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International Management - Rodchenko VV

1.5. Global vision and a new analytical thinking

In recent years, the management literature has considerably increased the number of articles relating to issues of globalization. Specialists are moving away from the perception of international contemporary business and see it mainly from a global perspective. We are talking about the globalization of markets, companies, institutions and the development of the globalization strategies.

Globalization - the increasing interdependence of national economies, the intertwining of social and economic processes that are carried out in different regions of the world and force firms to look for better conditions of work.

Driving forces of globalization are:

• overcome the uneven distribution of raw materials and energy resources on the planet;

• climatic and economic and geographic differences that are responsible for the territorial division of labor, specialization of countries and cause the development and deepening of the relationship between them;

• achievement of Transport and Communications;

• acceleration of the pace of technological innovation and the withdrawal of inventions on the market;

• an increase in open markets and international relations.

Inhibiting factor of globalization - different socio-economic systems, government intervention in the economy and protectionist policies, fluctuations in exchange rates, ideological differences, religious restrictions, the traditional conflicts and others.

One of the earliest practitioners use the term "global thinking", was executive director of the company "General Electric" J. Welch, who in early 1988 urged the leaders of the system in-house training managers to develop a "global mindset" in response to the competitive challenge from the European companies "Asea Brown Boveri", "Olivetti", "Elektrolux". It was emphasized that the development of the global mindset must be different from the development of international and national thinking.

The structure includes a new global thinking, global, vision problems, and suggests new analytical skills and the ability to use the new Strategic Concept.

Historically previously formed other "internal" thinking, limited scope of a single area or a country. It is still typical for companies in countries with a large domestic market. Such a way of thinking inherent good knowledge of national culture and the strong influence of the so-called syndrome of "not invented here".

In the next step managers were having "inter-ethnic" mentality and able to make decisions on the level of the two countries. Such managers are usually a long time were in a foreign country. As a result, they have developed some useful skills in international business, which, however, are not sufficient for the formation of a global perception.

Closer to the global managers to specialists, thinking at the multinational level. Usually it is people who have a wealth of experience in the field of international cooperation of several countries. However, this still does not provide a global mindset.

Global perception goes beyond ethnic and multi-ethnic world. It is characterized by mental equal-distance from all the main markets (North America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region). Global thinking is based on knowledge of the world, regardless of the number of countries visited. global thinking carrier may not travel around the world, but he must be able to "see" through the borders of individual countries and territories.

First of all, in the "database" global intelligence should include information about the geography of the world's major markets. Data on markets that have expertise of international and multinational level, is clearly insufficient. In addition, the required in-depth knowledge in the field of world historical development, the global economic system, as well as an understanding of global trends in the political arena, knowledge of the business world. At the same time the main differences these approaches are not in the volumes of information, and in the processing of existing data in the coordinate system and the alleged "angle of view".

Global thinking requires a certain basic skills on the world market, the formation of which depends on the ability to pass from one species of work to another.

The system of categories developed by M. Porter, allows to perceive competition not only within the individual groups of producers, but also in a broader context. Central to this analysis is the concept of so-called key success factors, which are the basic requirements to be met by any company wishing to gain advantages in a particular industry and a long time to maintain its competitiveness.

When you exit the level of global competition should determine whether it is possible to achieve an advantage over its competitors to take advantage of the key success factors acting simultaneously in several markets. One of the objectives in the framework of a global approach is the analysis of the industry on a global scale and the detection of the most favorable places for the realization of the potential opportunities of the company.

Currently, there are already companies that are faced with the real global consumers have identical needs and desires. Buyers of each country may have different ways to satisfy a particular need, but the steady presence of a particular product in many markets indicates that its production and sales reached the stage of global reach consumers. In such circumstances, globalization offers can help achieve competitive advantage. However, the global approach does not imply complete identity products and selling them all over the same methods. Manager with a global mindset must possess a variety of strategies to be able to identify the interests of consumers to the global brand image, products and services.

Today around the world there is a tendency to increase the number of buyers seeking global choice when shopping. Traditionally, consumers shopped after comparing the products produced in a limited area (the nearest to the place of residence or country of residence). With the tightening of competition in the national markets of the company began to tie a relationship with new suppliers and customers abroad. This has led to the expansion of geography of international shipments. Many companies have realized the need to create entirely new organizational structure - such as a global, independent economic units by "IBM" company.

