criticized as a means to evade free trade rules such as those of the World
Trade Organization (WTO), the European Union (EU), or North American Free Trade
Agreement (NAFTA) that restrict tariffs. Some of the common examples are anti-
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dumping measures and countervailing duties, which, although they are called "non-
tariff" barriers, have the effect of tariffs but are only imposed under certain
conditions. Their use has risen sharply after the WTO rules led to a very significant
reduction in tariff use.
Non-tariff barriers may also be in the form of manufacturing or production
requirements of goods, such as how an animal is caught or a plant is grown, with an
import ban imposed on products that don't meet the requirements. Examples are the
European Union restrictions on genetically-modified organisms or beef treated with
growth hormones.
Some non-tariff trade barriers are expressly permitted in very limited circumstances,
when they are deemed necessary to protect health, safety, or sanitation, or to protect
diminishing natural resources.
Non-tariff barriers to trade can be:
• State subsidies, procurement, trading, state ownership
• National regulations on health, safety, employment
• Product classification
• Quota shares
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• Pro-domestic sentiment favoring local brands
Barriers to entry are designed to block potential entrants from entering a market
profitably. They seek to protect the monopoly power of existing (incumbent) firms in
an industry and therefore maintain supernormal (monopoly) profits in the long run.
Barriers to entry have the effect of making a market less contestable
The economist Joseph Stigler defined an entry barrier as "A cost of producing (at
some or every rate of output) which must be borne by a firm which seeks to enter
an industry but is not borne by firms already in the industry". This emphasizes the
asymmetry in costs between the incumbent firm (already inside the market) and the
potential entrant. If the existing businesses have managed to exploit some of the
economies of scale that are available to firms in a particular industry, they have
developed a cost advantage over potential entrants. They might use this advantage to
cut prices if and when new suppliers enter the market, moving away from short run
profit maximization objectives - but designed to inflict losses on new firms and
protect their market position in the long run.
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Cost advantages: Lower costs, perhaps through experience of being in the market for
some time, allows the existing monopolist to cut prices and win price wars
Advertising and marketing: Developing consumer loyalty by establishing branded
products can make successful entry into the market by new firms much more
expensive. This is particularly important in markets such as cosmetics, confectionery
and the car industry.
Research and Development expenditure: Heavy spending on research and
development can act as a strong deterrent to potential entrants to an industry. Clearly
much R&D spending goes on developing new products but there are also important
spill-over effects which allow firms to improve their production processes and reduce
unit costs. This makes the existing firms more competitive in the market and gives
them a structural advantage over potential rival firms.
Presence of sunk costs: Some industries have very high start-up costs or a high ratio
of fixed to variable costs. Some of these costs might be unrecoverable if an entrant
opts to leave the market. This acts as a disincentive to enter the industry.
International trade restrictions: Trade restrictions such as tariffs and quotas should
also be considered as a barrier to the entry of international competition in protected
domestic markets.
Sunk Costs: Sunk Costs are costs that cannot be recovered if a businesses decides to
leave an industry Examples include: " Capital inputs that are specific to a particular
industry and which have little or no resale value " Money spent on advertising /
marketing / research which cannot be carried forward into another market or industry
When sunk costs are high, a market becomes less contestable. High sunk costs
(including exit costs) act as a barrier to entry of new firms (they risk making huge
losses if they decide to leave a market).
A good example of substantial sunk costs occurred in 2001 when British Telecom
announced it was scrapping its loss-making joint venture with US telecoms firm
AT&T. The closure was estimated to lead to the loss of 2,300 jobs - almost 40% of
Concert's workforce. And, it will cost BT $2bn (£1.4bn) in impairment charges and
restructuring costs, and AT&T $5.3bn.
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V. INDIA’S ATTRACTIVENESS FOR INTERNATIONAL
BUSINESS
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VI. INTERNATIONAL ENTRY MODES
• Companies deciding to enter the foreign markets, face the dilemma while deciding
the method of entry into a given overseas location. Analyzing the following decision
factors can reduce this dilemma: -
1. Ownership Advantages: Ownership advantages are those
designed by a company by owning resources. These benefits provide
competitive advantage to the company over its competitors. Toronto-
based Inco. Ltd., of rich, nickel-bearing ores allowed the company, to
dominate the production of both primary nickel and nickel-based
metal alloys.' Similarly,, Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO) Ltd.,
owned its iron ore mines and coal mines. This ownership grants the
advantage of low cost producer to the company.
2. Location Advantages
Certain location factors grant benefit to the company when the
manufacturing facilities are located in the host country rather than in
the home country. These location factors include:
Customer Needs, Preferences and Tastes
Logistic Requirements
Cheap Land Acquisition Cost
Cheap Labor
Political Stability
Low Cost Raw Materials
Climatic Conditions.
If the company has location advantages, it enters foreign markets
through direct investment. If the location of manufacturing facilities in
home country is advantageous in the host country, the company enters
foreign markets through exporting.
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3. Internationalization Advantages
Internationalization advantages are those benefits that a company gets
by manufacturing goods or rendering services in the host country by
itself rather than through contract arrangements with the companies in
the host country.
Sometimes the cost of negotiating, monitoring and enforcing an
agreement with the host country's company would be difficult and
costly. In such cases the company enters the international markets
through direct investment. Otherwise, if the company thinks that the
transaction costs are low, and the local companies in the host country
can produce efficiently without jeopardising the interest, the company
can enter the foreign markets through contract manufacturing,
franchising or licensing.
Toyota enters foreign markets through direct investment and joint-
ventures us the local companies in foreign countries cannot produce
as efficiently as Toyota.
Companies with low cash reserves normally prefer
licensing mode rather than foreign direct investment
(FDI)• Merck entered Israel by issuing license to Teva
Pharmaceutical an Israel company in order to save the
expenses of establishing in Israel. /n contrast, cash rich
firms may prefer FDI. Firms also enter through FDI in
order to take the advantage of economies of scale, and
synergies between their domestic and international
operations.
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• The entry mode employed should be consistent with the firm's objectives and the
choice will often involve a trade-off among objectives.
• The factors which influence the choice of entry mode are:
o Legal considerations
o The nature of the competition
o Political factors
o Economic risk
o The nature of the assets to be employed
o The firm's experience.
• Firms may use different entry modes in different countries and for different
products. As diversity increases, the task of coordinating the foreign operations
becomes more complex.
• Firms usually want complete ownership of foreign operations to guarantee control
and prevent loss of profit. However, host countries usually want a share of the
action and the resources that the MNE will bring into the host country.
• Joint ventures are often motivated by the complementary resources firms have at
their disposal, and just as often by governmental preferences.
• Turnkey projects usually require high level negotiation skills to deal with host
country government officials.
• Management contracts are a means of securing income with little capital outlay.
They are usually used for expropriated properties in LDCs, for new operations,
and for facilities with operating problems. Management contracts involve the sale
of technical or managerial expertise, and one of the responsibilities of the hired
manager is to train local nationals so they will be able to run the business when
the contact expires.
• Contracting foreign business does not negate management's responsibility to
ensure that company resources are being optimally employed. This involves
constantly assessing the work of the outsiders such as contract managers and
evaluating new options for their employment.
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MODES OF ENTRY
I. EXPORTING
Exporting is the simplest and widely used mode of entering foreign markets. It is
the marketing and selling of domestically produced goods in another country. It is
a traditional and well established method of reaching foreign markets. Since it
does not require that the goods be produced in the target country, no investment in
foreign facilities is required. Most of the costs associated with exporting take
form of marketing expenses.
The advantages of exporting include:
a. Need for Limited Finance : If the company selects a company in the host
country to distribute, the company can enter international market with no
or less financial resources. Alternatively, if the company chooses to
distribute on its own, it needs to invest financial resources, but this amount
would be quite less compared to that would be necessary under other
modes.
b. Less Risk: Exporting involves less risk as the company understands the
culture, customer and the market of the host country gradually. The
company can enter the host country on a lull scale, if the product is
accepted by the host country's market. British company selected this mode
to export jams to Japan.
c. Motivation for Exporting: Motivations for exporting are proactive and
reactive. Proactive motivations are opportunities available in the host
country. San Antonio's Pace, Inc., producing Tex-Mex food products
exported its products to Mexico as Mexicans relished the taste of its
products. Reactive motivations are those efforts taken by the company to
export the product to a foreign country due to the decline in demand for its
product in the home country. Toto Ltd., of Japan started exporting its
products, i.e., Porcelain bathroom fixtures to China when the Japanese
economy started slowing down in 1990s.
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FORMS OF EXPORTING
Forms of exporting include: -
1. Indirect Exporting: Indirect exporting is exporting the products either in
their original form or in the modified form to a foreign country through
another domestic company. Various publishers ill India including Himalaya
Publishing House, sell their products, i.e., books to UBS publishers of India,
which in turn exports these books to various foreign countries.
2. Direct Exporting: Direct exporting is selling the products in a foreign
country directly through its distribution arrangements or through a host
country's company. Baskin Robbins initially exported its ice-cream to Russia
in 1990 and later opened 74 outlets with Russian partners. Finally in 1995 it
established its ice cream plant in Moscow."
3. Intracorporate Transfers: Intracorporate transfers are selling of products by
a company to its affiliated company in host country (another country). Selling
of products by Hindustan Lever in India to Unilever in USA. This transaction
is treated as exports in India and imports in USA.
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functions include: handling transportation, documentation, taking ownership of
foreign-bound goods, assuming total responsibility for exporting and financing.
Types of export intermediaries include:
Export management companies act as export department of the exporting firm (its
client).
These companies act as commission agents for exports or they take tittle to the
goods.
Cooperative Society: The domestic companies desire to export the goods form a
cooperative society, which undertakes the exporting operations of its members.
International Trading Company: This company is engaged in directly exporting
and importing. It buys the goods from the domestic companies and exports.
Therefore, the companies can export their goods by selling them to the
international trading company.
Manufacturers' Agents: They work on a commission basis. They solicit domestic
orders for foreign manufacturers.
Manufacturers' Export Agents: These agents also work on a commission basis.
They sell the domestic manufacturers' products in the foreign markets and act as
their foreign sales department.
Export and Import Brokers: The brokers bridge the gap between exporters and
importers and bring these two parties together.
Freight Forwarders: Freight forwarders help the domestic manufacturers in
exporting their goods by performing various functions like physical transportation
of goods, arranging customs documents and arranging transportation services.
II. LICENSING
In this mode of entry, the domestic manufacturer leases the right to use its
intellectual property, i.e., technology, work methods, patents, copy rights, brand
names, trademarks etc. to a manufacturer in a foreign country for a fee." Here the
manufacturer in the domestic country is called 'licensor' and the manufacturer in
the foreign country is called `licensee.'
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Licensing is a popular method of entering foreign markets. The cost of entering
foreign markets through this mode is less costly. The domestic company need not
invest any capital as it has already developed intellectual property. As such, the
domestic company earns revenue without additional investment. Hence, most of
the companies prefer this mode of foreign entry.
The domestic company can choose any international location and enjoy the
advantages without -incurring any obligations and responsibilities of ownership,
managerial, investment etc. Kirin Brewery - Japan's largest beer producer entered
Canada by granting license to Molson and British market by granting license to
Charles Wells Brewery.
- 35 -
o Determination of Royalty: The most important factor in deciding the license
is the amount of royalty. It is needless to mention that the licensor expects
high rate of royalty while licensee would be unwilling to par much royalty.
However, both the parties negotiate for a fair royalty for both the sides in
order to implement the contract more
o Determining; Rights, Privileges and Constraints: Another important factor,
in granting license is determining clearly and specifically the rights, privileges
and constraints. For example, if the Indian licensee of Aiwa TV uses interior
input in order to reduce price, boost up sales and profit, the image of the
Japanese licensor would be damaged.
o Dispute Settlement Mechanism: The licensee and licensor should clearly
mention the mechanism to settle the disputes as disputes are hound to crop up.
This is because, settlement of disputes in courts is costly, time consuming and
hinders business interests.
o Agreement Duration: The two parties of the agreement specify the duration
of the agreement. Licensing cannot he a short-term strategy. Hence, the
duration of the licensing should not be of the short-term. It would always be
appropriate to have long duration of the licensing. Tokyo Disneyland
demanded on a 100-year licensing agreement With The Walt Disney
Company.
- 36 -
Licensee escapes himself from the risk of product failure. For example,
Nintendo game designers have the relatively safety of knowing millions of
game system units.
Disadvantages
Licensing agreements reduce the market opportunities for both the
licensor and licensee.
Pepsi-cola cannot enter Netherlands and Heineken cannot sell Coca-cola.
Both the parties have the responsibilities to maintain the product quality
and promoting the product. Therefore, one party can affect the other through
their improper acts.
Costly and tedious litigation may crop up and hurt both the parties and the
market.
There is scope for misunderstanding between the parties despite the
effectiveness of the agreement. The best example is Oleg Cassini and Jovan.
There is a problem of leakage of the trade secrets of the licensor.
The licensee may develop his reputation.
The licensee may sell the product outside the agreed territory and after the
expiry of the contract.
III. FRANCHISING
Franchising is a form of licensing. The franchisor can exercise more control over
the franchised compared to that in licensing. International franchising is growing
at a fast rate. Under franchising, an independent organization called the franchisee
operates the business under the name of another company called the franchisor.
Under this agreement the franchisee pays fee to t e franchisor. The franchisor
provides the following services to the franchisee:
Trade marks
Operating systems
Product reputations
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Continuous support systems like advertising, employee training, reservation
services, and quality assurance programmes etc.
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formula are carefully designed and properly executed, franchisors are able to
expand rapidly across countries and continents using the capital and resources of
their franchisees, and can earn profits commensurate with their contribution to
those societies. Additionally, the franchisor may choose to leverage the franchisee
to build a distribution network.
2. Legal considerations: The franchisor is relieved of many of the mundane duties
necessary to start a new outlet, such as obtaining the necessary licenses and
permits. In some jurisdictions, certain permits (especially liquor licenses) are
more easily obtained by locally based, owner-operator type applicants while
companies based outside the jurisdiction (and especially if they originate in
another country) find it difficult if not impossible to get such licenses issued to
them directly. For this reason, hotel and restaurant chains that sell liquor often
have no viable option but to franchise if they wish to expand to another state or
province.
3. Operational considerations: Franchisees are said to have a greater incentive than
direct employees to operate their businesses successfully because they have a
direct stake in the operation. The need of franchisors to closely scrutinize the day
to day operations of franchisees (compared to directly-owned outlets) is greatly
reduced.
For franchisees
1. Quick start: As practiced in retailing, franchising offers franchisees the advantage
of starting up a new business quickly based on a proven trademark and formula of
doing business, as opposed to having to build a new business and brand from
scratch (often in the face of aggressive competition from franchise operators). A
well run franchise would offer a turnkey business: from site selection to lease
negotiation, training, mentoring and ongoing support as well as statutory
requirements and troubleshooting.
2. Expansion: With the help of the expertise provided by the franchisers the
franchisees are able to take their franchise business to that level which they
wouldn't have had been able to without the expert guidance of their franchisors.
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3. Training: Franchisors often offer franchisees significant training, which is not
available for free to individuals starting their own business. Although training is
not free for franchisees, it is both supported through the traditional franchise fee
that the franchisor collects and tailored to the business that is being started.
