Managing in a Globalized Environment
Posted on April 13, 2024 by Martin Hahn, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
This article discusses how many if not all international companies conduct business, projects and work using the compter and internet.
Physical distance, cultural distance, or another type of distance has always been a major stumbling block to doing business abroad. This is because distance complicates everything the manager does, from controlling local operations to coaching employees.
Telecommunications tools like the telephone and e-mail reduce these problems. Instant messaging enables geographically dispersed employees to communicate inexpensively in real time. With Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology, calls that would usually go over phone lines are redirected through the Internet, which makes it easier and less expensive for companies to add or delete phones, and to combine voice and e-mail systems. Telecommunications in the form of electronic transmission of data, text, graphics, voice (audio), or image (video) over any distance is also facilitated by transferring technical information.
Ford designers at the company’s Dearborn, Michigan, headquarters use computers to design new cars. Digitized designs then go electronically to Ford’s Turin, Italy, design facility. There, the system automatically reproduces the designs and creates mockups of them. As another example, PricewaterhouseCoopers maintains electronic bulletin boards on more than 1,000 different company projects. About 18,000 of its employees in twenty-two countries use these electronic bulletin boards to get updates on matters such as how to handle specialized projects.
Face-to-Face Global Communications
However, dealing with sensitive topics or trying to be persuasive usually requires more personal, rich media, and this is where modern IT-based systems are invaluable to global managers. Being able to see the other person usually makes it easier to communicate in any situation. And in some societies like in many in Asia societies, people are much more comfortable with rich media. This means communicating with people whose expressions and gestures they can actually see. Examples of useful IT tools here include videoconferencing, group decision support systems, and virtual communities. These all support global communications and make it possible for virtual teams which are geographically dispersed, to communicate primarily online and via telecommunications to do their jobs.
● Videoconferencing Companies use videoconferencing to facilitate communications of geographically dispersed members of work teams. For example, the team that developed the Boeing 787 made extensive use of videoconferencing for meetings with engine suppliers and airlines around the world to discuss the new aircraft’s design. The links may be by phone or they may be satellite-based; or they may use one of the popular PC-based video technologies. Videoconferencing has become very sophisticated. For example, Hewlett-Packard’s new life-size Halo Collaboration Studio makes videoconferencing so clear that it makes people look as if they’re on the other side of the table, although they may be half a world away.
● Workgroup support systems are technology-based systems that make it easier for workgroup members to work together. Team members might meet at a single site, or they may be dispersed around the world. A group decision support system (DSS) is an interactive, computer- based communications system that facilitates the solution of problems by a virtual decision-making team. The group DSS lets team members interact via their PCs and use several software tools to assist in decision making and project completion. These software tools include electronic questionnaires, electronic brainstorming tools, idea organizers (to help team members compile ideas generated during brainstorming), and tools for voting or setting priorities (so that recommended solutions can be weighted and prioritized). A group scheduling system provides a shared scheduling database for geographically disbursed group members. Each group member puts his or her daily schedule into the shared database, which then helps to identify and set the most suitable times for meetings. A workflow automation system uses an e-mail type of system to automate the flow of paperwork. For example, if a proposal requires four signatures, the workflow automation system can send it electronically from mailbox to mailbox for the required signatures.
● Collaborative writing systems let group members create long written documents (such as proposals) while working at a network of interconnected computers. As team members work on different sections of the proposal, each member has automatic access to the rest of the sections and can modify his or her section to be compatible with the rest. For example, each member of a global team with access to Oracle Project Collaboration software can easily keep track of such things as assigned tasks, issues, and deliverables. It enables global team members (both within and outside the company) to work together more efficiently and to make better and more effective project-related decisions.
● Virtual Communities. On a Friday night, about eighty young people met in a Tokyo club to exchange business cards and to learn more about some of the other people in their Japan-based myspace.com-like virtual online community. Back online, they spend hours discussing matters of mutual interest.
Global companies also use virtual communities. For example, as the prime contractor in an effort to win a $300 million navy ship deal, Lockheed-Martin established a virtual design environment with two major shipbuilders, via a private internet existing entirely outside the firewalls of the three individual companies. Eventually, about 200 global suppliers also connected to the network via special, secure Internet links. This Internet-based network allows secure transfer of design, project management, and even financial data back and forth among the extended design team via simple browser access, with one homepage as its focal point and Lockheed got the contract.
● Internet-Based Communications Schlumberger, which manufactures oil- drilling equipment and electronics, has headquarters in New York and Paris. The company operates in eighty-five countries, and in most of them, employees are in remote locations. How does the company keep communications costs low for such a global operation? By using the internet to stay in close contact at a very low cost.