It is important that global managers treated the information available on the basis of new principles. Traditional business segmentation involves the allocation of customer segments and determining the geographical boundaries of interest. The manager, thinking at the international level, with an emphasis on geographic differences in the countries of key importance attached to the division of consumer segments.

Global Manager, which is the same facts, views the world from a different angle. The starting point for him is often a narrow segment of consumers of a certain product, and it analyzes the geographical boundaries of interests within this segment. Ultimately, global manager sees more differences between consumer segments than between the territories. The main attention is focused on the general terms of all consumers within the studied segment. To find such similarities are much more difficult than finding the surface, often transient differences when comparing several geographical regions.

In many companies, managers have the authority within a specific geographic region, so they collect information only on its territory, often without regard to their forecasts trends in the development of other regions. Global Manager should be able to see the relationship in industry and business over a wide area or in several regions. Responsible for the operation of companies in a particular country or a particular market (eg the Netherlands), he must be aware of the situation in the industry and the state of competition not only in this country but also in other European countries, the USA and Japan. This can greatly accelerate innovation and increase the company's flexibility.

In practice, however, many firms continue to collect data only on selected areas. This requires, on the one hand, a lot of time, on the other - high material costs. Thinking globally as manager will be able to compare the information on the industry, competitors, buyers and customers in many countries and to select the information needed for decision-making in a particular country. But for this companies have to change the attitude to the search and use of information.

A key element of the global collective thinking is the ability to identify the major markets worldwide, t. E. Such markets or countries that possess traits of leaders on certain indicators. These markets serve as indicators for the leaders of what might happen in other areas or sectors.

Global analysis of industry and regional trends in the development of competition should be carried out taking into account the processes occurring in the major markets, with careful study of the possible linkages, while inter-ethnic and multicultural approaches are limited to testing for each market in isolation, without taking into account the situation on the other.

This implies an important advantage of the global thinking - ability to accumulate global experience. Global Manager consistently collects and selects the desired information, gradually building a common model based on general experience. Thus, companies can use the experience of any part of the world and use it to become more competitive than firms that are guided by the experience gathered on the limited space.

Watching the organizational changes taking place in the large transnational companies, we are witnessing the emergence of a new generation of enterprises. More recently, large companies such as "ICI", "Philips" and "Siemens", have been reorganized to create a large number of small firms with operational independence. These enterprises are exempt from the influence of the traditional territorial management, where each country marketing several diversified commodity groups only engaged in the marketing division of the firm. Now, marketing and sales organizations are distributed in each of the corporation so that they control a specific distribution channel.

Many international companies have formed a self-contained "command" (strategic entrepreneurial units), which are focused on a particular segment of consumers, a limited set of products assortment, group of customers, or even on a specific project. But all these "teams" should have one thing in common - have a global mindset to take advantage of operational freedom.

Among the newly established enterprises that have arisen "in the shadow" of large multinational corporations, is developing a new trend. Instead of creating a consistent integrated subsidiaries in the interest of the market is concentrated young aggressive company functions and integrate them into their own separate operating company. At that time, as marketing and sales are still fragmented over large areas, other functions, such as finance, research and development, production, concentrated where there are particular advantages.

For example, the company "the Logitech", a world leader in computer "mouse" (the device for information input), posted unit for the assembly of its products in Taiwan, finance departments on the development and production of metal components - in Switzerland, for the production of plastic parts - in USA. All these units are aimed at global markets. More established companies (such as "Olivetti" and "Asea Brown Boveri") also created a similar model of the organization. But the "Logitech" - a young company, and it does not interfere with corporate traditions. Therefore, she could choose to implement their objectives in the most suitable scheme of organization.

The newly created company, specifically following a global strategy to become recently, "beacons" to a more "adult" of multinational firms, which in the past often used global strategy for its development, but it is usually done unconsciously.

It is obvious that the new forms of organization should be managed more like a network than a classical hierarchical structures. The success of such highly adaptive organizations, consisting of autonomous subsystems, the competition is increasingly dependent on competent professionals able to think globally.