There are four main international market entry options. They include licensing, exporting, joint venture and direct investment. Licensing enables a company to use the entities in possession of a licensor, which normally carry intangible character; they are patents, trading strategies and techniques, and trademarks (Foreign Market Entry Modes, 2010). Exporting stands for a direct sale of the products manufactured domestically to international markets. Exporting is tightly connected to such aspects as government regulations, transportation, and the needs of an importer (Foreign Market Entry Modes, 2010). A joint venture may be created with a variety of different goals, for example, sharing of risks and rewards, exchange of technologies, collaborative product development, and international entry.
In a joint venture the partners are to take into consideration such aspects as duties and level of involvement, ownership, pricing, control and influence, resources and capabilities. Among the main issues there are the allocation of income, cultural clashes, mutual mistrust, uneven investments and conflicts based on them. Finally, foreign direct investment refers to purchase of properties and facilities in a foreign country (Foreign Market Entry Modes, 2010). This entry option allows high level of control over the operations and better knowledge of competitive market, yet direct investment assumes that the investor possesses large resources and is highly dedicated to the process.
Construction of Corporate Scenarios
Corporate scenarios became an important part of business as it grew more complex. Scenarios have the capacity to improve business planning, develop more complex strategies and geode investments and they are applied on local and regional levels. Scenarios reveal potential risks and opportunities of a business, help with the decision making, and allow business forecasting. To be helpful a scenario needs to be plausible, consistent and serve as a base for future decision making (Scenario Building, 2007). Constructing a corporate scenario one needs to follow three main steps. First of all, they need to create industry scenarios that allow assumptions about task environment taking into account the most important and relevant features of targeted countries. This is necessary to be able to envision the likely future of particular industries.
Secondly, one is requited to form common-size statements of financial character based on the company’s performance in the past to create foundation for financial forecasting. Finally, it is necessary to form financial statements concerning the estimated future of a business including optimistic, realistic and pessimistic figures.
Organizational Structure and Culture
Organizational structure and culture may be the sources of success of a business, but at the same time they may because of the main contributors to failure. When an organization is structured in a way unsuitable for its size, purpose or specialization, problems are likely to occur. If a small company is overcomplicated in its structure, it creates a level of confusion since the employees are not sure to which manager they are to answer, or whom to address with various types of questions. Besides, organizational structure may be oversimplified, the employees will have too many duties and responsibilities which will slow down the working process and efficiency of an organization. Culture in an organization is considered strong when main assumptions are shared by the employees throughout the company, while lack of shared assumptions is considered a cultural weakness (Austin, 2015).
In my opinion, my organization has a significant structural issue – its bureaucratic built where one worker may be responsible for a huge number of duties, as a result the clients often are treated without individual approach, some of the workers suffer from burnout, and working process is slow. Yet, organizational culture is supported by the reduced turnover and a great number of incentives for the employees maintaining their motivation. Structural issue could have been resolved if the organization had more complex division and functional structure was employed.
Strategy and Culture
In my opinion, organizational culture is the very basis, the primary foundation of the company and all of its elements. Strategy is something that can be altered in response to the environmental factors and changed according to the attest trends within an industry where it is applied. At the same time, culture of an organization is something a business and its operators are to stay loyal to regardless of the environmental factors. For example, in her speech at MIT Marilyn Carlson Nelson, a leader of one of the largest corporations in the United States, mentioned that throughout the decades of the existence of her company the culture has been adjusted, but generally preserved and promoted, this is why environmental factors such as financial crisis and natural disasters have not impacted the culture of the company but encouraged the employees to act according to it (The Art and Science of Managing the New Global Corporation, 2011). Strategy is an entity much more flexible than culture. Strategy needs to be sensitive and responsive, while for the culture this would be a negative feature since a culture that changes all the time is generally weak and inconsistent.
Principles of Reengineering
Reengineering is directed at the improvement of quality of service and the increase of business efficiency. Hammer developed seven principles of reengineering which are designed to optimize the work of a company starting from a clean slate, getting rid of needless and old-fashioned assumptions and replacing them with the concerns relevant today. The seven principles are:
- Organize around result instead of tasks
- Identify organizational processes and reorganize them based on urgency
- Integrate information processing into its production
- Approach geographically dispersed commodities as if they are centralized
- Link activities that are parallel to each other
- Decision has to be made where the work actually is performed
- Grasp information at its source (Hammer, 2015).
In my opinion the most important principle is number three as information processing is a crucial part of any work, so it this process could be reorganized and optimize it would positively affect the whole working process speeding it up and sorting out a lot of needless activities making the workers available for other tasks.
Reference List
Austin, Don. (2015). Organizational Culture Source of Strength, Weakness, Continuity, and Change. Web.
Foreign Market Entry Modes. (2010). QuickMBA. Web.
Hammer, M. (2015). Reengineering Work: Don’t Automate, Obliterate. Web.
Scenario Building. (2007). JRC. Web.
The Art and Science of Managing the New Global Corporation. (2011). MITTechTV. Web.