3. Matsushita strength building process
In late 1980s, Matsushita had been able to take the opportunity from market changes and was successfully overtook Philips. As mentioned, the globalisation era shift electronics market competition from local fulfillment to global price competition. Compared to the Philips decentralized structures, the centralized Matsushita’s structure with its ability to respond to market opportunities enabled Matsushita to became global leader in this era.
Firstly, while Philips autonomous subsidiaries lowered their speed of reaction, the Matsushita ability to adopt the innovation supported by its centralised structure was providing significant productivity. As argued by Daft (2009), during the internationalisation companies usually still want to achieve ”common organizational goals”. However, it is difficult for them to choose between focusing on global standardisation or national responsiveness. Philips structure was geographic/product matrix with emphasis on the national responsiveness while Matsushita adapt the product matrix structure with power delegation to the subsidiaries. As illustrated in F During the period where forces for global integration are high and national responsiveness is low, Matsushita structure and mass production capabilities provides them advantages in delivering standardised low price product during that period.
Figure 1. Model to Fit Organisation Structure to International Advantages
Source: Roderick E. White and Thomas A. Poynter, “Organizing for Worldwide Advantage,” Business Quarterly (Summer 1989), 84–89. Adapted by permission of Business Quarterly, published by the Western Business School, the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada.
The main strategic ...
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... plants and concentrate production in manufacturing centers.
In addition, the inability of Matsushita to encourage innovation from local market was also key disadvantages. Despite its four localizations, overseas companies continued to act primarily only as the implementation arms of Japanese-based product divisions. Matsushita attempt to transform of substantial resources and delegation of many responsibilities were not able to eliminate dependency of the local plants to the parent company.
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N.V. Philips (Netherlands) and Matsushita Electric (Japan) are among the largest consumer electronics companies in the world. Their success was based on two contrasting strategies – diversification of worldwide portfolio and local responsiveness for Philips, and high centralization and mass production for Matsushita.
General Motors is knocking on the door to world class business performance. Ohmae’s five stages of global operation support General Motors aspirations. From stage one to stage five there are significant differences to becoming a global organization. For instance, stage one, states that a company supports arm’s length customer export activity by a domestic company that links up with local and distributors to function. This stage represents the entry level global corporation. General Motors is at stage 4 of Ohmae’s five stages of becoming a global corporation, because it has exemplified the following traits: Systems and tools used globally not just at headquarters, R&D, Engineering and other business operations have a global focus, and all support functions are applied globally. (MFGO 601, WK. #2 Lecture Notes) An example of Ohmae’s, stage ...
Thus began a long period of imitation, manufacturing products that were invented elsewhere. Sharp operated in industries in which products were easy to imitate and followed a dominant design. In addition to making refrigerators, washing machines, and air conditioners, Sharp also manufactured televisions licensed from RCA and microwaves licensed from Litton. Though Hayakawa promoted innovation, “the company remained primarily an assembler” of consumer goods (Noda 2). Sharp’s relatively small size and limited capital prevented it from developing a vertically integrated business and forced it to contract with other companies for significant portions of the value chain. This meant that it could not maintain control over its intelle...
Porter, M. E. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard business review, 25-40.
We all know that comapanies go international for many reasons but always typical goal is comapny growth and expantions. When a company searches for new interesting markets abroad and also hires international employees, using well designed international strategy can for sure expand business on foreign markets. Internalization strategy of companies is now possible because is no problem to manage business by phone or e-mail. There is also no problem to travel by plane from Europe to Asia in few hours what was not possible in past.
Over the last 30 years the world has seen drastic changes in the Chinese way of making business. Nowadays, China has opened its businesses to the rest of the world, especially America and Europe (Teagarden & Cai, 2009). As a result, their economy has increased and the evolution of the companies have changed to be from closed doors to be international and multinational (Teagarden & Cai, 2009). This essay will analyze, first of all, how some Chinese companies have had success abroad, looking at the strategy that they applied to expand and to improve their products. Furthermore, this essay will show examples of successful Chinese firms, such as Lenovo and TCL Group, and how they achieve it.
Fernandez, John P. and Barr, Mary, (1993). The Diversity Advantage: How American Business Can Out-Perform Japanese and European Companies in the Global Marketplace.
This paper examines the expansion of General Motors overseas in its various phases, as well as triggers for internationalization and the problems faced during the process. The paper also considers what benefits have been achieved through international growth, and how the company can be classified with regards to Bartlett and Ghosal’s 4 typologies. Finally, the paper discusses the concept of a “world car,” meeting the demands of customers across the globe.
15. Hill, Charles W.L. International Business: Competing in the Global Marketplace. New York : McGraw-Hill, 2007.
In today's business environment, there is sustained pressure for companies to maximize productivity in order to be competitive in the marketplace. Many businesses are moving a variety of activities, such as manufacturing and product development, to countries with low labour costs. They are also opening up sales channels in many new markets. The resulting global organizations need to structure themselves, so that they can effectively manage operations across numerous locations. This paper looks at how the organizational structure of a global company influences decision-making at the regional level, and how this can affect the business performance. This paper will:
Daniels, J. D., Radebaugh, L. H., and Sullivan, D. P., (2011). International Business: Environments and Operations. Prentice Hall, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey.
Nowadays, business is set in a global environment. Companies not only regard their locations or primary market bases, but also consider the rest of the world. In this context, more and more companies start to run multinational business in various parts of the world. In this essay, companies which run multinational business are to be characterized as multinational companies'. By following the globalization campaign, multinational companies' supply chains can be enriched, high costs work force can be transformed and potential markets can be expanded. Consequentially, competitive advantages of companies can be strengthened in a global market. Otherwise, some problems are met in the changed environments in foreign countries at the same time. The changed environments can be divided into four main aspects, namely, cultural environment, legal environment, economic environment and political system problems. All the changed environments make problems to multinational companies. In particular, problems which are caused by changed culture environment are the most serious aspect of running a multinational business. This essay will discuss these problems and give some suggestions to solve them.
To be successful in today’s global market, managers and leaders need to understand more than just technical skills. Managers and leaders should also understand globalization and organizational behavior. Globalization is the tendency of businesses, technologies, or philosophies to spread throughout the world, or the process of making this happen. The global economy is sometimes referred to as a globality, characterized as a totally interconnected marketplace, unhampered by time zones or national boundaries (Search CIO). Organizational behavior is a field of study that studies individuals groups, and structure. Organizational behavior applies the knowledge gained about individuals, groups, and the effect of structure on behavior in order to make organizations work more effectively (Robbins,2014).Gaining an understanding of globalization and its effect on organizational behavior is crucial to interacting effectively in the modern global economy. Globalization affects an organization’s behavior in several ways like stimulating hyper competitive pricing for a product or service, perpetuating continuous operations and communicating around the clock and globe, capitalism is replacing governmental control and organizations are no longer constrained by borders, and corporations are becoming more heterogeneous and adapting to people who are from different nationalities and cultures. To be successful in a global economy, professionals should have a thorough knowledge of sociology, psychology, communication, and management.
Currently in the global environment, there is a strong sense of competition that must be achieved through better performance, almost all firms are competing in international markets due to the reduction in barriers for capital and tariffs. With the new changes in both communication and technology, the consequences faced are that production processes are no longer within national boundaries but spread across (Debrah & Smith, 2002).