Global Business Dimensions Study Guide BMAL 590 - Practice-Ready Answer Guide

Global Business Dimensions Study Guide BMAL 590 - Practice-Ready Answer Guide Why Study Global Strategy? - answer - Knowing the concepts and components of global strategy will improve job and career aspiration opportunities, build awareness of what is occurring in the world, and avoid the downside risks of globalization. Approximately 80 million people worldwide are directly employed by foreign-owned firms. global strategy - answer - a firm's intention to provide standardized products and/or services on a world-wide basis. Another definition suggests that global strategy is any strategy outside one's home country. However, the best definition is that "global strategy" is each firm's theory about how to compete successfully in whatever global markets the firm chooses to compete. "strategy as plan" - answer - The first school of thought This school is the oldest and is based on the work of Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian (German) military strategist. This school suggests that strategy is embodied in the same explicit rigorous formal planning as in the military. "strategy as action" - answer - suggests that strategy is most fundamentally reflected by firms' patterns of action. The planning school has been challenged by Liddell Hart, a British military strategist. Hart argues that the key to strategy is a set of flexible goal-oriented actions. He favored an indirect approach, which seeks rapid flexible actions to avoid clashing with opponents head-on. emergent strategy - answer - Henry Mintzberg, a Canadian scholar, posited that in addition to the intended strategy that the planning school emphasizes, there can be an emergent strategy that is not the result of "top-down" planning, but that is the outcome of a stream of smaller decisions from the "bottom up." "strategy as integration" - answer - Although the debate between the planning school and action school is difficult to resolve, many scholars and managers have realized that the essence of strategy is likely to be a combination of both planned deliberate actions and unplanned emergent activities defines strategy as "a firm's theory about how to compete successfully." In other words, if we have to define strategy with one word, our choice is neither plan nor action - it is theory. A theory serves two purposes: explanation and prediction. Strategy as a theory - answer - describes how to compete successfully in a global market. Firms have both intended and emergent strategies, meaning, some strategies are defined from the outset while others develop with the firm's participation in the marketplace. It is often difficult to change strategy so firms must guard against total adherence to a strategy because to do so would hamper adaptation in new situations. Strategy should continue to give coherence to decisions and actions. Managers must exert effective strategic leadership both in a global and a local perspective. Theory building and development requires replication and experimentation to establish the temporal (time-related) and geographic limits of an existing theory. The strategy as theory perspective helps us understand why it is often difficult to change strategy. Why do firms differ? - answer - The largest influences are a reflection of the cultural differences between Western and Japanese companies. In Western firms, the competition among companies drives the process. In other companies, like the Japanese, networks of relationships have powerful effects. Where does most of our knowledge of firms come from? - answer - Anglo-American capitalism keiretsu - answer - Japanese firms extensively employ a network form of supplier management, giving rise to the term keiretsu (inter-firm network). guanxi - answer - The Chinese favor guanxi (interpersonal networks), cultivated by managers, that may serve as informal substitutes for formal institutional support. In other words, interpersonal relationships among managers are translated into an inter-firm strategy of