Deck 10: Marketing Organization, Implementation, and Control

Question 1

See how Dow's "solutionism" (www.dow.com/about/index.htm) is addressing some of the world's biggest challenges. The more we talk together, the more we solve together. Wind turbines today are truly revolutionizing energy generation across the globe. The Orkney Islands provide a glimpse of a renewable future. Cutting-edge wave and tidal technology is regenerating island communities and bringing new jobs and new skills.

Answer 1

Not Answer

Question 2

Discuss the benefits gained in adopting a matrix approach in terms of organizational structure.

Answer 2

Matrix organizational structure is all about where employees have several reporting lines and where supervisors look after and have a saying in different departments too other than their own.
The benefits that could be gained by a company that adopts matrix organizational structure are that the company has a very strict control over its working patterns and the supervision of all business processes is very transparent and definite. The decisions taken by any department in the organization has a chance to be reviewed by several other departmental heads and this increases the viability of the particular decision.
Thus to conclude it could be said that matrix organization structure has its pros and cons both. It is very beneficial when the company is highly decentralized as in the organizational activities gets reviewed at each and every level giving the true nature of it.

Question 3

Video Collaboration Studios (VCS) is continually growing new studios globally. The immersive environment created by VCS allows employees to connect face to face from any part of the world as if they were in the same room. These studios greatly reduce the need for travel-saving money and time and reducing carbon footprint. What factors are overlooked?

Answer 3

Videoconferencing is all about employees being in touch sitting miles away from each other with the use of internet and a camera conducting a meeting. This videoconferencing has changed the business outlook altogether and brought the people in the world much closer.
Video Collaboration Studios (VCS) is continually growing new studios globally. The immersive environment created by VCS allows employees to connect face to face from any part of the world as if they were in the same room. These studios greatly reduce the need to travel -saving money and time and thus reducing carbon footprints which are great thing for saving the environment and global warming.
But the things that are overlooked in VCS is that the actual presence of the person is available or not. Sometimes when employees working in different parts of the world for the same company ahs to come to a assent regarding the conduct of VCS so that the time difference is not a constraint and it becomes conducive for every one to com efface to face via internet to conduct and attend a meeting. Also there is no guarantee that the internet and other connections will work effectively at the time of video conferencing. Thus there are many factors that forms a disadvantage for the VCS.

Question 4

Is there more to the "not-invented-here" syndrome than simply hurt feelings on the part of those who believe they are being dictated to by headquarters?

Question 5

How can systems that are built for global knowledge transfer be used as control tools?

Question 6

"Implementers are the most important country organizations in terms of buy-in for effective global marketing strategy implementation." Comment.

Question 7

Just Right Globalization?
Too little attention to foreign markets seems to result in missed opportunities for sales growth, operational inefficiencies, and the risk of being blindsided by fast-moving international competitors. In companies with large international operations, senior executives who gave too little attention to global issues tended to follow one of two approaches. In the first instance, they forced head-office solutions on overseas subsidiaries using a kind of "my way or the highway" mentality. In the second approach, they delegated primary strategic and operating decision-making authority to foreign subsidiary managers, employing a sort of "it's not my job to worry about these things" mindset. While both approaches may be efficient from a head-office perspective, neither maximizes company performance. Both fail to tap the rich resources of the global company. Both also fail to achieve the learning and best-practice benefits that come through global knowledge sharing and skill generation.
On the other hand, an excessive level of attention to opportunities and threats abroad seems to create even bigger problems. It can lead senior executives to take their minds off potentially more critical issues at home or interfere with the smooth functioning of foreign operations that do not need intense scrutiny from head-office managers. This can also lead to mental overload and exhaustion on the part of members of the top management team. Given the complexity of global markets, staying abreast of and interpreting world events is taxing.
The greater the international experience levels of managers, the greater the benefits that come from global attention. Managers with more international experience generally had greater ability not only to make sense of rather complex international stimuli but also to process them quickly and in ways that improved the quality of their decision making. Bottom line: if you want to get the most benefit from global attention, put people in place with lots of international experience.

What works best if executives want to increase the level of attention their subordinates give to global issues?

Question 8

Every big company has in-house experts. So why do they not use them more? Search systems that apply social-computing tools such as internal blogs, wikis, and social networks can fill these critical gaps. Posted comments and communication between users help reveal not only who knows what but who is approachable. Cemex (www.cemex.com/AboutUs/OurApproach.aspx) invited 400 employees involved with its ready-mix products to help figure out which products worked best and which were redundant. The result is a slimmed-down product line offered in a constantly updated catalog available globally.

Question 9

Firms differ, often substantially, in their organizational structures even within the same industry. What accounts for these differences in their approaches?

Question 10

Just Right Globalization?
Too little attention to foreign markets seems to result in missed opportunities for sales growth, operational inefficiencies, and the risk of being blindsided by fast-moving international competitors. In companies with large international operations, senior executives who gave too little attention to global issues tended to follow one of two approaches. In the first instance, they forced head-office solutions on overseas subsidiaries using a kind of"my way or the highway"mentality. In the second approach, they delegated primary strategic and operating decision-making authority to foreign subsidiary managers, employing a sort of"it's not my job to worry about these things"mindset. While both approaches may be efficient from a head-office perspective, neither maximizes company performance. Both fail to tap the rich resources of the global company. Both also fail to achieve the learning and best-practice benefits that come through global knowledge sharing and skill generation.
On the other hand, an excessive level of attention to opportunities and threats abroad seems to create even bigger problems. It can lead senior executives to take their minds off potentially more critical issues at home or interfere with the smooth functioning of foreign operations that do not need intense scrutiny from head-office managers. This can also lead to mental overload and exhaustion on the part of members of the top management team. Given the complexity of global markets, staying abreast of and interpreting world events is taxing.
The greater the international experience levels of managers, the greater the benefits that come from global attention. Managers with more international experience generally had greater ability not only to make sense of rather complex international stimuli but also to process them quickly and in ways that improved the quality of their decision making. Bottom line: if you want to get the most benefit from global attention, put people in place with lots of international experience.

Managers who use the"Goldilocks scenario"to solve problems may exhaust themselves as they encounter new issues. What can managers do to avoid exhaustion while managing their international offices?
SOURCES: Allen Morrison and CyrilBouquet,"Are You Giving Globalization the Right Amount of Attention?" MIT Sloan Management Review (Winter 2011): 14-16; and CyrilBouquet, Allen Morrison, and Julian Birkinshaw,"InternationalAttention and Multinational Enterprise Performance," Journal of International Business Studies 40, no. 1 (2009): 108-131.