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Merger activity: solutions to Japan's economic downturn? Economic downturn in Japan has brought about an urgent need for Japanese companies to restructure. Throughout the postwar period of economic growth corporate Japan has been dominated by organizational structures based on relational ties, which have protected implicit contracts with employees and acted as a barrier to takeovers. The current disintegration of traditional business networks has brought about restructuring through merger activity, often with foreign firms, resulting in more market-oriented corporate control structures. The success of these mergers will depend on incorporating market considerations, while retaining the advantages of alliance structures.
Keywords: Japan, Mergers and acquisitions, Financial restructuring
The need for global managers: a business necessity Multinational corporations need to recognize the importance of international management development. Formal human resource programs, tied to business objectives, need to be established. Ignoring the importance of global management development leads to missed market opportunities. Understanding and support at the executive level is a necessity. Human resource information systems need to include international data elements to help in the identification of candidates. Training budgets have to shift course work from a domestic focus to multicultural and international marketplace issues. The home and host managers must agree to the objectives for the employee prior to the assignment start. Repatriation assignments must align with the experience.
Keywords: Globalization, Managers, Teams, Expatriates, Multinationals
Interpreting corporate transformation through failure Defines and evaluates transformation, and examines why transformation efforts can fail. Provides a case study, describing the context, strategy and change processes. Finally, identifies what lessons can be learned from working with failure.
Keywords: Business failure, Organizational change, Management development, Construction
industry
Beyond downsizing: recreating in Australia The management literature is replete with articles on total quality management, just-in-time manufacturing, strategic partnerships between customers and vendors, re-engineering the company, flattening the organisation, teams that replace individual decision making and horizontal organisational structures. The terms and descriptions used in the literature for these organisational changes vary, but the overall objective is the same, to increase organisational effectiveness and to ensure the future of these organisations by establishing more efficient operations. In many companies positive organisational change is often undertaken simultaneously with, or following on from a "downsizing" or "restructuring" programme. In business recreation, whether in Australia or any other country, operational efficiency built upon enhanced processes must not be seen as the final objective - the opportunities are much greater. Examples of successful Australian organisational recreation are given.
Keywords: Organizational restructuring, Recreation, Downsizing
Business strategy in new high-tech ventures: an empirical analysis The aim of this study is to determine the existence of specific and unique features characterising markets, activities and customers in at least two of the most representative high technology sectors nowadays, the microelectronics/software industry and the biotechnology/biomedical industry. Cross-Tabs statistical method has been used to analyze the data collected from the sample made up by 18 high-tech American firms. One of the major findings of this study is that the business strategy will hold better prospects in those high-tech firms benefiting from a higher technological excellence, having spent longer time in developing and launching their products, being able to keep longer the novelty attached to their products, being positioned in intermediate to final stages of the production chain.
Keywords: Business strategy, Empirical study, High technology
Changing strategic postures of overseas Chinese firms in emerging Asian markets One of the most important cultural values in Chinese societies is family-oriented collectivism. This cultural value has had much impact on the structures and strategies of overseas Chinese firms. Influenced by this cultural value, traditional Chinese firms prefer family ownership and stress hierarchy and centralized decision making, which in turn influence the business strategies of these firms. In recent years, however, the majority of Chinese societies have been in transition, and traditional Chinese culture is also changing. These developments have brought about changes in strategies of the overseas Chinese firms. To study these changes, this paper focuses on the manufacturing industries in a major emerging market, China, and reports evidence of changes in both culture and business strategy of overseas Chinese firms. Concludes with a discussion on the implications of the findings for both researchers and practitioners.
Keywords: Business strategy, China, Markets, National cultures
Choosing the right employee: Chinese vs US preferences Explicit or implicit sets of selection criteria are always used when hiring decisions are made. When employers and job applicants come from similar cultural backgrounds, applicants may better understand what job-related attributes employers think are important and can develop and stress those qualities. Many studies have attempted to identify important job attributes, but despite recent globalization trends, there is little information comparing the importance of different criteria to individuals from different cultures. For this exploratory study, Chinese and US individuals were surveyed to ascertain their ratings of the importance of 26 job selection attributes. Given the cultural distance between the USA and China, it was hypothesized that significant differences would be found. As China emerges as an important global player with increasing interaction between US and Chinese organizations, the results of this study should help each culture better understand the other and lead to better business relationships between the two countries.
Keywords: China, Decision making, Human resource planning, Job design, Selection, USA
Innovate or liquidate - are all organisations convinced? A two-phased
study into the innovation process Striving to survive in the ever changing world, the ability to innovate has become increasingly crucial. But are all organisations convinced? Based on data collected from a recent survey and a telephone interview, this article examines the general understanding of issues concerning innovation among managers and their ability to translate this understanding into practice. The study reveals that while most organisations have realised the importance of innovation and are prepared to mobilise their managers to be involved in innovation projects, many of them have not yet been able to create an innovation culture and devise suitable policies to encourage innovation positively within the wider context of their organisations. It is also discovered that there is a surprisingly low level of understanding of the most commonly known innovation techniques, yet most people dismiss the value of creativity training programmes conducted in their organisations, raising serious concerns over the effectiveness of these programmes.
Keywords: Creativity, Innovation, Organizational culture, Problem solving
Making the case for knowledge management: the bigger picture Despite several years of hearty media and academic interest, for most people "knowledge management" still remains an ill-defined and woolly concept. The problem may be that knowledge management proponents have usually focused on either the minutiae of implementation - intranets and data mining techniques - or worse, on abstract theories such as the value of trust in a knowledge sharing culture. This article contends that it is only really possible to appreciate the concrete importance of knowledge management in the workplace if the subject is seen in a much broader context - as causally related to the enormous changes taking place in the global economic framework itself. These more fundamental changes to the economic environment are what are driving organizations toward adopting the sophisticated new set of policies and practices known as "knowledge management". In short, there is a broad "knowledge-based revolution" taking place, and it comes in a matching set: the knowledge-based economy for nations, and knowledge management for organizations themselves.
Keywords: Globalization, Knowledge workers, Management, Skilled workers, Technological
innovation
Relationship marketing as an ethical approach: philosophical and
managerial considerations As the thoughts and actions of marketers focus on the philosophy of relationship marketing (RM), the purpose of this paper is to broaden our understanding of the concept for its effect on ethical behaviour in organisations. Whilst there is evidence of strong ethical inputs in the theory formation of RM, there is also a need to separate rhetoric from reality. In this paper we argue that despite the evidence that RM is inherently a concept with strong ethical roots, there is a gap between the theory of RM and its actual practice. Indeed, major changes in values and ethics may be required if RM is to be truly adopted. Otherwise there is a danger of allowing RM's ethical inputs (commitment, trust, etc.) to become axiomatic without being subjected to sufficient critical scrutiny at the practical level. We believe that the RM philosophy is capable not only of contributing genuinely to the strategic discourse of contemporary organisations, but also of playing the role of the social advocate by fostering mechanisms which will generate ethical introspection and promote ethical decision making.
Keywords: Relationship marketing, Marketing ethics, Decision making
As always we have only skimmed the surface of relevant articles this week and only those that are particularly relevant for Asia-Pacific managers. Many other articles are available as well including those focusing on other countries and international perspectives.
No other resources this week |
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