Multinational Corporations and Nationality Essay

Multinational Corporations and Nationality - Essay Example The present research has identified that much contrary evidence suggests that even the most global of companies remain deeply rooted in the national business systems of their country of origin. Hu and Ruigrok have argued that MNCs exhibit national characteristics. Very few of the worlds largest companies are production highly internationalized as evidenced by very few Fortune top 100 companies have more than half their production facilities or their workforce outside the country of origin. Even though the home base does not account for the bulk of sales, operations, and employment, the home nation is almost always the primary locus of ownership and control. Board and senior management positions are staffed disproportionately - often overwhelmingly - by home country nationals, strategic decisions tend to be made in the home nation, and innovative activities are also disproportionately located there. The connection between national culture and MNC behavior rests on the academic industr y generated by Hofstede's analysis of `cultures consequences. Wong and Birnbaum, for example, have constructed hypotheses about MNC behavior on the basis of Hofstede's analysis of power distance, that is the perception by individuals of the degree of interpersonal power or influence exerted over them by their superiors in the organization. They found that the acceptance of unequal power distances in the banks home society was highly significant in explaining the centralization of authority in the bank operating in Hong Kong. The analysis using Hofstede’s ideas are said to have inconsistencies that make it unreliable. Hofstede came up with his five dimensions and scores with samples taken only from a single company – IBM. McSweeney points out that generalizing results from IBM employees to a global scale is unthinkable because there are no evidence-based reasons for assuming that the average IBM responses reflected ‘the’ national average.

Strategy management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3000 words - 3

Strategy management - Essay Example In order to stay relevant in such aggressive market, these companies have been forced to initiate new strategies characteristically from time to time. However, amid the innovativeness and creativity to generate such new strategies such as distinct mobile phone features, capability, speed, memory capacity and so forth, there has been a clash between the principal firms. Ultimately, the aim of each company is not only to stay relevant but to remain dominant in the market as well. In a number of studies by prominent researchers such as Michael porter, Bowman’s, Johnson’s, McKenzie’s etc on the marketing strategies, they have made some influential marketing models to analyse the reign in competitive market spheres. For instance, in Porter’s generic strategies, he proposed three stratagems of cost leadership, focus and differentiation (Porter, 2007). Through the three strategies, Porter intends to show that the profit of the firm is basically the difference between its returns and cost. Thus, high profitability is achievable through attaining lower costs or higher prices with reference to the competition, meaning that a company can earn a price premium through differentiation (de Kluyver, 2010). In line with Porters’ and other models by other researchers, I seek to critically evaluate some of the analytical processes against three major mobile manufacturing companies. The purpose of this study paper is to not only evaluate the models, but also explore the merits and demerits associated with each of the analytical processes with regard to the telecommunication industry. The methodology of this paper will be an evaluation of the analytical process, followed by application of the firms and conclusion of each with the scepticism of demerits experienced of the processes. In addition, will be an assessment of the number of ways to mitigate the deficiencies of the models if any. A case study of this assessment paper is on three major mobile manufacturing