International Management

Your task: You have been employed as management consultants by a company of your choice which is either contemplating international expansion into a specific market or already operating internationally: Your task is to produce a consulting report. You will analyze the current situation, develop frameworks for managing employees and provide recommendations related to how to manage the international operations most effectively. This integrative term project requires research, critical thinking, analysis, imagination, and logic in applying the concepts and frameworks learnt in the course MGMT 401. The report should contain: · Cover page · Executive summary – about 2-3 pages, outlining the main findings of the report, including analysis and recommendations. This is NOT included in the word limit. · Table of content – the main sections and the page numbers. Use the MS Word Function to create the table of content. This is NOT included in the word limit. · Body of the report: 1. Describe the environment (business, institutions, social, legal, political, demographic, etc.) and critical operational factors in the host country and explain how these might affect or are affecting your company. This part should be around 300 words. 2. Provide a brief background and critical analysis of the firm’s internationalization strategy so far – e.g., motivations to internationalize, scope of global operations (use measures of firm scope), growth, entry strategies in foreign markets. Be sure to evaluate the firm’s international success / failure as judged by its financial performance. This part should be around 300 words. Attach appendices with financial analysis. 3. Provide a cultural profile of both the country where the company is headquartered as well as the host country using concepts learned in this course. This part, around 300 words, should help you understand what local employees are like. 4. Explain the rationale for the staffing policy (e.g. ethnocentric, polycentric, global) the firm uses or should use for top-level, medium level, lower level managers, and other positions. What can be improved? 5. Explain the kinds of leadership, decision-making, and motivational systems the firm is using or should be using to be most effective in the host country. 6. Discuss the kinds of communication problems expatriate managers may face in the host country’s working environment. How should they prepare and deal with them? 7. Discuss issues of ethics and social responsibility managers may face (or are facing) in the host country and how they should deal with them. What can be improved? · References – list all sources referenced in the body of the report (not included in the word limit). · Appendices – attach any appendices that may enhance and support your analysis (not included in the word limit). · Parts 4-7 should be around 2,000 words. Thus, the whole project should be about 3000 words (+/- 10%). You are expected to use a minimum of five (5) sources in writing the project. All sources must be dated after 2009 (unless they are seminal pieces of work). The textbook and the Wikipedia do not count as a source. There is no shortage of sources on practically any topic. However, extreme care must be exercised as many unreferenced, undated, and even unnamed sources, freely available on the Web, are of questionable quality. You must use academic, refereed, and credible sources such as found in Library databases. If in doubt, contact me. Use in-text citations and make sure all sources used are included in the list of references. Font: Please use a serif font (such as Times New Roman), size 11-12 for a professional look.