- 40 -
2. Price: Starting and operating a franchise business carries expenses. In choosing to
adopt the standards set by the franchisor, the franchisee often has no further
choice as to signage, shop fitting, uniforms etc. The franchisee may not be
allowed to source less expensive alternatives. Added to that is the franchise fee
and ongoing royalties and advertising contributions. The contract may also bind
the franchisee to such alterations as demanded by the franchisor from time to
time. (As required to be disclosed in the state disclosure document and the
franchise agreement under the FTC Franchise Rule)
3. Conflicts: The franchisor/franchisee relationship can easily cause conflict if either
side is incompetent (or acting in bad faith). An incompetent franchisor can
destroy its franchisees by failing to promote the brand properly or by squeezing
them too aggressively for profits. Franchise agreements are unilateral contracts or
contracts of adhesion wherein the contract terms generally are advantageous to
the franchisor when there is conflict in the relationship.
OTHER ADVANTAGES
Franchisor can enter global markets with low investment and low risks.
Franchisor can get the information regarding the markets, culture, customs
and environment of the host country.
Franchisor learns more lessons from the experiences of the franchisees.
McDonald benefited from the world wide learning phenomenon. McDonald is
convinced to open a restaurant in inner-city office building in Japan. This
location has become a more successful one. Based on this lesson, McDonald
opened its restaurants in downtown locations in various countries.
Franchisee can early start a business with low risk as he selects an
established and proven product and operating system,
Franchise gets the benefits of R & D with low cost.
Franchisee escapes form the risk of product failure.
OTHER DISADVANTAGES
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International franchising may be more complicated than domestic
franchising.
McDonald taught the Russian farmers the methods of growing potatoes to
meet its standards.
It is difficult to control the international franchisee. As one of the French
investor did not maintain the stores as per the standards, McDonald did revoke
the franchise.
Franchising agents reduce the market opportunities for both the franchisor
and franchisee.
Both the parties have the responsibilities to maintain product quality and
product promotion.
There is scope for misunderstanding between the parties.
There is a problem of leakage of trade secrets.
SPECIAL MODES
Some companies cannot make long-term investments or long-term contracts to
enter markets. Therefore, they may use specialized strategies. These specialized
strategies include: -
a. Contract Manufacturing
Some companies outsource their part of or entire production and
concentrate on marketing operations. This practice is called the contract
manufacturing or outsourcing.
Nike has contracted with a number of factories in south-east Asia to
produce its athletic footware and it concentrates on marketing. Bata also
contracted with a number of cobblers in India to produce its footware and
concentrate on marketing. Mega Toys - a Los Angeles based company
contracts with Chinese plants to produce Toys and Mega Toys
concentrates on marketing.
Advantages
International business can focus on the part of the value chain
where it has distinctive -competence.
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It 'reduces the cost of production as the host country's companies
with their relative cost advantage produce at low cost.
Small and medium industrial units in the host country can also
develop as most of the production activities take in these units.
The international company gets the location advantages, generated
by the host country's production.
Disadvantages
Host country's companies may take up the marketing activities
also, hindering the interest of the international company.
Host county's companies may not strictly adhere to the production
design, quality standards etc. These factors result in quality problems,
design problem and other surprises.
The poor working countries in the host country's companies affect
the company's, image. For example, Nike has suffered a string of blows to
its public image, because of reports of unsafe and harsh working
conditions in Vietnamese factories churning our Nike footware.
b. Management Contracts
The companies with low level technology and managerial expertise may
seek tile assistance of a foreign company. Then the foreign company may
agree to provide technical assistance and managerial expertise. This
agreement between these two companies is called the management
contract.
A management contract is an agreement between two companies whereby
one company provides managerial assistance, technical expertise and
specialized services to the second company of the argument for a certain
agreed period in return for monetary compensation. Monetary
Compensation may be in the form of a flat fee or Percentage over sales or
Performance bonus based on profitability, sales growth, production or
quality measures.
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Management contracts are mostly due to governmental inventions. The
Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia nationalized Armco and
requested the former owners to manage the company. Exxon and other
former owners of Armco accepted the offer. Delta, Air France and KLM
often provide technical and managerial assistance to the small airlines
companies owned by the Governments.
Advantages
Foreign company earns additional income without any additional
investment, risks and obligations.
c. Turnkey Project
A turnkey project is a contract under which a firm agrees to fully design,
construct and equip a manufacturing/business/service facility and turn the
project over to the purchaser when it is ready for operation for
remuneration. The forms of remuneration include: -
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A fixed price (firm plans to implement the project below this price)
Payment on cost plus basis (i.e., total cost incurred plus profit)
International turnkey projects include nuclear power plants, air ports, oil
refinery, national highways, railway lines etc. Hence, they are large and
multiyear projects. International companies involved in such projects
include: Bechtel, Brown and Root, Hyundai Group, Friedrich Krupp, etc.
The companies normally approach the host country's Governments or
International Finance, Corporation, Export-Import Bank of USA and the
like for financial assistance as the turnkey projects require huge finances.
The recent approach of turnkey projects is Build, Operate and Transfer
(B-O-T). The company builds the manufacturing/services facility,
operates it for some time and then transfers it to the host country's
Government. In this approach, the contractor will not be paid the
remuneration.
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• The technology, manufacturing expertise, intellectual property rights have
potentialities and their full utilization needs planned exploitation.
ADVANTAGES
• Mostly, the customers of the host country prefer to the products produced in their
country like -'Be American, Buy American, 'Be Indian. Buy Indian.'. In such
cases FDI helps the company to gain market through this mode rather than other
modes.
• Purchase managers of most of the companies prefer to buy local production in
order to ensure certainty of supply, faster services, quality dependability and
better communication with the supplier.
• The company can produce based on the local environment and changing
preferences of the cutomers.
Disadvantages
o FDI exposes the company (to a fullest extent) tothe host country's politicaL
and economic risks.
o FDI also exposes the company to the exchange rate fluctuations.
o Some countries discourage the entry of foreign companies through FDI in
order to protect the domestic industry.
o Changing Government policies of the host country may create uncertainties to
the company.
o Host country Governments, sometimes, ban the acquisition of local companies
by foreign companies, impose restrictions on repatriation of dividends and
capital. India has allowed IOO% convertibility.
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buys or leases land, creates facilities, erects the machinery, remits or transfers the
human resources and starts the operations and marketing activities. This strategy
is followed by Fuji in locating its manufacturing, facilities in South Carolina, by
Mercedes-Benz in locating automobile assembly plant in Alabama and by Nissan
in locating its factory in Sunderland, England."
ADVANTAGES
The company selects the best location from all viewpoints.
The company can avail the incentives, rebates and concessions offered by
the host governments including local governments.
The company can have latest models of the buildings, machinery and
equipment technology.
The company can, also have its own policies and styles of human
resources management.
The company can have its gestation period
to understand and adjust to the new culture of the host country. Thus it can
avoid the cultural shock.
DISADVANTAGES
This strategy results in a longer gestation period as the successful
implementation takes time and patience.
Some companies may not get the land in the location of its choice.
The company has to follow the rules and
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regulations imposed by the host country's Government in case of construction
of the factory buildings.
Host country's Government may impose conditions that the company
should recruit local people and train them, if necessary, to meet the company’s
requirement.
Multiply market entry alternatives and available resources for expansion into
choice international markets. Consider possibility of replicating IJV's in different
market areas.
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Access lucrative but otherwise closed or resistant markets through the efforts of
a foreign partner to maximize value of established relationships. Develop
customer service channels what would be unfeasible otherwise.
Gain cost advantages through scale and locational economies (factor costs).
Limit exposure of own corporate assets to those actually contributed to the joint
venture.
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1
Though mergers and acquisitions provide easy and instant entry to global
business, it would be very difficult to appraise the cases of acquisitions
and mergers. Some times it Would he cheaper to a domestic company to
have a green field strategy than by acquisitions. Sometimes merg ers and
acquisitions also result in purchasing the problems of a fore
Advantages and Disadvantages of Aquisition strategy
Advantages
• The company immediately gets the ownership and control over the
acquired firm's factories, employees, technology, brand names and
distribution networks.
• The company can formulate international strategy and generate more
revenues.
• If the industry already reached the stage of optimum capacity level or
overcapacity level in the host country. This strategy helps the economy
of the host country.
Disadvantages
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Companies adopt this strategy just as a means of entering foreign markets.
Procter and Gamble entered Mexican tissue products in 1997 by
purchasing Loreto Y. Pena Pobre's manufacturing and marketing systems.
b. Joint Ventures
Two or more firms join together to create a new business entity that is
legally separate and distinct from its parents. Joint ventures are established
as corporations and owned by the funding partners in the predetermined
proportions. American Motor Corporation entered into ajoint venture with
Beijing Automotive Works called Beijing Jeep to enter Chinese market by
producing jeeps and other vehicles. Joint ventures involve shared
ownership. Joint Ventures are common in international business. Various
environmental factors like social, technological, economic and political
encourage the formation of Joint ventures. Joint ventures provide required
strengths in terms of required capital, latest technology required human
talent etc. and enable the companies to share the risks in the foreign
markets.
Joint ventures involve the local companies. This act improves the local
image in the host country and also satisfies the governmental requirements
regarding joint ventures. In fact, support of the host country's Government
is essential for the success of the joint venture.
Massey-Ferguson entered into a 51% joint venture in Turkey to produce
Tractors. It planned to produce 50,000 engines per year and called the
Government to provide facilities for an additional production of 30,000
tractors a year. Massey-Ferguson failed to understand economic, political
and Governmental factors in the country. The company needed
Government support for its successful operation. The venture is terminated
as the Government of Turkey did not provide he support to the company.
ADVANTAGES
• Joint ventures provide large capital funds. Joint ventures are suitable for
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major projects.
• Joint venture spread the risk between or among, partners.
• Different parties to the joint venture bring different kinds of skills like
technical skills, technology, human skills, expertise, marketing skills or
marketing networks.
• Joint ventures make large projects and turn key projects feasible and
possible.
• Joint ventures provide synergy due to combined efforts of varied parties.
DISADVANTAGES
Joint ventures are also potential for conflicts. They result in disputes
between or among parties due to varied interests. For example, the
interest of a host country's company in developing countries would be
to get the technology from its partner while the interest of a partner of
an advanced county would be to get the marketing expertise from the
host country's company.
The partners delay tile decision-making once the dispute arises. Then
the operations become unresponsive and inefficient.
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After making alliances, the growth phase of the joint venture takes place.
If the interests of the parties vary at this stage, they will lead to collapse of
the joint venture in this phase itself. If the partners work together, this
phase leads to stability of the joint ventures. Even in the stability stage, the
joint venture may collapse. If not, the changed interests of the parties force
them to renegotiate regarding their interests and shares. If the
renegotiation is not successful, the joint venture may collapse. The reasons
for collapse include:
Entry of new competitors
Changes in Business Environment
Changes in partners' strengths
Today's partners may become tomorrow's competitors,
Changes in partners' interests.
PART III
FORMULATING STRATEGY FOR INTERNATIONAL
MANAGEMENT
Strategy of a firm defines its long-term goals and objectives and the
resources required to and the courses of action applied to attain those
goals. It is a unified, integrated and comprehensive plan of an
organization that relates to the strategic advantages of the firm to the
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challenges of the environment. It is designed to ensure that the basic
objectives of the enterprise are achieved through proper execution by
the organization. Strategy of a firm describes its integrative pattern of
decisions revealing the firm’s action plans, resource allocation
priorities and long-term goals.
J. Lorsch defines strategy as, “the stream of decisions taken over time
by top managers which, when understood as a whole, reveal the goals
they are seeking and the means used to reach those goals.”
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Strategic Management is a continuous, iterative, cross-functional
process aimed at keeping an organization as a whole appropriately
matched to its environment. It is concerned with deciding on strategy
and planning how that strategy is put into effect.
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1. Analysis of existing missions and goals
The firm’s global strategy stems out of its corporate strategy as
firm’s initially start as domestic firms and later transform into
international firms. When formulating the global strategy of the firm
it is thus important to analyze its current mission and reformulate it
if it appears redundant.
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To evaluate the firm’s strengths and weaknesses, the following
questions need to be answered: -
- 57 -
What is the rate of innovation in the industry?, etc.
- 58 -
A strategic Business Unit (SBU) may be a division, product line, or
other profit center hat can be planned independently from the other
businesses of the firm. At the SBU level, the strategic issues are less
about the coordination of operating units and more about
developing and sustaining a competitive advantage for the goods
and services that are produced. At the SBU level, the strategy
formulation phase deals with positioning the business against rivals,
anticipating changes in demand and technologies and adjusting the
strategy to accommodate them and influencing the nature of
competition through strategic actions such as vertical integration
and through political actions.
The various SBU level strategies are: -
2. Differentiation Strategy
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It calls for the development of a product or a service that
offers unique attributes that are valued by customers and that
customers perceive to be better that and different from those
offered by the competitors. The value added by the unique
attributed of the product may also allow the firm to charge
premium price for it. Firms succeed in this strategy when they
have access to leading scientific research, have highly skilled
and creative product development team and/or effective sales
team, have established corporate reputation for quality and
innovation, etc.
- 60 -
II. Offensive Strategies: -
These involve: -
Attacking competitors’ strengths
Attacking competitor’s weaknesses
End-run offensives
Pre-emptive strategies, etc.
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unrelated diversification; (3) joint ventures; and (4) vertical
integration.
3. When CP is weak but MGR is rapid, the strategies are: (1)
reformulation of strategy; (2) related acquisition; (3) vertical
integration; and (4) abandonment, as a last resort.
4. When CP is weak and MGR is slow, the strategies are: (1)
reformulation of concentric strategy; (2) merger with a rival firm;
(3) vertical integration; (4) diversification; and (5) harvest or
divest (sell-off divisions or other saleable assets).
These strategic choices however are impacted by the stage of
development of the organization itself. For example, Hofer and
Schendel suggest that a new organization may have an
entrepreneurial strategic mode, whereas a medium-sized firm in a
stable environment may have an adaptive mode. It is likely that a
large firm will have a planning mode with emphasis on detailed
planning as a precursor to strategic management. On the other
hand, all of these modes might be found in the same organization,
depending on where its divisions are in terms of product life cycles.
In addition to considering the stages of development of an
organization, it is important to note that the strategy formulation
process will also be impacted by management style, the size of the
firm, and the existing organization structure.
1. BCG Matrix
In the early 1970’s Boston Consultancy Group developed a
model for managing a portfolio of different business units, the
BCG growth-share matrix displays the various business units
on a graph of the market growth rate (or growth potential) vs.
present market share relative to the competitors. Resources
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are allocated to business units according to where they are
situated on the grid.
- 63 -
2. GE Nine Cell Matrix
Mckinsey and Company developed this matrix in 1970’s. It
measures the SBU’s portfolio in terms of Market
Attractiveness and Business Strength. Market Attractiveness
is a function of annual market growth rate, overall market
size, historical profit margin, current size of the market,
market structure, market rivalry, demand variability, global
opportunities, etc. and business strength depends on current
market share, brand image, brand equity, production
capacity, corporate image, relative profit margin, R & D
performance, personnel, etc.
- 64 -
3. Directional Policy Matrix
This matrix measures the health of the market (industry’s
attractiveness/business sector prospects) and the firm’s
strength (business strength/competitive abilities) to pursue it.
Directional Policy Matrix is another refinement upon the
Boston Matrix. As with the GE Business Screen, the location of
a Strategic Business Unit (SBU) in any cell of the matrix
implies different strategic decisions. Each of the zones is
described as follows: -
Leader - major resources are focused upon the SBU.
Try harder - could be vulnerable over a longer period of
time, but fine for now.
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Double or quit - gamble on potential major SBU's for the
future.
Growth - grow the market by focusing just enough resources
here.
Custodial - just like a cash cow, milk it and do not commit
any more resources.
Cash Generator - Even more like a cash cow, milk here for
expansion elsewhere.
Phased withdrawal - move cash to SBU's with greater
potential.
