Assignment: Cross-Cultural Management Presentation
The purpose of this class is to increase your understanding of managing in an international context and develop your skills to become a future international manager. In order to achieve that purpose, you will put yourself in the shoes of an international manager and do deep research in order to gain insights into a company's global strategy, operations, and management.
1. The Company
• Provide a brief company profile (skip if it's familiar to everyone e.g. Facebook) andits success thru some financial numbers, including size (market cap), revenue, profit, revenue growth rate, profit growth rate, return on equity, etc. for last 5 years. Is the company's growth rate increasing or slowing down?
• What's the company's product/service and business model and how much competitive advantage does it enjoy in its industry domestically? Analyze the industry of the company and its growth outlook by providing some numbers on how much growth potential for the industry globally
• What isthe company's position in its industry:Does it face significant competition and who are its most important competitors? Does the company enjoy a favorable future outlook or face significant threats from future competitors, technology shifts, or changes in the business?
2. Global Strategy
• How important is the company's operation abroad? How many continents and countries is the company operating in? How much of the company's revenue, profit, and customers come from overseas and what is the regional distribution of these revenue and profit?
• How successful has the company's global strategy been? How does that success compare with the company's success domestically? How much international advantage has the company's domestic success given it? How much emphasis does the company put on its overseas operations, and why?
• What have been some challenges of doing business overseas? Provide some examples, e.g. dealing with government, different institutions,culture, etc.?
3. Cross-Cultural Management
• Based on the nature of the company's product/business, how much has the company had to adapt its product or business model overseas?
• Are there any business customizations made to fit with the specific culture of different regions? If so find some specific examples.
• Are there any business customizations made to fit with the specific institutional environment (e.g. political, legal, social, etc.) of different regions? If so find some specific examples.
4. Conclusions:
• What do you think are three key successes or mistakes this company has made in its global strategy and cross-cultural management?
• What are your top three recommendations about the company's futureglobal strategy and cross-cultural management?
• Based on your research, what are the top three lessons in cross-cultural management you have learned from the experiences of this company?
I recommend you use the following comprehensive and systematic resources, rather than just relying on Google to find a few disjointed articles. How manyresearch resources you have utilizedis a major factor in the evaluation of your research quality.Make sure to include all sources in the notes page under each slide, instead of at the end of the presentation.
1. I suggest you start with Mergent Online (access it from MSU library website under databases), which gives you 15 years of the company's financial statements so you can easily see the trend, plus many other resources. It is often a good idea to start with the numbers first to see the last 5 and/or 10 years of annual growth rate in revenue, profit and trends inprofit margin, return on equity, etc.
2. Annual and quarterly reports (Important: you want the filings to SEC found on the company's investor relations website e.g. 10K, 10Q, not the kind of glossy annual report for promotion purposes) of a public company gives the most comprehensive info about the company. It is the must read to understand the complete picture of a company. Since it's very long, focus on the section of manager's discussion of the business, and financial statements.
3. Library databases such as Business Source Premier (library database), which often gives you industry profiles, company SWOT analyses, and many recent articles and coverage from various journals and newspapers (But pls. note the SWOT and other industry analysis here are only to give you reference and you need to think more critically for your own SWOT analysis instead of using their cookie cutter). The guide about how to access many the above-mentioned databases and resources is available in the library page. If you have any questions about where to find certain information or how to use any of the above library databases, pls. contact our reference librarian: William Vincenti at 973-655-7147.
4. Bloomberg terminals. Bloomberg terminals give you an abundance of information in one place including company news, all the financials, SEC filings, analyst reports, and much more. Our business school has several Bloomberg terminals (not Bloomberg) in the Applied Finance Center in the lower level of the building. After creating a login using your NetID, you can type in MAIN to go to the main menu, choose EQUITIES, then type in the company name in the command line. Then choose the kind of analysis you want. Two function I recommend especially are the supply chain analysis (which gives all the suppliers and customers of the company), and BI, which is industry analysis. You can access customer support if any questions. If you have questions about creating a login and access the Bloomberg Terminal, please access the business school tech support at 973-655-5491.
Your paper will be graded on how well it tackles the question posed and the comprehensiveness and depth of your analysis. Listed below are some of the key grading criteria.
- Comprehensive Research with Data Insights: whether the analysis shows comprehensive and in-depth research. Please double check your sources and indicate the sources in the notes section of each slide, instead of at the end of presentation. Whether you use reliable data sources (instead of randomly googled articles) and double check the accuracy of data using multiple sources and common sense is an important component to evaluation.
- Critical Thinking and Independent Analysis: whether the analysis is sophisticated, insightful, and thoughtful, and exhibits independent and critical thinking, not just regurgitation of information or company propaganda, and whether you can gather important insights from financial and other data. Focus on analysis not descriptions! Brief background and facts are OK but overly detailed descriptions will count against you. The integration of analysis and consistency shown across the presentation is also an important component to evaluation.
Format your assignment according to the following formatting requirements:
1. The answer should be typed, double spaced, using Times New Roman font (size 12), with one-inch margins on all sides.
2. The response also includes a cover page containing the title of the assignment, the student's name, the course title, and the date. The cover page is not included in the required page length.
3. Also include a reference page. The Citations and references should follow APA format. The reference page is not included in the required page length.