Divest - liquidate or move these assets on a fast as you can.
7. Strategy Implementation
At this stage, the global company implements the selected strategy.
The factors of strategy implementation include: -
1. Partner Selection
Selection of a sound and competent partner is must for
successful implementation of the global business strategy.
Before selecting a partner the organization needs to analyze it
in terms if its performance, market standing, competencies
and goodwill. Moreover, a strategic fit between the
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organization and its partner is imperative to attain. The
strategist must study before hand the contribution both or all
partners can make to others.
2. Organizational Structure
This deals with the selection of an appropriate organizational
structure for the international division. In case of exporting,
the firm can opt either for opening an Export Department or
an Export Division which can be headed by an Export Manager
reporting to the domestic marketing executive (who in turn
would be reporting to the corporate marketing manager) or by
Division Manager respectively. In case of licensing and/or
franchising, the firm may choose to open up an International
Division or International Quarters (Subsidiaries) headed by
Director of international operations or President, (who is vice
president in parent company) respectively. In cases where
substantial investments have been made by the global firms
and they are performing diverse business activities, global-
functional structure for specific geographies, product lines,
functions or their combination may be adopted.
3. Behavioral Implementation
It is one of the major parts in the global strategy
implementation process. It relates with training the existing
employees in the culture of the foreign company. It also
involves training the expatriates in the culture of the parent
company.
4. Marketing Implementation
The strategists at this stage alter their market mix according
to the host country’s needs. Thus, this involves implementing
the various marketing strategies like product design, pricing,
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distribution, promotion, etc. in order to attain the corporate
goals.
5. Financial Implementation
It involves taking decisions pertaining to acquisition and
allocation of finance taking into account the cost of funds and
financial needs of the enterprise. All long-term and short-term
decisions like capital budgeting, capital structure and working
capital management decisions are taken at this stage.
6. Production Implementation
Decisions regarding the plant location and layout and other
production processes are taken and implemented at this
stage.
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1. Financial Measures- ROI analysis, Budget Analysis, Historical
Comparisons, etc.
2. MNC-Host Country Relations- Comparison of the benefits and
limitations as posed to the host country by the MNC. The
relations can be: -
a. Contributory Relations
When the foreign company contributes directly to the
attainment of the goals without any simultaneous negative
effect.
b. Reinforcing Relations
When the foreign company’s actions reinforce the
attainment of the host nation’s goals but tend to have
some negative effects.
c. Frustrating Relations
When actions of a foreign company challenge the goals of
the nation or impede its immediate functioning in ways to
which the nation cannot respond effectively so that its
government is frustrated.
d. Undermining Relations
When the foreign company has adverse effect on the host
country’s norms, values and philosophy.
Effective strategic management is absolutely necessary for the firm that is to survive in the
competitive arena of international business. The process of strategic management begins with an
on-going practice of the external and the internal environmental scanning. It is necessary to scan
the internal environment in order to understand the firm's unique strengths and weaknesses. It is
- 69 -
also necessary to scan the external environment in order to identify opportunities and threats to
the firm. The environmental scanning process must be a continuing effort because of the
dynamics of change. Most managers agree that the events of the world are changing so fast that
new opportunities and threats appear almost daily, and the opportunities may not be available for
long. It is more difficult to convince some managers that the conditions within the firm also
change and, what may have been a strength last month may now be a weakness. The point is that
the forces of change are as prevalent within the organization as they are outside. Matching
strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is the process by which the firm can identify
alternative strategic actions.
This process also further defines organizational goals. What the goals mean, how they will be
accomplished, and how they are viewed is the function of linearity. The linear line is drawn for
the firm and then projected outside by the members of its dominant coalitions. These coalition
members are the key decision-makers in the company who identify the "relevant" environmental
conditions, provide meaning to them, allocate resources, and articulate their rationalizations for
the stakeholders.
This process is the Traditional Strategic Management Model, the logic of which has
been generally accepted for the past three decades. The model proposes that strategic
management is an ends-ways-means sequence, by which the organization's strategic
management process takes place in the following three stages: -
3. Determine and allocate the resources, or the means for the achievement of the
objectives.
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1. Only recently have some management thinkers begun to question the efficacy of
this traditional model. Citing the experiences of several companies, Hayes
observed that the traditional strategic management process invites managers to
answer the question, "What do we think is going to happen?" when they should be
answering the question, "What do we want to happen?" By addressing the former,
traditional question, managers fail to see the possibility that the firm has the
opportunity to take command of its future.
2. Furthermore, the answers that are normally given by managers to the question of
"what's going to happen," tend to lead the organization to search for structural
changes as a way of achieving goals, when the behavioral aspects-that is, the
things that the firm currently does-may be the real impediments to realizing those
goals. In many firms, goals are set first, and then the coalition members busy
themselves acquiring resources to meet those goals. In these cases, it is often the
financial managers of the firm that are setting strategic boundaries, which tend to
tell their managerial colleagues what they can and cannot do. In this manner,
strategic management becomes an exercise in "living within the budget."
EMERGING SM MODEL
Because of the many problems with the traditional model for strategic management, it
might be worthwhile to conceptualize the model by placing qualitative and quantitative
resources as the starting point of strategy making. The Emerging Strategic Management
Model reflects another three-stage process: -
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1. Determine the resources, or the means that are reasonably available to the
organization;
2. Determine the strategies or ways that these resources might be maximized; and
The emerging model for strategic management offers the following advantages: -
3. It does not require the manager to scurry around trying to find needed resources
after the goals are established and publicized.
4. It does not keep the company with its means but allows the stretching of those
resources.
The 10-P framework for globalization symbolizes the aspirations and needs of employees
and organizations in the new competitive settings. It comes a long way from the initial
impetus provided to the subject by Michael Porter in his book Competitive Strategy
(1980), and goes beyond his purely industrial organization perspective. The framework
operationalizes the 4-Diamonds for a nation's competitive advantage of Porter. The 10-P
framework integrates theory of strategic management and practice of business policy and
provides a structure for the practicing manager to evaluate competitiveness at regular
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intervals.
The 10-P framework explores a fine `fit' between the soft and hard strategic choices. It
seeks a self-motivated network of stakeholders who are able to self-actualize a high sense
of satisfaction, self-worth, liberty and freedom in business organizational settings.
True to the vision of a world-class organization, the central fulcrum in the framework is a
PEOPLE-ORIENTATION-both inside and outside the corporation. This approach
presents a humane perspective to issues at hand and differentiates between a `satisfying'
approach and an `excellent' approach. It realizes and reflects that modern economies and
corporations thrive mainly on innovation in all respects of value-augmentation-creative
thinking at the design stage, ensuring production at highest efficiency and minimum
costs, and satisfying the customer in a most effective manner.
The rest of the 9-Ps are levered in a highly interactive mode with People and amongst
themselves. A change in any of the Ps affects performance of the other levers and
therefore the final outcome for the organization. The 9-Ps are: Purpose, Perspective,
Positioning, Plans (and policies), Partnerships, Products, Productivity, Politics, and
Performance (and profits). The 10-P framework is appropriate for auditing strategic
competitiveness, a monitoring emerging opportunities and threats, devising a value-based
action-plan and executing it in the context of globalizing organizations.
PEOPLE
Organization is people: An organization is created by the people, it exists for the people,
and continuously draws sanction from the people. From this humane perspective, the
primary objective of an organization can only be to add value to the society by serving it
with value augmented products. The people-focus implies that the primary purpose of an
organization can never be to provide employment at the expense of customers or society
in general-a drill routinely exercised in Third World countries, and especially in India by
many public sector and government organizations during the height of regulated
economic regimentation. Similarly, retrenchment of people (hire and fire) cannot be
accepted as a no-holds-barred practice for maximizing organizational profits!
Retrenchment is a myopic and non-creative response to the problem of cutting costs and
improving productivity. The corporate manager in the new paradigm has the unenviable
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role of maximizing `people orientation' as well as `task orientation'. In these emerging
work values, each employee is empowered to take decisions under certain norms. For
instance, under Just-in-Time culture, an ordinary shop-floor worker is empowered to stop
the whole machine assembly line if he finds that the product quality has gone out of
control.
PURPOSE
Organizational purpose as used in strategy-making sense is interchangeable with
mission, vision, core competence, strategic intent, and basic values. It is important not
merely to produce and sell products, but to produce and sell quality products, without
fail. Not only from the production side, but also from the distribution side, we must
constantly review whether our customers are satisfied with our products and whether
customers are satisfied with our service. We must be perfect in satisfying.
Organizational purpose must be explicitly stated. An organization must enjoy social
sanction by serving socially useful purpose. Purposeless organizations are liable to drift
and become marginal in the course of time. A sense of purpose is important for other
organizational reasons, including facilitating interpersonal processes and formalization
of relationships (the other characteristic of an organization). Globalization connotes
dynamic human will for achieving larger social and human purposes.
PERSPECTIVE
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rotation, and cross-functional teams.
POSITIONING
PARTNERSHIPS
The partnership approach suggests a sense of belief and trust in other person's capabilities
and skills. It opens the doors for people to look beyond the usual routined responses, and
create an environment where people voluntarily come up with innovative solutions for
seemingly intractable problems. Partnership is a ‘perspective’ as well as a ‘position’.
Partnership has softer (intangible) and harder (tangible) dimensions. Going beyond the
softer side of partnership-approach, development of long-term partners for weak
competitors is essential for deriving sustainable advantages. Suppliers, bankers and other
investors, employees, government, technology collaborators, transporters, and
distributors do have a stake in the firm's well-being (and vice versa) and therefore have to
be treated as key resources. In this approach, the perspective is that there can be no
profits at the expense of any resource.
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PRODUCTIVITY
PRODUCT
A product is a package of information which the customer interprets in his mind while
going through the process of consumption. Therefore, the concept of any product must
start with the customer in mind, and end with his total satisfaction. In this definition all
products are ultimately services converted into information. Beyond quality, products
must offer customers a satisfaction to a level where they become the best salesmen for
the company forever.
The thrust of the 10-P framework is to integrate people's personal growth and
development with organizational objectives through excellent all-round quality. The
premise is that the tasks are executed with finesse by satisfied and motivated people. To
ensure that people remain aligned with the common sense of purpose and do not drift, the
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organization must have a clear, documented statement of objectives and broad plans. A
firm's `plan' must contain a clear mission statement on the way it proposes to serve the
customer.
When a firm sustains profits that exceed the average for its industry,
the firm is said to possess a competitive advantage over its rivals. A
competitive advantage is an advantage over competitors gained by
offering consumers greater value, either by means of lower prices or
by providing greater benefits and service that justifies higher prices.
Competitive advantages are capabilities that are difficult to replicate or
imitate and are non-tradable.
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ATTAINING COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE
1. Economies of Scale
2. Latest technology
3. Human resources (Skilled, trained, creative, positive attitude,
high EQ and IQ, competitive, etc.)
4. Continuous learning philosophy and knowledge management.
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5. Automation and modernization of business processes like
implementation of ERP, CAD-CAM manufacturing, E-commerce,
BPR, etc.
6. Product and process innovation and development.
7. Diverse workforce.
8. Low cost
9. Development in the external environment favoring the firm’s
business
10. Acquisition of market power.
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PORTER’S CONTRIBUTION
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The model of the Five Competitive Forces was developed by Michael E.
Porter 1980. Since that time it has become an important tool for
analyzing an organizations industry structure in strategic processes.
Porter has identified five competitive forces that shape every industry
and every market. These forces determine the intensity of competition
and hence the profitability and attractiveness of an industry. The
objective of corporate strategy should be to modify these competitive
forces in a way that improves the position of the organization. Porter’s
model supports analysis of the driving forces in an industry. Based on
the information derived from the Five Forces Analysis, management
can decide how to influence or to exploit particular characteristics of
their industry.
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Bargaining Power of Suppliers
The term 'suppliers' comprises all sources for inputs that are
needed in order to provide goods or services. Supplier bargaining
power is likely to be high when:
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- There is the possibility of the supplier integrating forwards in
order to obtain higher prices and margins. This threat is
especially high when
- The buying industry has a higher profitability than the
supplying industry,
- Forward integration provides economies of scale for the
supplier,
- The buying industry hinders the supplying industry in their
development (e.g. reluctance to accept new releases of
products),
- The buying industry has low barriers to entry.
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- Customers could produce the product themselves,
- The product is not strategically important for the customer,
- The customer knows about the production costs of the
product
- There is the possibility for the customer integrating
backwards.
Threat of New Entrants
1. Threat of Substitutes
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existing players. This category also relates to complementary
products.
After the analysis of current and potential future state of the five
competitive forces, managers can search for options to influence these
forces in their organization’s interest. Although industry-specific
business models will limit options, the own strategy can change the
impact of competitive forces on the organization. The objective is to
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reduce the power of competitive forces. The following table provides
some examples: -
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2. GENERIC COMPETITIVE STRATEGIES
Inbound Logistics
Here goods are received from a company's suppliers. They are stored until they
are needed on the production/assembly line. Goods are moved around the
organization.
Operations
This is where goods are manufactured or assembled. Operations is the process of
transforming inputs into finished products and services.
Outbound Logistics
The goods are now finished, and they need to be sent along the supply chain to
wholesalers, retailers or the final consumer.
Marketing and Sales
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In true customer orientated fashion, at this stage the organization prepares the
offering to meet the needs of targeted customers. This area focuses strongly upon
marketing communications and the promotions mix.
Service
This includes all areas of service such as installation, after-sales service,
complaints handling, training and so on.
Support Activities
Procurement
This function is responsible for all purchasing of goods, services and materials.
The aim is to secure the lowest possible price for purchases of the highest possible
quality. They will be responsible for outsourcing (components or operations that
would normally be done in-house are done by other organizations), and e-
Purchasing (using IT and web-based technologies to achieve procurement aims).
Technology Development
Technology is an important source of competitive advantage. Companies need to
innovate to reduce costs and to protect and sustain competitive advantage. This
could include production technology, Internet marketing activities, lean
manufacturing, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and many other
technological developments.
Human Resource Management (HRM)
Employees are an expensive and vital resource. An organization would manage
recruitment and s election, training and development, and rewards and
remuneration. The mission and objectives of the organization would be driving
force behind the HRM strategy.
Firm Infrastructure
This activity includes and is driven by corporate or strategic planning. It includes
the Management Information System (MIS), and other mechanisms for planning
and control such as the accounting department.
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4. COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE OF NATIONS/DYNAMIC
DIAMOND OF NATIONAL CA
Michael Porter introduced a model that allows analyzing why some nations are
more competitive than others are, and why some industries within nations are
more competitive than others are, in his book The Competitive Advantage of
Nations. This model of determining factors of national advantage has become
known as Porters Diamond. It suggests that the national home base of an
organization plays an important role in shaping the extent to which it is likely to
achieve advantage on a global scale. This home base provides basic factors, which
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support or hinder organizations from building advantages in global competition.
Porter distinguishes four determinants:
FACTOR CONDITIONS
The situation in a country regarding production factors, like skilled labor,
infrastructure, etc., which are relevant for competition in particular industries.
These factors can be grouped into human resources (qualification level, cost of
labor, commitment etc.), material resources (natural resources, vegetation, space
etc.), knowledge resources, capital resources, and infrastructure. They also
include factors like quality of research on universities, deregulation of labor
markets, or liquidity of national stock markets.
These national factors often provide initial advantages, which are subsequently
built upon. Each country has its own particular set of factor conditions; hence, in
each country will develop those industries for which the particular set of factor
conditions is optimal. This explains the existence of so-called low-cost-countries
(low costs of labor), agricultural countries (large countries with fertile soil), or the
start-up culture in the United States (well developed venture capital market).
Porter points out that these factors are not necessarily nature-made or inherited.
They may develop and change. Political initiatives, technological progress or
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socio-cultural changes, for instance, may shape national factor conditions. A good
example is the discussion on the ethics of genetic engineering and cloning that
will influence knowledge capital in this field in North America and Europe.
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FIRM STRATEGY, STRUCTURE, AND RIVALRY
The conditions in a country that determine how companies are established, are
organized and are managed, and that determine the characteristics of domestic
competition
Here, cultural aspects play an important role. In different nations, factors like
management structures, working morale, or interactions between companies are
shaped differently. This will provide advantages and disadvantages for particular
industries.
Typical corporate objectives in relation to patterns of commitment among
workforce are of special importance. They are heavily influenced by structures of
ownership and control. Family-business based industries that are dominated by
owner-managers will behave differently than publicly quoted companies.
Porter argues that domestic rivalry and the search for competitive advantage
within a nation can help provide organizations with bases for achieving such
advantage on a more global scale.
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SUSTAINING INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIVE
ADVANTAGE
Competitive advantage occurs when a firm is using a strategy that is currently not being
currently implemented by any of its present and potential competitors. Sustainable CA
continues to exist after the efforts by competitors to copy tat advantage continues to exist
after the efforts by competitors to copy that CA have ceased. That means, the inability of
competitors to copy the strategy makes for a sustainable competitive advantage. It is
difficult to sustain a significant CA over a time without periodically revisiting the firm’s
identity and purpose. For instance, reducing costs is not a true strategy because it simply
provides a breathing space for the organization to formulate an appropriate strategy. The
length of time over which a firm can maintain its CA is dependent on: -
1. Replicability: how easy it is for the competitors to duplicate it.
2. Transferability: how easy it is for the competitors to acquire the same resources
and capabilities.
3. Transparency: to what degree can the competition tell what a firm is doing
strategically.
4. Durability: how long can the firm keep its CA.
The most important resources of a firm are those that are durable, difficult to identify
and understand, not easily duplicated, and in areas over which the firm has clear
control.
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difficult for others to see the linkage between the resource and the benefit; and (c)
makes the resource socially complex due to corporate culture.
Coyne suggests that the durability of CA depends on some “capability gaps” that
exist between firms. These gaps are: -
1. Business System Gaps- often found in organizational structure and its people.
2. Position Gaps- resulting from past decisions, from being a fast mover, or from the
acquisition of a precious resource.
3. Regulatory Gaps- resulting from some governmental limitation on the extent of
competition allowed in the industry.
4. Organizational or Managerial Gaps- when superior leadership results in the
recognition of trends and adaptation to change earlier than the competition.
1. Creates flexibility and adaptability so that firm’s products change with the
customers
• Create consumer dependence on your bundle of products
• Build on the strength of the existing bundle
• Product development and/or horizontal integration
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o Environment-induced change—e.g. demographic changes or
random events
o Evolutionary vs spontaneous erosion of competitive advantage
5. Work at protecting, expanding, and building upon the unique assets and
strengths of the company
• This requires using the environmental monitors to look for opportunities to
expand the company’s expertise or bring new expertise into the company
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also be due to high switching costs that customers would incur if they changed
products or services: in that case the customer is locked-in. An example of uniqueness
or superior value is provided by Schlumberger, which commands nearly 70 per cent
of the world market for logging, a highly specialized service of control for oil explo-
ration. Coca Cola or Louis Vuitton are among the most characteristic examples of
sustainable competitive advantages coming from a strong brand. A high switching
costs example is given by Microsoft, whose operating system is so dominant that a
customer wishing to shift to a competitive system like Linux or Apple would have
tremendous application software adaptation costs.
POSITIVE FEEDBACKS are advantages that follow the logic of 'success brings
success' and produce increasing returns. There are two kinds of positive feedback:
`network externalises' and `experience effects'. Network externalises exist when the
customer base of a product or service is such that it induces other products or services
providers to adopt it in their own value proposition. In turn, the fact that other
products or services use the original product increases the value for new customers to
buy the original product or service. This virtuous circle creates a positive loop that
reinforces the company's competitive position. The classic example of network
externalities has been provided by the battle of standards between VHS and Betamax.
Because JVC, the inventor of VHS, opened its licence to many consumer electronic
manufacturers, it made VF IS more readily available. This, in turn, induced video
producers and distributors to put more movies on the VHS standard, inducing more
consumers to buy %'HS machines, given the large number of VHS movies available.
Microsoft DOS and Windows or Microsoft Office followed the same path: more
software available with Windows or more users of Microsoft Office attracts more
customers to buy Windows personal computers and to become users of Microsoft
Office which in turn induces more Windows-based software, thereby attracting more
customers. Betamax cassettes disappeared, Macintosh computers were pushed into a
small market niche and Lotus 123 or WordPerfect nearly collapsed. In the end,
network externalities create a situation in which the `winner takes it all', meaning that
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the company which has developed a competitive advantage based on network
externalities has reached a quasi-monopolistic situation.
MEANING
1. An alliance can be defined as the sharing of capabilities between two or more firms with the
view of enhancing their competitive advantages and/or creating new business without losing
their respective strategic autonomy. What makes an alliance 'strategic' is that the sharing of
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capabilities, such as R&D, manufacturing or marketing affects the long-term competitiveness
of the firms involved and implies a relatively long-term commitment of resources by partners.
3. A strategic alliance is when two or more businesses join together for a set period of
time. The businesses, usually, are not in direct competition, but have similar products
or services that are directed toward the same target audience.
CONCEPT
According to economists, a joint effort involving the contribution of separate firms can be
organized either through a market contract, such as a buyer-supplier contract, or through the
merger of capabilities under a single management control, as in the case of a merger, an
acquisition or an internal development. An alliance is somewhere in between when either full
control is not feasible, for legal or practical reasons, or when a contract is difficult to draw up
because of the uncertainties involved and none of the parties involved has the ability to develop
the needed capability internally. As a consequence, a strategic alliance has been sometimes
defined as `a governance structure involving an incomplete contract between separate firms and
in which each partner has limited control'.' An alliance is an incomplete contract to the extent that
'it cannot specify fully what each party should do under every conceivable condition' and,
therefore, requires that both parties engage in some form of trusting open-ended relationship in
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which decision-making is shared in order to allocate resources and distribute the outcome of the
joint activity according to the prevailing business conditions.
International business and the pressure for globalization often make alliances necessary. One can
distinguish four various types of alliances depending upon the scope (global or local) and the
object (market access or capabilities enhancing). A-local alliance would be one in which either
the object is for a foreign company to penetrate a local market (alliance for market entry) or to
have access to a set of resources available in a particular country (resource-based country
alliance). A global alliance would be one in which the object would be either to develop a global
market presence (Slohal reach alliance) or to enhance the worldwide competitive capabilities of
the firms (global leverage alliance).
Local alliances under the form of joint venture companies have been traditional vehicles for
market entry since 1945 in countries that aimed at bringing value adding productive activities to
their economy, protecting their natural resources and also promoting the strategic development of
national firms. Japan in the 1950s, Korea, China, Indonesia, India in the 1960s are among the
countries that have systematically encouraged the formation of international joint ventures
between foreign investors and local firms. Although in these countries the legal requirement for
joint venture has been somewhat relaxed, a joint venture mindset subsists. The logic of these joint
ventures is simple: it consists in an exchange of market or resources for technology. Foreign
investors are invited to bring their products, processes and management technologies alongside
their capital in exchange for an entry in the domestic market or an access to key natural resources.
The value created by those local alliances is straightforward: the value for the foreign partner is
an increase in market penetration, a set of profits coming from various sources - dividends,
transfer prices, management fees. The value for the local partner is an increase in know-how, a
flow of dividends and other indirect cash flow such as rental fees, local procurement, etc.
By contrast, global alliances are much more complex and subtle in their strategic and economic
scope. Doz and Hamel (1998) distinguish three broad types of strategic alliances:
(a) Coalitions (what Doz and Hamel call 'co-option') are alliances of competitors, distributors
and suppliers in a same industry putting together their capabilities with the view of spanning
world markets ('the search for global reach') or to Global strategic alliances establish a
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common standard. Airlines alliances such as STAR represent a good example of such a
coalition.
(b) Co-specializations are alliances of firms that join their respective unique but complementary
capabilities to create a business or develop new products or technology. What characterizes
this type of alliance is that each partner contributes to a unique asset, resource or
competencies. Combined together, the capabilities of partners create the needed capabilities
for business development. Airbus and GE-SNECMA in the aerospace industry are examples
of such alliances.
(c) The primary purpose of learning alliances is to serve as a vehicle for know-how
transfer between partners. A classical example is the alliance formed between Toyota
and General Motors, called the NUMMI project, where the fundamental purpose for
GM was to learn `lean' manufacturing processes and for Toyota to learn how to
operate in a highly unionized North American environment.
Strategic alliances differ from country-based joint ventures in five main aspects: -
First, they differ not only in their geographical scope - local versus global - but also in the
complexity of their strategic objectives. While in the case of country based joint ventures the
objectives are straightforward; this is less obvious in the case of strategic alliances. Very often
market objectives are combined with technological learning or strategic options. Hidden agenda
are more present in strategic alliances than in joint ventures.
Country-based joint ventures are based on a simple complementary scheme -market access
against technology transfer - while strategic alliances have a more complicated strategic
architecture. Often there is a mixture of complementary capabilities, consolidation of certain
activities as well as technology transfer from both sides.
The valuation of strategic alliances is more difficult than for joint ventures since they
frequently involve contributions in intangible assets and know-how, and in most situations they
take place in new and volatile products or processes. In joint ventures the value is created by the
venture and distributed to the partner under the form of dividends or transfer pricing. In a
strategic alliance value is created not only in the alliance but also outside the alliance through
the applied learning that partners can utilize in other products of their own. Finally, partners
in strategic alliances are frequently also competitors; this is less often the case in country-based
joint ventures.
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STAGES OF ALLIANCE FORMATION
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The effectiveness of an alliance depends on the degree to which it complements each
partner’s core competency. Bleeke and Ernst studied cross border alliances involving 49
organizations and summarized their findings as follows: -
1. Alliances are more effective in related businesses and while entering a new
geographical market.
2. Alliances with strong and weak partners seldom work.
3. Alliances, to be effective, require on-site management and control.
4. Alliances with a 50/50 equity split have a better chance to be effective, but the
split itself is not a predictor of success.
5. More than 75 percent of the alliances that did not last ended up in acquisition by
one of the alliance partners.
Lorange and Roos contend that, for an alliance to succeed, there must be a strattegic
match between the partners in terms of: -
1. The goals that each partner wishes to accomplish
2. Core competencies and the way they complement each other
3. The existing portfolios of each partner and the place of the alliance in these
portfolios
4. Closeness of the core competencies and the safeguards necessary to safeguard
them.
5. The capacity of the alliance to increase each partner’s strengths
6. The degree of cultural similarity between the partners.
As summarized by Treece and Miller in Business Week, the following is the criteria for
alliance effectiveness: -
1. The involvement of top management is needed to ensure that the strategic
importance of an alliance is not lost because of small hitches at the individual
level
2. Mutual trust is created and abetted through frequent meetings, both formal and
informal
3. Use a third party to meditate impasses in negotiation
4. Safeguard the proprietary knowledge of each partner
5. Do not try to hurry the process of forming the alliance
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6. Select alliance project managers with sensitivity to each other’s culture.
ADVANTAGES/NEED/RATIONALE/ROLE OF SA
The following are key points in structuring and subsequently managing strategic
alliances.
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Choose a partner
• interpersonal contact
• networking
• workshops to build interpersonal skills
• learning from partners so that the relationship carries benefits into the future and
through not regarding the alliance as a one-off exercise.
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PART IV
ORGANIZING AND CONTROLLING FOR
INTERNATIONAL COMPETITIVENESS: INTERNATIONAL
HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT-CONCEPT AND DIMENSIONS,
HUMAN RESOURCE ISSUES IN DEVELOPING AND MAINTAINING AN
EFFECTIVE WORK FORCE, LEADERSHIP ISSUES; MOTIVATION; BASIC
MODELS FOR ORGANIZATION DESIGN IN CONTEXT OF GLOBAL
DIMENSIONS; FUTURE OF INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT IN THE EAST
>>>MANAB THAKUR,
ORGANIZATION DESIGN
The introduction to this chapter noted that Hill's (2005) text gives little attention
to basic organization design. If you have not previously studied organization
structure, this section is intended to make the textbook chapter easier to
understand than it might otherwise be.
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These three elements of structure pertain to both the vertical and horizontal
aspects or organizing. The first two elements are the structural framework , which
is the vertical hierarchy drawn on the organization chart. The third element
concerns the pattern of interactions, which provide horizontal information and
coordination where and when it is needed.
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range of centralization from high to low and there is a range of functions, some of
which may be subject to centralized control, while others are decentralized.
Typically, functions such as research and development (R&D) and finance are
controlled centrally just as, typically, marketing is decentralized.
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• leads to autonomy for subordinate managers, which may actually
enhance control by top management by allowing them to concentrate on
important issues.
Bata Ltd began in Czechoslovakia before World War II. In 1939, Bata took 100
Czech families and migrated to Canada , the current head office of this MNE.
Here are some statistics relating to Bata Ltd:
Where possible, Bata owns 100% of the operation. In some countries, this level of
ownership is not possible: for example, in India it is 60% and in Japan 10%. In
some cases, Bata provides licensing, consulting, and technical assistance to
companies in which it has no equity.
Multi-domestic This strategy is one which pursues local responsiveness and this, in
: structural terms, is decentralized with its overseas subsidiaries being
functionally self-contained. Bata Ltd is run by Tom Bata (son of the
founder) as a decentralized operation that is free to adjust to the local
environment. As well, the company tries to service each local market
solely through shoes it produces in that market.
To the extent that Bata is successful in doing that, and if we ignore
those cases where Bata has incomplete control, we can say that Bata
matches its multi-domestic strategy with a decentralized structure.
International : Under this strategy a firm recognises the value in transferring its core
competencies from head office operations to its overseas subsidiaries
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(it is implicit in multi-domestic strategy that overseas subsidiaries are
left to develop these core competencies for themselves). Thus, the
structural match for this type of strategy is to centralize core
competencies and decentralize functional areas. Those decentralized
functional areas are largely self-contained so, structurally, an
international strategy requires more centralization than a multi-
domestic strategy, but it is not as strongly centralized as, say, global
strategy (see below).
Core competencies are most frequently found in R&D and marketing
(for example, Coca-Cola's centralized control over its key recipe
ingredients and its worldwide marketing themes). In the case of Bata
Ltd, Tom Bata travels extensively to check on quality control and, as
noted above, Bata provides licensing, consulting and technical
assistance in locations where it has no equity. This can be interpreted
as centralization of key competencies so, by this criterion, Bata could
be represented as using an international strategy.
Global: Where a global strategy is used, major decision making is centralized
and so are core competencies. Ultimate control over operations is
vested with head office but, generally speaking, functional control is
decentralized. On the evidence available, Bata does not retain ultimate
control over decision making so we must infer that Bata does not
employ a global strategy.
Transnational: Companies employing a transnational strategy are trying to optimise a
combination of scale economies and local responsiveness. This
creates competing requirements for centralization vis-à-vis
decentralization. The need to transfer core competencies, particularly
production and R&D, calls for centralization of operating decisions.
The need to be locally responsive calls for decentralization of
operating divisions, particularly in marketing. The end result is a
mixture of centralization and decentralization. On the criteria
discussed above, it is clear that Bata Ltd is not pursuing a
transnational strategy.
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ORGANIZATIONAL DESIGN OPTIONS
At the moment of conception, we consist of two cells - one from each of our
parents. The fused cells then proceed to multiply until eventually there are billions
of cells. Along the way, the cells differentiate: some become nerve cells, others
become muscle cells and organs such as the heart, liver, lungs, skin and so on
evolve. When an organization is conceived, it goes through a similar process and
the organs of our body are analogous to the various departments we find in
organizations.
The type of departments depend on the purpose of the organization, so let's look
at some of the possibilities for creating various departments. We can organise
departments or divisions on the basis of function, product, customer or geography
, as illustrated in the diagram below.
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Basis for an organization structure
A hybrid organization
We can also create hybrid organizations, incorporating two or more of the above
options. A common hybrid employs both the functional and the product options.
Matrix structure
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A matrix structure
A major feature of the matrix, which has both advantages and disadvantages, is
the dual authority system which requires some managers to be accountable to two
bosses at the same time. In Figure 8.3, for example, Manager A is responsible to
the Marketing Manager as well as to the Manager for Product A. In Ciba-Geigy,
the Swiss chemical and pharmaceutical MNE, Product A might be a new drug.
Ciba-Geigy, incidentally, has a matrix of three dimensions - product, function and
geography - so Manager A might be a marketing manager in Europe or Australia .
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INTERNATIONAL STRUCTURE OPTIONS
In stage one, the domestic stage, the firm is domestically oriented but may want to
consider some initial foreign involvement to expand production volume. The
structure is domestic, typically functional or divisional and foreign sales are
handled through an export department.
In stage two, the international stage, the firm becomes multi-domestic and
foreign subsidiaries may be established. An international division has replaced the
export department of stage one.
1. If the firm has a domestic structure based on function and has a low degree
of diversification (that is, relatively few products), it will probably adopt a
worldwide area structure as illustrated in Figure below: -
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A worldwide area structure
In stage four, the transnational stage, the firm is trying to realise location and
experience curve economies, as well as concentrating on local responsiveness and
the diverse transfers of core competencies (global learning from page 430 of your
textbook). These often conflicting demands suggest a global matrix structure as
illustrated in the figure: -.
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COORDINATING AND INTEGRATING MECHANISMS
In management literature you will find a number of words that are used with
considerable licence. These words are system, process, coordination, integration,
and control. Before defining these words in the context of this chapter, here is an
assertion which is fairly consistent with what you will find in management
literature: the basic management systems are the communication system, the
system for coordination and integration, and the control system. Here are the
definitions.
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4. Differentiation in the organisation context is also known as division of labour
: that is, breaking the entity into its constituent parts so that people can
specialise in some function such as manufacturing, marketing and so on.
Integration is the converse of differentiation. It is the process of bringing all
the parts together so that they function as a unit.
5. Control is the process through which managers ensure that actual activities
conform to planned activities.
INTERNATIONAL HRM
IHRM policies and practices relate to the management of employees who may be
working away from their home country for a specific period of time on
assignment in another country which is known as the host country. The home
country is often referred to as the parent country. Employees on overseas
assignment are called expatriates, which is often colloquially shortened to expats.
Expatriates may be either parent country nationals (PCNs) or third country
nationals (TCNs). PCNs are those whom most people would identify as being
expatriates. They are the employees from the parent (home) country who are sent
overseas because of their managerial knowledge or specialist skills.
With the help of the following figure, an example may help clarify the above
terms. An Australian MNE [Firm X] that has subsidiaries in Singapore [Country
C - Firm X 1] and India [shown in the figure as 'any other country'] may send
Australian employees (PCNs) to Singapore and transfer employees in the Indian
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subsidiary to the operations in Singapore (TCN). When the Australian MNE
employs Singaporean citizens in the subsidiary in Singapore , then these
employees are known as host country nationals (HCNs).
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Perhaps another definition will help. Hill defines inpatriates as being 'expatriates
who are citizens of a foreign country working in the home country of their
multinational employer'.
STAFFING
Staffing deals specifically with the acquisition, training and allocation of the
organization’s human resources. In both the domestic and the international context,
the staffing process can be seen as a series of steps that are performed on a continuing
basis to keep the organization supplied with the right people in the right positions at
the right time. The steps in this process are:
In an international business, the way in which these steps are administered depends
very much on the firm's strategy and the staffing policy chosen to support that
strategy. There are four choices in policy: the ethnocentric approach, the polycentric
approach, the geocentric approach and the regiocentric approach. What follows is a
shorthand description based on Dowling and Welch (2004) of the four using the same
criteria for each approach. You should use these descriptions as the 'skeleton' of your
understanding of the four approaches and use the reading from Hill (2005) to provide
the 'flesh'.
Ethnocentric approach
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Definition: Ethnocentricity (ethnocentrism) is a belief in the superiority
of one's own ethnic group. The firm basically believes that
parent-country nationals are better qualified and more
trustworthy than host country nationals.
Rationale and advantages: Experience curve effects derive from standardisation of
production. The firm produces in the home country initially
and transfers its core competency to the host country under
the guidance of expatriate managers. These managers have
the knowledge to create value through core competencies.
They also contribute to the maintenance of the corporate
culture.
Problems and disadvantages: Denies advancement to host country nationals. This may
breed resentment and diminish the firm's public image.
Expatriate managers are expensive to maintain: they may
become insular in their attitudes and be prone to cultural
myopia. The latter may result in management overlooking
market niche opportunities.
Polycentric approach
Definition: Polycentricity (polycentrism) is a belief that local people
know the local environment better than outsiders.
Rationale and advantages: Gives hope for profit maximisation through flexibility
because local managers can react quickly to market needs in
the areas of pricing, production, product life cycle, and
political activity. Absence of problems associated with
expatriate managers including cultural myopia. Provides
continuity in the management of foreign subsidiaries.
Problems and disadvantages: No synergy because there is little communication between
national units. Limits experience of host nationals to their
own country. Corporate headquarters may become isolated
from national units and lead to lack of integration. This in
turn may lead to corporate inertia.
Geocentric approach
Definition: Geocentricity (geocentrism) is the notion that the best
people should be employed, regardless of their nationality.
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Rationale and advantages: Enables the firm to make best use of its human resources
and builds a cadre of executives who feel comfortable
working in any culture.
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The following are the various advantages and disadvantages of using expatriates
(PCNs and TCNs) and locals (HCNs) when considering which category of staff to
employ for international operations: -
Expatriate managers
No matter which staffing policy a firm has adopted, it usually has some parent-country
nationals (PCNs) who serve in foreign positions, generally at managerial level. The
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individual success of these expatriate managers is usually very important to the success
of the company. To understand the importance of expatriate managers, consider the
possible indirect costs of their failure to do a good job):
There has been considerable research into the selection and training of expatriate
managers to avoid the consequences listed above.
Dowling and Welch (2004) suggest that because of the high costs associated with
expatriate failure, which occurs when an expatriate returns early from an overseas
assignment or is ineffective in the overseas posting, developing selection criteria that
predict success is vital. Selecting potential expatriates is a more complex process than
selecting domestic employees because, in addition to predicting successful job
performance, the HR manager is also attempting to predict the expatriate's ability to
adjust to a different cultural environment. An important point made by Dowling and
Welch (2004) is that a person's ability to perform job tasks (technical ability) in the
domestic business does not necessarily translate into that person performing well abroad
because of the need for the expatriate to adapt to a different cultural environment. That is,
domestic ability is not necessarily a valid predictor of international success.
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SELECTION AND TRAINING OF EXPATRIATE MANAGERS
In previous sections there has been repeated emphasis on the need for managers
of international businesses to be aware of cultural factors in the work environment
and how they may differ both across and within countries. In other words, we
have been referring to the need for managers to have cross-cultural literacy. In
this section we look at the selection and training of managers and the supporting
facilities an organization must provide when managers have taken up their
positions in the host culture.
For now it is suffice to say that not everyone is fitted for the task of management in a
culture different from one's own. Several factors need to be considered in selecting an
expatriate manager. First, a manager must be psychologically suited to the job. In
practical terms, this means such a person should:
Second, the manager should have few prejudices and be non-discriminatory in terms
of race, gender or ethnic background. Third, the manager must have the skills to do
the job and a broad general knowledge of the area related to the assignment. Specific
skills required include job knowledge, communication skills and a working
knowledge of the language of the host country.
Having selected the manager for the job, he or she must be trained. However, it is not
sufficient to provide training only for the manager: the whole family must be trained.
The training of a spouse/partner may be more important than training the manager
because everyday activities involving school, shopping, interaction with neighbours,
dealing with telephone and postal services, and selecting and managing domestic help
are usually the responsibility of the spouse/partner.
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TRAINING AND MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT
Having selected the manager for the job, he or she must be trained. However, it is
not sufficient to provide training only for the manager: the whole family must be
trained. The training of a spouse/partner may be more important than training the
manager because everyday activities involving school, shopping, interaction with
neighbors, dealing with telephone and postal services, and selecting and managing
domestic help are usually the responsibility of the partner.
Training should include at least two phases. Pre-departure training should focus
on language, history and culture for the whole family and on job-specific training
for the manager. On arrival in the new country two or three weeks without too
much job-related activity should be allowed for adaptation to the new culture.
Transition training should continue with language and culture training as well as
meetings at which the new expatriates have the chance to mix with local residents
and other foreign nationals.
Caring for expatriate managers does not cease at this point. The home office must
remain alert to the need to provide psychological support in a variety of ways and
to convince expatriates that they are not being disadvantaged for promotion by
service in a foreign country. In this context the expatriate should get out of the
host culture on a regular basis once or twice a year. The ability to 'touch base'
with the home culture gives reassurance to expatriates that they are valued
servants of the organization. It also helps in avoiding 'culture shock' when they
finally return to the home country. People need to be prepared for re-entry to the
home culture and the organization needs to provide the support facilities for this
event.
We should be clear that training and development are two different but related
issues. Training is concerned primarily with the acquisition of skills (for example,
learning a language), but may also refer to the acquisition of awareness (for
example, cultural training). Development is the term used to describe a process in
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which the person is changed: that is, 'developed' through the acquisition of
knowledge via some form of education program which may include some
'training'. The distinction between training and development may be made clearer
by discussing the forms they take. Thus training may be:
• Cultural training, in which the trainee learns about the host country's culture,
history, politics, economy, religion and social and business practices
• Language training, in which the trainee learns a language other than his or her
native tongue
• Specific skills training, in which the trainee learns communication skills,
negotiation skills, and other skills needed by a practising manager. In this latter
category we might find training in performance appraisal, total quality
management, and training (as in 'train the trainer').
Management development might also be called 'general education' where the manager
goes to school to learn how to be a manager. Management development subsumes a
range of activities including:
• skills training
• in-house programs on a wide range of company-related topics
• external seminars and conferences on a wide range of topics relevant to company
activities
• university courses
• job rotation and/or transfers within the company, including overseas postings
• exchange visits with other companies, usually within the same corporation
• networking with other managers within the company, with government officials
and with manages of suppliers, customers and so on.
PERFORMANCE APPRAISAL
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appraisal has problems not usually encountered in the domestic company. These
problems fall generally into the category of bias. Let's see how bias arises because
of the expatriate manager's location.
Expatriate managers are assessed by their superiors in both the host country and
the home country. From these different perspectives:
• Host country assessors may be biased by their cultural frame of reference and set
of expectations.
• Home country assessors may be biased by their distance from the host country
and by their own lack of experience in the host country. Their cultural frame of
reference may be the same as that of the person being assessed, but their
expectations of that person may or may not be realistic. Home country assessors
rely on facts and figures in making their assessment: facts and figures do not take
account of the 'soft' variables associated with working in another culture.
COMPENSATION
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The various approaches to staffing relate to compensation by being concerned
primarily with:
It follows that three of these four staffing approaches - ethnocentric, regiocentric and
geocentric - rely on extensive use of expatriate managers (PCNs and TCNs).
• Home-based policy. T his policy links the base salary for PCNs and TCNs to the
salary structure of the relevant home country. For example, a US executive
transferred to France would have a compensation package based on the US base
salary rather than that applicable to the host country France . All PCNs and TCNs
are treated equitably in relation to their home countries but they may be paid
different amounts for doing the same work. For example, in the London branch of
an American bank, a US expatriate and an Australian (TCN) may perform the
same banking duties but the American will receive a higher salary than the
Australian because of differences in their respective home country base salary
levels.
• Host-based policy. The base salary is linked to the salary structure of the host
country but supplementary allowances for cost of living, housing, schooling and
so on are linked to the home country salary structure. This policy is attractive to
TCNs where host country salaries are greater than those in their home countries,
but equally unattractive to expatriates who home country salary levels are greater
than those of the host country.
• Region-based policy. This is something of a compromise between the home
based and host based policies whereby expatriates working in their home regions
(for example, an Italian in Germany) are compensated at lower levels than those
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working in regions far from home, for example, an American working in Saudi
Arabia.
• Goods and services: home country outlays for items such as food, clothing,
personal care, household furniture, recreation, transportation and medical care
• Housing: the major costs associated with the employee's principal residence
• Income taxes: payments to federal and local governments for personal income
taxes
• Reserve: contributions to savings, benefits, pensions, investments, education
expenses, and so on.
You will probably know from your reading of newspapers and magazines, and
from your own experience, that labor relations are a subject with political,
sociological and emotional overtones. Your textbook seems to suggest that labor
unions are the enemy of MNEs. This may be so in some cases, but it need not be.
For example, in the 1970s, Capricorn Coal Company, a consortium of four MNEs
based in Britain, Germany and the Netherlands, began the development of an
open cut coal mine at German Creek in the Bowen Basin of Central Queensland.
One of Capricorn Coal's first acts was to include the four unions involved in the
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company's planning process. The harmony which ensued is illustrated by the fact
that in the first ten years of the mine's existence, the only time the unions went on
strike was at the request of the company. There was an Australia-wide strike by
coal miners and the company did not wish to incur the wrath of the Australian
Miners Federation by allowing its employees to continue working during the
national strike. The story behind this tale is that the CEO of Capricorn Coal had
begun life as a miner in Wales and had subsequently been a union official. He
understood miners!
Unions, or organised labour, are usually thought to be concerned about pay, job
security and working conditions. In fact unions are concerned about many other
issues including quality of life, equal opportunity, superannuation and so on. In
the international context, unions are concerned about the power of MNEs to move
production facilities from one country to another (or even from one part of one
country to another part) with the consequent loss of jobs. MNEs typically make
such decisions by negotiation with governments, and unions are thus potentially at
a great disadvantage unless they have influence with the government in power.
The power of unions ultimately lies in the strike weapon, but there are also about
twenty forms of non-strike activity such as go slow, work to rule, overtime bans
and the like.
A final concern is the desire of some MNEs to transpose work practices from one
country (for example, Japan ) to the home country. In Australia for example,
- 146 -
Mitsubishi and Toyota have been fairly successful in implementing some
Japanese employment practices in their Australian factories. However, this was
done in consultation with unions. In the US, Japanese auto companies have been
able to establish non-union plants - a practice which is feasible in the US because
of the low level of unionisation of the private sector workplace (about 9%), but
not feasible in Australia where unions are much stronger, even though
membership is declining (now about 25% of the total workforce).
One of the most pressing tasks facing the international trade union movement is to
address the power and influence of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) as part of a
trade union response to globalization. The combination of the growth of foreign
direct investment, technological changes, international financial markets and a
wide range of deregulation and privatisation measures have made it possible for
MNEs to be in the driver's seat of the global economy.
The challenge for the international trade union movement is to ensure that
companies respect workers' rights in every part of the world where their influence
is felt and to establish a genuine global dialogue between unions and MNEs.
- 147 -
The Global Union Federations (GUF) have the primary responsibility for dealing
with global companies. They are the major instruments for workers to come
together at international level inside enterprises and industries. The ICFTU works
in partnership with GUFs in many areas including efforts to strengthen
international trade union solidarity and build global social partnership.
The ICFTU represents 234 organizations in 152 countries and territories, in total
representing a membership of 148 million. Some of their activities and priorities
mentioned on their website are:
Activities
- 148 -
Unions have been a little more successful with two international bodies - the
International Labor Organization (ILO) and the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The OECD is a government, industry and union group located in Paris. In 1976,
the OECD established a set of voluntary guidelines for MNEs. These guidelines
were originally proposed in 1975 by the ILO: they say that MNEs are obliged to
respect the laws, regulations and administrative practices of member countries
and that countries are obliged to treat MNEs in the same way as domestic firms
within their borders. These guidelines have had limited effect, largely because
there is an umbrella or chapeau clause which is ambiguous. The clause states that
MNEs should adhere to the guidelines 'within the framework of law, regulations
and prevailing labor relations and employment practices, in each of the countries
in which they operate'. The unresolved question is whether the chapeau clause
takes precedence over local law (the MNE review) or whether the clause means
that the guidelines supplement local law (the union view).
There are two broad approaches to international labor relations: centralized and
decentralized. To argue in favor of one versus the other is to beg the question.
Both approaches are necessary and one must dovetail into the other.
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Centralization is desirable when decisions are concerned with labor and
transportation costs, skill levels, availability of natural resources and the political
climate in countries in which the MNE operates.
Decentralization is desirable when decisions are concerned with labor laws, union
power, the nature of collective bargaining and the work culture. Increasingly, the
way work is organized in particular countries is seen as a source of competitive
advantage. Employee participation has a long history and it has many forms. Your
textbook mentions self-managing teams, but quality circles (QC) and ultimately
total quality management (TQM) are manifestations of employee participation in
decision making. This is definitely the domain of local management -
decentralization.
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CHOICE OF MANUFACTURING LOCATION
People living in industrial societies tend to ignore some aspects of the natural world,
so let's look briefly at some basic environmental factors and the way they influence
the location of manufacturing. Climate and geographic considerations influence the
distribution of the earth's population and the nature of agriculture, lumbering, grazing
and fishing, although they do not completely explain the nature and dispersion of
economic activity. Given suitable climate and physical features, industries will locate
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their manufacturing plants in areas that provide the greatest advantages in the
assembly, production and distribution of the final product.
Machinery manufacture
The manufacture of machinery requires creative and skilled labour, energy for
processing raw materials, an economy in need of such products and the means for
distributing the finished goods. For example, the large farms of the US and
Canada led to the invention and manufacture of large scale farm machinery.
Electronic products
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conducted in the laboratories of universities and corporations in the San Francisco
area.
Shipbuilding
The industry must be located adjacent to deep, quiet waters. Skilled labour must
be available and raw materials, especially steel, must be manufactured nearby.
Examples of this are the Tyne and Clyde Rivers in England before World War II ,
Japan after World War II and Korea more recently because of lower labour costs.
Food processing
The industry develops in areas with the raw materials available. For example, fruit
and vegetables are canned near the producers because of the perishability of the
products and the cost of transporting them unprocessed. Wineries are established
in areas of grape production such as Western Australia and Tasmania because the
finished product can withstand the cost of transportation to markets.
Given these industry requirements, let's see now how certain economic, political
and cultural factors may require firms to modify their perfect choices. Let's call
these country factors .
Textiles
The textile industry requires cheap power, skilled labour and extensive marketing
systems as is the case with northern hemisphere countries such as Europe and,
increasingly, China . On the other hand, wool in particularly is most obtained
from southern hemisphere countries such as Australia and Argentina .
Country factors
Examples to illustrate the idea that governments lay down conditions which
persuade firms to locate their plants in specific areas: -
- 153 -
• China has created special economic zones to promote development in areas such
as Guangzhou , Shanghai and Fujian .
• Businesses that establish plants in southern Italy can obtain soft loans, tax
concessions and even outright grants of up to 40% of the fixed investment.
• Export processing zones that enable firms to take advantage of low labour costs,
and to export their production, exist in Mexico, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and
some 50 other countries. The firms have a limited selection of plant locations: the
plants are confined to an 'in-bond' area. In Mexico , in-bond plants -
maquiladoras - came into existence because of an arrangement between Mexico
and the US . The Mexican Government permitted plants to import parts and
processed materials to be assembled, packaged and processed without paying
import duties provided the finished products were exported. The US Government
permitted the finished product containing US made parts and materials to be
imported with import duty paid only on the value added in Mexico.
Technological factors
The technology used should create or add value at the lowest possible cost while
giving customers the highest possible value.
Fixed costs
- 154 -
Minimum efficient scale
A single large plant is generally the best way to achieve economies of scale: that
is, as the number of products made increases, the unit cost decreases. However,
there is a limit beyond which cost-per-unit does not decrease. This scale of output
is termed the minimum efficient scale and is illustrated in the figure: -
Unit-cost curve
These systems are computer-based and are designed to permit the efficient (low-
cost) production of small batches of products or parts. Flexible systems also
encompass the logistics of materials handling. For that reason we will defer
discussion of the technology until a later section, after we have discussed
materials handling. The ability of flexible manufacturing systems to handle small
batches gives a firm more latitude in the way it makes its products. This is known
as economies of scope .
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Product factors
• value-to-weight ratio
• universal needs.
Value-to-weight ratio
Universal needs
Products which satisfy common needs such as steel, bulk chemicals and personal
computers are best produced at a single location because there is little need for
local responsiveness.
In the process of deciding where to locate manufacturing plants around the world
there tend to be two strategies: either to centralize the location or decentralize
them in a number of regions close to the markets.
Concentrated Decentralized
production production
Country Factors
Differences in Substantial Few
political economy
- 156 -
Differences in culture Substantial Few
Differences in factor Substantial Few
costs
Trade barriers Substantial Few
Location externalities Important in industry Not important in
industry
Exchange rates Stable Volatile
Technological Factors
Fixed costs High Low
Minimum efficient High Low
scale
Flexible Available Not Available
manufacturing
technology
Product Factors
Value-to-weight Ratio High Low
Serves universal needs Yes No
MAKE-OR-BUY DECISIONS
International businesses invariably face decisions about whether they make all or
just some of the components used in their final product and therefore buy in from
other sources ( outsourcing ) those components they decide not to make. This
make-or-buy decision is related to the degree to which a firm is vertically
integrated: that is, the extent to which a firm is its own supplier and market. At
one extreme a firm can make all of its own inputs and be its own supplier; at the
other extreme, it can buy all its inputs and rely on external suppliers. Partial
integration implies that some components are made and others bought.
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drawbacks are the cost of investment and expertise needed to provide these
inputs. A benefit of buying is the ability to choose one or more suppliers. A
corresponding drawback is the reliance on suppliers. The trade-offs associated
with make-or-buy decisions are summarized in following table: -
Make Buy
Advantages control over costs choice among suppliers
overspecialization
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The 'real world' is seldom so simple and a wide variety of combinations is
possible. However, there is another way to obtain some of the benefits of vertical
integration without incurring some of the costs: through strategic alliances. Bear
in mind from our discussion in Chapter 8 that strategic alliances have costs as
well as benefits. The principal cost may be giving away technological know-how.
Strategic alliances in the make-or-buy context may be said to come in two sizes.
The larger is between two or more companies of similar size. Your textbook cites
alliances between Kodak and Canon to manufacture copiers to be sold by Kodak;
between Motorola and Toshiba to cross-licence their respective technologies; and
between General Motors and Toyota to build the Chevrolet Nova as a joint
venture. The smaller size of strategic alliance is between a large company such as
Toyota and a number of small-parts suppliers, some of whom supply only Toyota
while others supply most of their output to Toyota . This is the more likely
scenario in make-or-buy situation, where Toyota does not have production
facilities for all of the thousands of parts needed to construct a motor vehicle.
MATERIALS MANAGEMENT
Materials management and physical distribution are concerned with the means by
which inputs get to the production site and the finished product gets to the
customer. If we show this process from suppliers to customers, it could be
displayed as in the figure: -
- 159 -
There are other support activities that go hand in hand with procurement. These
are purchasing (if the inputs are bought rather than made), maintenance of
buildings and equipment, and technical functions which provide the production
facility with manufacturing specifications.
The procurement process ends with the supply of inputs to production, but the
system must be geared to providing the right quantity of inputs. Is a materials
inventory to be held or is there a just-in-time (JIT) system in operation? We will
address JIT in the next section, but if an inventory is to be held, what level of
stock is appropriate? Decisions such as these are germane to the position of the
materials management cell in the organisation structure.
New manufacturing technologies introduced over the last two or three decades
include robots, numerically-controlled machining tools and computer software for
product design, engineering analysis and control of manufacturing machinery.
This technology is called computer-integrated manufacturing (CIM): it is also
- 160 -
called flexible manufacturing systems. CIM coordinates robots, machines,
product design and engineering analysis through a single computer.
There is seldom one clear choice and trade-offs will involve decisions on concentration
(centralization) or decentralization.
The make-or-buy issue was discussed in the context of the extent to which the firm is
vertically integrated. A high level of vertical integration implies make while a low level
- 161 -
of integration implies buy. Making the component preserves trade secrets, but creates an
incestuous buying/selling arrangement with subsidiaries. Subsidiaries have a guaranteed
market, the parent company has a guaranteed supply and there is little incentive to
achieve lowest cost and highest quality. Outsourcing risks exposure of proprietary
technology but provides flexibility of supply, albeit with some risk to continuity of
supply.
Strategic alliances offer the benefits of vertical integration without the costs, but they
may limit strategic flexibility because of the commitment to alliance partners.
We looked at materials management which encompasses all the activities from supply of
materials through the manufacturing process to the distribution of the product to the
customer. This process is subject to problems of distance, time, exchange rates and
customs and other trade barriers.
• robots
• numerically controlled machinery
• computer integrated manufacturing; which includes:
o computer-aided design (CAD)
o computer-aided manufacturing ( CAM )
o administrative automation, which includes electronic data interchange
(EDI) and just-in-time (JIT).
- 162 -
PART II
ENVIRONMENT FACING BUSINESS: CULTURAL
ENVIRONMENT FACING BUSINESS, MANAGING
DIVERSITY WITHIN AND ACROSS CULTURE,
HOFSTEDE STUDY, EDWARD T HALL STUDY,
CULTURAL ADAPTATION THROUGH SENSITIVITY
TRAINING, POLITICAL, LEGAL, ECONOMIC,
ECOLOGICAL AND TECHNOLOGICAL FACING
BUSINESS AND THEIR MANAGEMENT.
CULTURE DEFINED
The word 'culture' is derived from the Latin cultus, meaning cult or worship. The word
culture in our society has many connotations: artistic, elitist and biological to name but a
few. In the context of international business, culture may be defined as learned
patterns of behavior or guidelines for behavior which are primarily passed on from
parents to their children but also by social organizations, special interest groups, the
government, schools, and churches. Common ways of thinking and behaving that are
developed are then reinforced through social pressure.
This learning and adjusting is called acculturation. Another definition of culture is that it
is a learned, shared, compelling, interrelated set of symbols the meaning of which
provides a set of orientations for members of a society.
- 163 -
The latter definition contains five important elements:
Individuals may be influenced by cultures other than the societal culture defined above,
and the societal culture may be subjected to the influence of national laws, the type of
government in power, the state of the economy, and even technology. We will call this
composite entity the societal or national culture. Other cultures which affect individual
behavior are:
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CULTURAL DIMENSIONS OF BUSINESS
All cultural phenomena do not have the same importance for business. In this section we
examine those cross-cultural issues that practicing managers of international business
must understand.
Social structure
Social structure includes a number of cultural features that can influence the
quality of workers available to an international business. The more important of
these are:
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• Occupational Status
Language
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However, there are times when we may understand the language but not the slang.
Time
Concepts of time vary widely between cultures. In some countries 'time is money':
in other countries this attitude is considered vulgar and even offensive. In Europe
and North America, punctuality is respected and to arrive late for an appointment
is considered disrespectful. In the Middle East and parts of Africa and South
America, being late for a meeting may be acceptable.
Closely related to the concept of time is the cultural view of the future. In most
English speaking countries, people believe they have the power to control, or at
least influence, future events. This belief is a very positive view of time. Other
people express a more negative view and behave accordingly, stoically submitting
to a fate that they see as beyond their control.
Managers are also interested in the dominant or state religion of the country, the
importance of religion in the society, the degree of religious homogeneity or
heterogeneity and the degree of tolerance of religious diversity, ethics and
superstition.
The importance of religion is also a concern for business. Where religious beliefs
are fundamental to the society there will be little flexibility in terms of adherence
to religious holidays and low tolerance of religious mistakes by foreigners. Take
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the example of the heavily commercialized celebration of St Valentine's Day
where romantics at heart exchange cards, flowers, chocolates, and gifts as
expressions of their love. Each year Hindu nationalists issue warnings that they
will shave the heads of young lovers celebrating St Valentine's Day and beat
them. The reasoning for this is that the Hindu nationalist Shiv Sena party consider
the celebration obscene and a violation of the Hindu cultural ethos. However,
where religion plays a relatively minor role, people will be more relaxed about
religious issues and more tolerant of the mistakes of foreigners.
Superstitions: These also affect international business in much the same ways as
religion. Colors for example, should be used with great care. Black is the color for
mourning in Christian countries as well as being the color for trendy clothing,
whilst in the Middle East it stands for modesty. White is the color for mourning in
Islamic countries. Red is considered lucky in China, as is yellow in Thailand.
White carnations, which are often worn at formal events in some English
speaking countries, are a symbol of death in some East Asian countries.
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only long enough to earn a little money and then cease work until those funds
have been exhausted. In other, generally more affluent cultures, people live to
work and are interested in job security, participation in management and self-
actualization rather than only straight monetary rewards. Managers in
international business must identify the types of rewards that are considered
important by employees in a particular culture.
Decision making
Bribery
In international business, bribery has two forms. The first involves large sums of
money offered (generally) to political figures to give multinational enterprises an
unfair advantage. This form of bribery is illegal and generally frowned upon in
most cultures.
The second form involves the payment of relatively small sums of money to
minor officials to expedite some government procedures such as clearing goods
through customs. These petty bribes are often called tips or gifts and are thought
of by some as analogous to the tips given to waiters in restaurants. Other
examples may be hiring extra employees, 'sponsoring' a host country manager's
child by providing them accommodation in your own country and assisting their
application to a university. These bribes are not seen as harmful or even illegal:
they represent reasonable payment for services by civil servants who are often
grossly underpaid by Western standards. However, they present a dilemma for
managers from cultures where even the smallest bribe is deemed unethical.
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HOFSTEDE’S STUDY
Gerard Hendrik Hofstede (born 2 October 1928, Haarlem) is an influential Dutch writer on
the interactions between national cultures and organizational cultures, and is an author of
several books including Culture's Consequences (2nd, fully revised edition, 2001) and
Cultures and Organizations, Software of the Mind (2nd, revised edition 2005, with his
son Gert Jan Hofstede).
Hofstede's study demonstrated that there are national and regional cultural groupings that
affect the behaviour of societies and organizations, and that are very persistent across
time.
Based on his IBM study in 72 different countries, Hofstede identifies five of these
differences in mental programming, which he calls five dimensions:
1. Power distance
Power distance measures how subordinates respond to power and authority. In high-
power distance countries (Latin America, France, Spain, most Asian and African
countries), subordinates tend to be afraid of their bosses, and bosses tend to be
paternalistic and autocratic. In low-power distance countries (the US, Britain, most of the
rest of Europe), subordinates are more likely to challenge bosses and bosses tend to use a
consultative management style.
Power Distance Index (PDI) focuses on the degree of equality, or inequality, between
people in the country's society. A High Power Distance ranking indicates that inequalities
of power and wealth have been allowed to grow within the society. These societies are
more likely to follow a caste system that does not allow significant upward mobility of its
citizens. A Low Power Distance ranking indicates the society de-emphasizes the
differences between citizen's power and wealth. In these societies equality and
opportunity for everyone is stressed.
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In individualistic countries (France, Germany, South Africa, Canada, etc.), people are
expected to look out for themselves. Solidarity is organic (all contribute to a common
goal, but with little mutual pressure) rather than mechanical. Typical values are personal
time, freedom, and challenge.
In collectivist cultures (Japan, Mexico, Korea, Greece) individuals are bounded through
strong personal and protective ties based on loyalty to the group during one’s lifetime and
often beyond (mirrored on family ties). Values include training, physical condition, the
use of skills. See Appendix 2 for comments on differences between American and
Chinese society on this dimension.
What makes individualism in the United States is not so much the peculiar characteristics
of each person but the sense each person has of having a separate but equal place in
society.... This fusion of individualism and equality is so valued and so basic that many
Americans find it most difficult to relate to contrasting values in other cultures where
interdependence, complementary relationships, and valued differences in age and sex
greatly determine a person's sense of self.
Individuality is different and appears to be much more the norm in the world than United
States-style individualism is. Individuality refers to the person's freedom to act differently
within the limits set by the social structure. Compared to the United States, many other
cultures appear to be much more tolerant of "eccentrics" and "local characters." This
confusion of one kind of individualism with individuality at first appears paradoxical: We
might suppose that a society which promises apparently great personal freedoms would
produce the greatest number of obviously unique, even peculiar people, and yet for more
than a century visitors to the United States have been struck by a kind of "sameness" or
standardization. As one writer interpreted it, U.S. freedom allows everybody to be like
everybody else.... While the individual (glorified as "the rugged individualist") is praised,
historically individuals in the United States have made their achievements in loose
groupings. What is different here is that the independent U.S. self must never feel bound
to a particular group; he must always be free to change his alliances or, if necessary, to
move on.... Cultures better characterized by values of individuality are likely to lack this
kind of independence from the group, as well as individual mobility. Thus it may be that
such cultures allow for greater diversity in personal behavior in order to give balance to
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the individual vis-à-vis the group, whereas the United States, characterized by loose
groupings and high mobility, does not.
Individualism (IDV) focuses on the degree the society reinforces individual or collective,
achievement and interpersonal relationships. A High Individualism ranking indicates that
individuality and individual rights are paramount within the society. Individuals in these
societies may tend to form a larger number of looser relationships. A Low Individualism
ranking typifies societies of a more collectivist nature with close ties between individuals.
These cultures reinforce extended families and collectives where everyone takes
responsibility for fellow members of their group.
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4. Uncertainty avoidance
When uncertainty avoidance is strong, a culture tends to perceive unknown situations as
threatening so that people tend to avoid them. Examples include South Korea, Japan, and
Latin America.
In countries where uncertainty avoidance is weak (the US; the Netherlands; Singapore;
Hong Kong, Britain) people feel less threatened by unknown situations. Therefore, they
tend to be more open to innovations, risk, etc.
Uncertainty Avoidance Index (UAI) focuses on the level of tolerance for uncertainty and
ambiguity within the society - i.e. unstructured situations. A High Uncertainty Avoidance
ranking indicates the country has a low tolerance for uncertainty and ambiguity. This
creates a rule-oriented society that institutes laws, rules, regulations, and controls in order
to reduce the amount of uncertainty. A Low Uncertainty Avoidance ranking indicates the
country has less concern about ambiguity and uncertainty and has more tolerance for a
variety of opinions. This is reflected in a society that is less rule-oriented, more readily
accepts change, and takes more and greater risks.
5. Long-term versus Short-term orientation
A long term orientation is characterized by persistence and perseverance, a respect for a
hierarchy of the status of relationships, thrift, and a sense of shame. Countries include
China; Hong Kong; Taiwan, Japan and India. A short-term orientation is marked by a
sense of security and stability, a protection of one’s reputation, a respect for tradition, and
a reciprocation of greetings; favors and gifts. Countries include: Britain, Canada, the
Philippines; Germany, Australia
Geert Hofstede added the following fifth (5th) dimension after conducting an additional
international study using a survey instrument developed with Chinese employees and
managers. That survey resulted in addition of the Confucian dynamism. Subsequently,
Hofstede described that dimension as a culture's long-term Orientation.
Long-Term Orientation (LTO) focuses on the degree the society embraces, or does not
embrace, long-term devotion to traditional, forward thinking values. High Long-Term
Orientation ranking indicates the country prescribes to the values of long-term
commitments and respect for tradition. This is thought to support a strong work ethic
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where long-term rewards are expected as a result of today's hard work. However,
business may take longer to develop in this society, particularly for an "outsider". A Low
Long-Term Orientation ranking indicates the country does not reinforce the concept of
long-term, traditional orientation. In this culture, change can occur more rapidly as long-
term traditions and commitments do not become impediments to change.
Dr. Geert Hofstede conducted perhaps the most comprehensive study of how values in
the workplace are influenced by culture. From 1967 to 1973, while working at IBM as a
sychologist, he collected and analyzed data from over 100,000 individuals from forty
countries. From those results, and later additions, Hofstede developed a model that
identifies four primary dimensions to differentiate cultures. He later added a fifth
dimension, Long-term Outlook. As with any generalized study, the results may or may
not be applicable to specific individuals or events. In addition, although the Hofstede's
results are categorized by country, often there is more than one cultural group within that
country. In these cases there may be significant deviation from the study's result. An
example is Canada, where the majority of English speaking population and the minority
French speaking population in Quebec has moderate cultural differences.
Geert Hofstede's dimensions analysis can assist the business person or traveler in better
understanding the intercultural differences within regions and between counties.
"Culture is more often a source of conflict than of synergy. Cultural differences are a
nuisance at best and often a disaster." - Dr. Geert Hofstede
Geert Hofstede’s depiction of enduring and powerful national cultures or national cultural
differences is legendary. If his findings are correct they have immense implications for
management within and across countries, and for the future of nation states - including
the prospects for greater European integration. However, closer examination of his
research reveals that it relies, in my view, on fundamentally flawed assumptions. This
article examines four crucial assumptions upon which his measurements are based. These
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assumptions are ‘crucial’ in the sense that each is necessary for the plausibility of his
identification claims. It is argued that they are all flawed and that therefore his national
cultural descriptions are invalid and misleading.
Hofstede generalizes about the entire national population in each country solely on the
basis of analysis of a few questionnaire responses. The respondents were simply certain
categories of employees in the subsidiaries of a single company: IBM. What evidence
does he have that they were nationally representative? None. He just assumes it.
Sometimes he supposes that every individual in a nation shares a common national
culture. At other times he claims to have found in the IBM data a "national norm" or
"central tendency", or "average [national] tendency." Both claims are problematic.
A statement that every English person is violent, because on occasions some English
football fans are violent, would be regarded by any rational person as absurd.
Generalizing about an entire national population on the basis of miniscule number of
questionnaire responses - in some countries fewer than 100 - is equally absurd. If a
national culture were common to all national individuals - and survey responses could
identify those cultures - there would not have been significant intracountry differences in
individuals’ questionnaire responses. But the IBM surveys within each country revealed
radical differences in the answers to the same questions.
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America White Cheer-Leaders Club in Smoky Hill, Kansas, USA, and amongst any other
group, in any other part, of the USA. Is Hofstede’s assumption credible?
There are no evidence-based reasons for assuming that the average IBM responses
reflected ‘the’ national average. Hofstede’s assumption is a mere leap of faith. It is not
grounded in evidence. Furthermore, IBM subsidiaries demonstrably had many nationally
atypical characteristics. These included: the company’s selective recruitment only from
the ‘middle classes’; the frequent international training of employees; the technologically
advanced and unusual characteristics of its products during the survey periods - which
were before the development of the ‘personal computer’; the ‘frequent personal contacts’
between subsidiary and international headquarters staff; its tight, internationally
centralised control; US ownership during a period in which foreign direct investment was
new and controversial; and the comparatively young age of its managers. Furthermore,
IBM employees diverged from the general population more in some nations than in
others. For instance, during the time the survey(s) were undertaken, working for a non-
family owned firm would have been much more unusual in Taiwan than in Britain.
Hofstede does not demonstrate the national representativeness of what he claims to have
found in each IBM subsidiary is nationally representative. He asserts it. What is said to
have been identified is actually presupposed. Hofstede’s reasoning is circular - he begs
the question.
Suppose that by sheer chance he did find national averages - what use would they be? As
managers, employees, investors, tourists, citizens, or whatever we do not engage with
statistical averages but with real local specifics - as the statistician who drowned in the
river whose average depth was five centimetres unfortunately discovered.
How does Hofstede claim to have identified national culture in IBM subsidiaries? As
well as supposing the existence of such cultures, and the typicality of what he could
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identify in that company, he had to make a number of other and equally implausible
assumptions in order to be able to assert that he could describe, indeed measure, these
cultures.
Three discrete cultures: Out of the potentially huge number of cultural and non-cultural
influences on the questionnaire answers, Hofstede assumed that only three: organisational
(OrC); occupational (OcC) and national cultures (NC), were significant. Each respondent
was conceived of as exclusively carrying - as being permanently "mentally programmed"
by - these three non-interacting cultures (or values). This extraordinarily reductive
conception of IBM employees conveniently allowed him to argue that as there was only
one IBM culture, and as he occupationally matched the respondents, the questionnaire
response differences showed "national culture with unusual clarity."
Hofstede’s anorexic and mechanistic assumption can be seen from its expression below
as an equation:
(OrC + OcC + NC1) - (OrC + OcC +NC2) = NC1 - NC2
in which,
OrC = Organizational culture (IBM’s);
OcC = Occupational Cultures;
NC = National Culture;
and therefore NC1 - NC2 = Difference(s)
between two national cultures.
Convenient for processing questionnaire answers, but unrelated to reality. Was there
really just one monopolistic organizational culture in IBM world-wide? Does every
occupation have a single global culture?
Organizational culture: The principal problem for Hofstede’s analysis is not that he
supposed that there was a single worldwide IBM organizational culture - albeit that is
contestable, and not self-evident as he suggested - but he treats that culture as the only
organizational culture in IBM. He ignored extensive literatures which argue for
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recognition of multiple, dissenting, emergent, organic, counter, plural, resisting,
incomplete, contradictory, fluid, cultures in an organization. If the assumption of a single
and monopolistic IBM culture is rejected and the possibility of a host of diverse cultural
and/or non-cultural influences on the questionnaire responses is acknowledged,
Hofstede’s underlying equation collapses.
About ten years after the initial publication of his analysis of the IBM survey data,
Hofstede had begun to acknowledge that there is cultural variety within and between
units of the same organisation. An acceptance that organisations have multiple cultures
and not a single culture would seem to undermine a crucial, and much trumpeted, part of
his analysis: that all respondents were from the same company and therefore had the
same organisational culture. However, Hofstede never admits error or weaknesses in his
analysis. In parallel with his acknowledgement of cultural heterogeneity in organisations,
Hofstede redefined ‘organisational culture’. He stated that "national cultures and
organisational cultures are phenomena of a different order." Thus he concludes that the
cultural heterogeneity within IBM did not affect his cross-IBM-subsidiary comparison of
values, as organisational culture does not contain/reflect values. His definitional change
is problematic for many reasons (see McSweeney, 2002).
Like the earlier version, this reasoning relies on the unwarranted presumption that
occupational cultures are universally the same.
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"programmed into" carriers in pre-adulthood. "Values", he states: "Are acquired in one’s
early youth, mainly in the family and in the neighbourhood, and later at school. By the
time a child is ten years old, most of its basic values have been programmed into its
mind... for occupational values the place of socialization is the school or university, and
the time is in between childhood and adulthood."
The notion that national and occupational cultures are unchanging and finalised
consequences of early ‘socialization’ has few supporters. Even Talcott Parsons, the high
priest of socialisation, was less rigid. And yet the continuity assumption is crucial for
Hofstede’s analysis. Without it, the mere matching of respondents on an occupational
basis could not plausibly be deemed to isolate national cultural values.
Many other factors - cultural and noncultural - could have influenced IBM employee
responses. To take but one. The questionnaires were not designed to identify national
cultures. They were constructed to enhance senior management’s interventions at a time
of worry within the company about morale. Some years later Hofstede used these non-
independent, company-administered, sometimes nonconfidential, ‘second-hand’
questionnaires for his analysis. Respondents had foreknowledge that: their managers
were expected to develop strategies for corrective actions which the survey showed to be
necessary. Is this not likely to have encouraged them to manipulate their answers to
improve their own, and their divisions’, position, resources, remuneration, and so forth?
Yet, Hofstede relies on the supposition that the answers were immune to respondents’
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gaming, uninfluenced by the possible consequences of their answers. He treated the
answers as the pure outcomes of their unconscious preprogrammed values.
The IBM questionnaire answers could have been categorised, in ways which reflected
possible response differences additional, or alternative to, nationality - for example - race,
religion, first language, type of car, or hair colour. The problem for Hofstede’s analysis is
that each of these classifications would produce response differences, and yet using the
same methodology he employed, each could be deemed to have been caused by, and the
means of identifying, a particular ‘culture’ or cultural difference on the basis of whatever
a priori classification framed the data stratification. But Hofstede ignores this
classification problem. Nationally classified data provides no evidence of either the
influence or identifiability of national cultures.
Despite the criticisms above, even if it is assumed that Hofstede managed to isolate
unique aspects of national cultures, it takes another non-evidence-based leap of faith to
conclude that he was able to construct adequate depictions of national cultures or national
cultural differences. Were the questions asked wide-ranging and deep enough? The
consequences of not having comprehensively ‘identified’ national value sets is not
merely incomplete descriptions, but more importantly inaccurate descriptions. Restricted
questions/answers would miss influential values that might counterbalance or outweigh
the values that were measured, so the resulting depictions of national cultures would be
distorted. As the questionnaires were not designed to identify national cultures it is likely
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that the questions were not adequate for that purpose. Researchers who have asked
questions different from those used by Hofstede provide evidence of this flaw. Instead of
revealing the same dimensions and ranking of those dimensions, they have indeed usually
produced quite different descriptions of specific national cultures. Shalom Schwartz
(1994), for instance, found seven culture-level dimensions which were "quite different"
from Hofstede’s. Even if it is crudely supposed that a national culture is somehow
composed of separately identifiable independent dimensions, why should we accept that
Hofstede successfully identified even the "dominant" dimensions? Questionnaire answers
are not neutral ‘windows’ through which national cultures can be perceived.
Hofstede’s depicts his dimensions of national culture as bi-polar in the sense that each is
composed of contrasting positions, for instance ‘individualism’ versus ‘collectivism’.
This is also problematic - the two can coexist and are simply emphasised, more or less,
depending on the situation. Every society presents a number of contradictory adages or
sayings such as "look before you leap" and "he who hesitates is lost" as part of its
repertoire. But Hofstede’s dimensions exclude such coexistence and are thus blind to key
cultural qualities. That is not to argue that the dimensions which Hofstede used - but did
not originate - or those of others, cannot usefully frame initial discussion about national
particularities, to alert, or remind us, that the world is not culturally homogeneous. But
Hofstede claims much more, too much more: to have been able to use those dimensions
to identify and compare, indeed measure, the dominant dimensions of unique, enduring,
and systematically causal cultures in numerous countries.
Such is the elusiveness of the concept of culture that in the wider literature on the subject
there is no consensus about which ‘units’ or ‘dimensions’ should be used for describing
it: essentially cultures are still ‘grasped’. Hofstede’s arithmetisation of some employees’
answers to survey questions is not equal to the task.
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Assumption 4: That ‘identified’ in the workplace is unaffected by location
The IBM data was effectively restricted to the workplace. Other sections of national
populations - the unemployed, full-time students, the self-employed, the retired,
homeworkers, and others - were ignored. The questions were almost exclusively about
workplace issues, were completed in the workplace and not replicated in other types of
location.
In summary, the validity of Hofstede’s national culture identification claims face two
profound problems.
First, the generalisations about national level culture from an analysis of small
subnational populations necessarily relies on the unproven, and unprovable, supposition
that within each nation there is a uniform national culture and on a mere assertion that
micro-local data from a section of IBM employees was representative of that supposed
national uniformity.
Secondly, the elusiveness of culture. It was argued that what Hofstede ‘identified’ is not
national culture, but an averaging of situationally specific opinions from which
dimensions or aspects, of national culture are unjustifiably inferred. Even if we heroically
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assume that the answers to a narrow set of questions administered in constrained
circumstances are ‘manifestations’ of a determining national culture, it requires an
equally contestable act of faith to believe that Hofstede’s overly contrived methodology
successfully identified those cultures.
CRITICISM PART 2
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CULTURAL ADAPTATION THROUGH SENSITIVITY
TRAINING
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awareness of this ``time'' orientation can make severe interpersonal
blunders, and then need cross-cultural training to avoid culture shock.
Chen and Starosta (1996) believe that people have to develop their
intercultural communication competence in order to live meaningfully
and productively in the global village. According to Landis and Brislin
(1983), as the workforce in various countries becomes more culturally
diverse, it is necessary to train people to become more competent and
thus to deal effectively with the complexities of new and different
environments. Thus, the issue of cross-cultural training in developing
intercultural communication competence can no longer be neglected.
People who are sent abroad must develop such competence in order to
be successful. Cross-cultural training has long been advocated as a
means of facilitating effective cross-cultural interaction (Bochner,
1982; Harris and Moran, 1979; Landis and Brislin, 1983; Mendenhall
and Oddou, 1986; Tung, 1981). The importance of such training in
preparing an individual for an intercultural work assignment has
become increasingly apparent (Baker, 1984; Lee, 1983;
Tung, 1981). As Bhagat and Prien (1996, p. 216) put it, ``as
international companies begin to compete with each other in the global
market, the role of cross-cultural training becomes increasingly
important.'' A comprehensive literature review by Black and
Mendenhall (1990) found strong evidence for a positive relationship
between cross-cultural training and adjustment. In addition, another
survey revealed that 86 percent of Japanese multinationals report a
failure rate of less than 10 percent for their expatriates who have
received training (Hogan and Goodson, 1990). Numerous benefits can
be achieved by giving these expatriates cross-cultural training. It is
seen as: -
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• A distinct advantage for organizations;
• A means for conscious switching from an automatic, home-
culture international management mode to a culturally
appropriate, adaptable and acceptable one;
• an aid to improve coping with unexpected events or culture
shock in a new culture;
• A means of reducing the uncertainty of interactions with foreign
nationals; and
• A means of enhancing expatriates' coping ability to by reducing
stress and disorientation.
• It can reduce or prevent failure in expatriate assignments.
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The Cross-Cultural Cycle describes the concept of ‘cultural change’
which represents a transition between one's own culture and a new
culture. Cultural change is part of a problem-solving process
undergone by users. Here, the users are identified as sojourners and
expatriates who experience a new culture which is unfamiliar and
strange. In the initial stage of confrontation with the new culture, the
user experiences a culture shock. Then full or partial acculturation
takes place, depending on factors such as former experience, length of
stay, cultural distance between home and new culture, training,
language competency among other factors. The greater the users'
ability to acculturate, the less the impact of culture shock on them. The
ability to acculturate and reduce the impact of the culture shock can
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be developed through an appropriate and effective cross-cultural
training. Apart from that, training can also help the users to develop
intercultural communication competence, which is needed to adapt
better and perform well in the new environment. As a result, once
sojourners and expatriates have succeeded in completing the cycle,
they will be more familiar with it the next time they confront a new
culture. The change process will be improved and becomes less
complicated. However, the success or failure of the users to adjust and
perform depends on how they respond to the cycle.
Culture
Culture is the complex whole, which includes belief, knowledge, art,
law, morals and customs and any capabilities and habits acquired by a
person as a member of a society. According to Hall (1959), culture is
communication and communication is culture.
Acculturation
Acculturation is defined as, ``Changes that occur as a result of first-
hand contact between individuals of differing cultural origins'' (Redfield
et al., 1936). It is a process whereby an individual is socialized into an
unfamiliar or new culture. In short, it refers to the level of adoption of
the predominant culture by an outsider or minority group. According to
Gordon, 1967; Garza and Gallegos, 1985; Domino and Acosta, 1987;
Marin and Marin, 1990; Negy and Woods, 1992, the greater the
acculturation, the more the language, customs, identity, attitudes and
behaviors of the predominant culture are adopted. However, many
sojourners and expatriates experience difficulty in fully acculturating,
only adopting the values and behaviors they find appropriate and
acceptable to their existing cultures. It is a question of willingness and
readiness.
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Culture shock
Many expatriates experience what is called ``culture shock'' when they
first confront or come into contact with a different culture. Adler (1997)
defines this as the frustration and confusion as a result of being
bombarded by too many new and un-interpretable cues. Culture shock
is also the expatriate's reaction to a new, unpredictable, and
consequently uncertain environment (Black, 1990)
Cross-cultural training
Training in general can be defined as any intervention aimed at
increasing the knowledge or skills of the individual. This can help them
cope better personally, work more effectively with others, and perform
better professionally. It is an organized educational experience with
the objective of helping expatriates learn about, and therefore adjust
to, their new home in a foreign land.
Cross-cultural training may be defined as any procedure used to
increase an individual's ability to cope with and work in a foreign
environment. There are many types of training that can be given to
people to be sent abroad depending upon their objectives, the nature
of their responsibilities and duties, the length of their stay, and their
past experiences. As Kealey and Protheroe also point out, ``The
effectiveness of the various types of training will naturally depend to
some extent on the time and resources available for undertaking them,
the quality of trainers, and the possibilities for in-country training'' (p.
149). Some of the types of training available to expatriates are
technical training, practical information, area studies, cultural
awareness, intercultural effectiveness skills, and interpersonal
sensitivity training.
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Many theorists have wrestled with the exact nature of the definition of
``competence'' in the context of cross-cultural adaptation. However,
one of its most common definitions is ``effectiveness'' (Hawes, and
Kealey, 1979; Abe and Wiseman, 1983; Gudyskunst and Hammer,
1984). This effectiveness is generally described in terms of skills,
attitudes, or traits which the sojourner and expatriate use to build a
successful interaction (Ruben, 1976). Scholars have also argued that
the concept of communication competence can be broken down into
three broad sets of skills: affective, cognitive, and behavioral (Chen
and Starosta, 1996). Wiseman and Koester (1993) examined the
relationship between intercultural communication competence,
knowledge of the host culture, and cross-cultural attitudes. As a result,
they conceptualized intercultural communication competence as:
• Culture-specific understanding of the other;
• Culture-general understanding; and
• Positive regard of the other.
SENSITIVITY TRAINING
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than they are. Sensitivity training often specifically addresses concerns
such as gender sensitivity, multicultural sensitivity, and sensitivity
toward those who are disabled in some way. The goal in this type of
training is more oriented toward growth on an individual level.
Sensitivity training can also be used to study and enhance group
relations, i.e., how groups are formed and how members interact
within those groups.
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was on the way people interact as they are becoming a group. The NTL
founders' primary motivation was to help understand group processes
and use the new field of group dynamics, to teach people how to
function better within groups. By attending training at an offsite venue,
the NTL provided a way for people to remove themselves from their
everyday existence and spend two to three weeks undergoing training,
thus minimizing the chances that they would immediately fall into old
habits before the training truly had time to benefit its students. During
this time, the NTL and other sensitivity-training programs were new
and experimental. Eventually, NTL became a nonprofit organization
with headquarters in Washington, D.C. and a network of several
hundred professionals across the globe, mostly based in universities.
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During the 1960s, new people and organizations joined the movement,
bringing about change and expansion. The sensitivity-training
movement had arrived as more than just a human relations study, but
as a cultural force, in part due to the welcoming characteristics of
1960s society. This social phenomenon was able to address the
unfilled needs of many members in society, and thus gained force as a
social movement. The dichotomy between approaches, however,
continued into the 1960s, when the organizational approach to
sensitivity training continued to focus on the needs of corporate
personnel.
The late 1960s and 1970s witnessed a decline in the use of sensitivity
training and encounters, which had been transformed from ends in
themselves into traditional therapy and training techniques, or simply
phased out completely. Though no longer a movement of the scale
witnessed during the 1960s, sensitivity-training programs are still used
by organizations and agencies hoping to enable members of diversified
communities and workforces to better coexist and relate to each other.
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c. But the trainer refuses to provide guidance and assume
leadership
3. Refreezing the new ones – This step depends upon how much
opportunity the trainees get to practice their new behaviors and
values at their work place.
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individual man into the whole society through group development. It
was caught up in the basic conflict of America at mid-century: the
question of extreme freedom, release of human potential or rigid
organization in the techniques developed for large combines." The
ultimate goal of the training is to have intense experiences leading to
life-changing insights, at least during the training itself and briefly
afterwards.
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1. Increased understanding, insight, and self-awareness about
one’s own behavior and its impact on others, including the ways
in which others interpret one’s behavior.
CULTURAL SENSITIVITY
Extensive research across disciplines has investigated the question of
how to create culturally competent managers (e.g., Chen and Starosta,
1996; Hinckley and Perl, 1996; Post, 1997; Shanahan, 1996; Spitzberg
and Cupach, 1989). From the numerous definitions of competence, one
subsumes the ongoing discussion quite well: competence may be
described as (work-related) knowledge, skills and aptitudes, which
serve productive purposes in firms. It distinguishes outstanding from
average performers (Dalton, 1997; Kochanski, 1997; Nordhaug, 1998;
Nordhaug, 1993). When operationalizing cultural competence, previous
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research has mostly focused on one of the following dimensions: the
affective (motivation), the cognitive (knowledge) or the conative (skills)
dimension. However as results have shown, this emphasis on just one
dimension falls short of depicting this complex construct. Therefore,
more recent attempts to measure cultural competence integrate all
three dimensions. Among these holistic approaches, the so-called
“Third Culture Approach” by Gudykunst et al. (1977) has found a
particularly widespread reception in the field. Under the “Third-
Culture” approach, a manager displays cultural competence, when
he/she interprets and judges culturally overlapping situations neither
from an ethnocentric perspective, nor from an idealised host culture
perspective, but assumes a neutral position. To achieve this neutral
position, Gudykunst et al. (1977) stress the importance of the affective
component of cultural competence, which may be called cultural
sensitivity. In their model, cultural sensitivity is a prerequisite which
instils the acquisition of knowledge (cognitive dimension) and skills
(conative dimension). Gudykunst et al. (1977) see cultural sensitivity
as the psychological link between home and host culture. This notion
clearly contradicts the current business practice mentioned earlier,
where language or professional knowledge and skills are deemed key
prerequisites for successful foreign assignments.
Cultural Sensitivity is the ability to be open to learning about and
accepting of different cultural groups. It leads to Cultural Competency.
The following diagram shows an individual’s path to cultural
competency: -
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Multiculturation
Selective Adoption
Appreciation/Valuing
Acceptance/Respect
Understanding
Awareness
Ethnocentricity
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4. Acceptance/Respect - This is when we begin allowing
those from other cultures to just be who they are, and
that it is OKAY for things to not always fit into our
paradigms.
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failure rates of international assignments due to a lack of international
managers’ cultural sensitivity and the unsuccessful integration of
family members into the host culture (e.g., Bird and Dunbar, 1991;
Black, 1988; Black and Gregersen, 1991; Harvey, 1985), participants in
such training most commonly do not expect major difficulties
regarding their competence in culturally overlapping situations. They
have hardly any idea about which effects cultural differences can have
on private and business matters (Bittner, 1996; Bittner and Reisch,
1994). Taking these circumstances into account, an exemplary
sequence of training issues in intercultural preparatory programs is
outlined below:
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learning effect consists of questioning internalized values, which are
often accepted without reflection and therefore seen as superior to
others.
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culture are presented and evaluated for their practical relevance to
cultural sensitivity training.
WORKFORCE DIVERSITY
Workforce Diversity refers to policies and practices that seek to include people within a
workforce who are considered to be, in some way, different from those in the prevailing
constituency. In this context, here is a quick overview of seven predominant factors that
motivate companies, large and small, to diversify their workforces:
As a Social Responsibility
Because many of the beneficiaries of good diversity practices are from groups of people
that are “disadvantaged” in our communities, there is certainly good reason to consider
workforce diversity as an exercise in good corporate responsibility. By diversifying our
workforces, we can give individuals the “break” they need to earn a living and achieve
their dreams.
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As an Economic Payback
Many groups of people who have been excluded from workplaces are consequently
reliant on tax-supported social service programs. Diversifying the workforce, particularly
through initiatives like welfare-to-work, can effectively turn tax users into tax payers.
As a Resource Imperative
The changing demographics in the workforce, that were heralded a decade ago, are now
upon us. Today’s labor pool is dramatically different than in the past. No longer
dominated by a homogenous group of white males, available talent is now
overwhelmingly represented by people from a vast array of backgrounds and life
experiences. Competitive companies cannot allow discriminatory preferences and
practices to impede them from attracting the best available talent within that pool.
As a Legal Requirement
As a Marketing Strategy
Buying power, particularly in today’s global economy, is represented by people from all
walks of life (ethnicities, races, ages, abilities, genders, sexual orientations, etc.) To
ensure that their products and services are designed to appeal to this diverse customer
base, “smart” companies, are hiring people, from those walks of life - for their
specialized insights and knowledge. Similarly, companies who interact directly with the
public are finding increasingly important to have the makeup of their workforces reflect
the makeup of their customer base.
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All companies are seeing a growing diversity in the workforces around them - their
vendors, partners and customers. Companies that choose to retain homogenous
workforces will likely find themselves increasingly ineffective in their external
interactions and communications.
As a Capacity-building Strategy
Tumultuous change is the norm in the business climate of the 21st century. Companies
that prosper have the capacity to effectively solve problems, rapidly adapt to new
situations, readily identify new opportunities and quickly capitalize on them. This
capacity can be measured by the range of talent, experience, knowledge, insight, and
imagination available in their workforces. In recruiting employees, successful companies
recognize conformity to the status quo as a distinct disadvantage. In addition to their job-
specific abilities, employees are increasingly valued for the unique qualities and
perspectives that they can also bring to the table. According to Dr. Santiago Rodriguez,
Director of Diversity for Microsoft, true diversity is exemplified by companies that “hire
people who are different – knowing and valuing that they will change the way you do
business.”
For whichever of these reasons that motivates them, it is clear that companies that
diversify their workforces will have a distinct competitive advantage over those that
don’t. Further, it is clear that the greatest benefits of workforce diversity will be
experienced, not by the companies that that have learned to employ people in spite of
their differences, but by the companies that have learned to employ people because of
them.
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