Wednesday, April 18, 2012

GLOBAL ENTREPRENEURS


Introduction
In this blog, we will explore different entrepreneurial practices in order to thrive with globalization. We selected four key factors that have changed during the past decade and how it affects global entrepreneurs. Our analysis will start with the most important factor which is technology, and then we will continue with environment issue, global market and finally political and legal issue.   


1.     Entrepreneur’s practices shift due to technology
Technological change is an ongoing process. Innovation in labour management, work techniques, logistics and the computerization of the work space have lead to change in one very influential factor: productivity. Increased productivity results in higher production efficiency, meaning less resource are needed to achieve a certain level of production. But productivity is also about the time required to reach a certain objective, and this also has improved due to technological advancements. These two aspects are the main reason why entrepreneurs nowadays have more tools at their disposal and the perception of the risk starting a business has significantly decreased.

1.1 Entrepreneurial leap
Good Idea
-          A good idea can come from one individual that has created a new concept, product or service and feels that only trough a new company that new idea will be marketed effectively.
-          A good idea can arise out of a "braintrust" or "thinktank", where a group of specialists meet and through their discussion on some predefined topics they can accumulate ideas and amplify the reach and productivity of their thinking process.
-          A good idea can come from observing a specific environment and trying to find a way to adapt or improve the current state. One example would be the development of the exterior shell of cars, which used to be heavy and squared and now is light and round, in order to improve aerodynamics.
Effective tactics
It has become easier for a startup to begin its activity due to the decreasing entry costs, especially for tech companies, where capital costs are minimal (computer, power & internet connection). 

The availability of freeware and open source software has made it possible to set up extensive server applications without the need for high-level programmers.

Remote control of server systems has given SMEs the edge in terms of cost-to-benefit ratio compared to MNCs, because ever fewer workers are needed to handle the order-processing and data transfer monitoring activities of a company; a handful of workers can coordinate the automation of multiple orders due to programs like "Python" (Automation Software).

Substainable strategy
Workers have increased their computer usage a lot during the last two decades, for private and business use, so acceptance and integration of the computer in a workers daily life has also increased and companies can make use of this fact by giving employees the option to complete certain tasks from home, submitting their results online (= labour flexibility).                     [control variable costs]

Startups can reduce their costs in the first years of their existence by constantly opting for cheaper hardware solutions and freeware, thereby enabling them to stay competitive even against large established firms; when a new company seeks to maximize market share it will very often use this strategy, to enable high potential future returns (= low-cost focus).              [control fixed costs]

Entrepreneurs can seek to market in exclusivity, so that their product or service creates excess demand, which will not be met. In that state, a company does not have a cost anchor in its strategy, but rather a production target, so the entire company activity is linked to periods of high demand or low demand, as determined by management. (= stable return).              [pull strategy]

1.2 Technological change
Internet
The commercial and private use of the internet began during the 1980s; at that time the two main areas in which it was used for were e-mail transfer and accounting. When connections became faster and computer more performing, companies and governments used closed and open networks for security, data transfer, payment processing and employee management. It is in those early days that collectives were able to create influential software like Apache or Linux, that simplified the work process of companies in a very general way.

The transaction speed is a major factor when talking about the benefits of the internet for entrepreneurs. As the order-taking process can be fully automated, more transactions can occur at any time, because time zone difference is not a barrier anymore. This trend will continue, as can be seen from the increasing internet coverage in developed countries. 

The reach of operations has enormously risen, because business-to-business relations and CRM have been facilitated through the use of internet. Whereas in the past entrepreneurs had to actively search for partners and suppliers and promote their company on multiple channels to increase customer reach, now it is possible to combine all these activities on just one platform, the website.

Logistic
Availability of logistics increased, especially for SMEs that engage in product selling, rather than services. So called "industrial parks" bring suppliers and traders together on one common ground, where the offices of companies are conglomerated and so enable synergies across industries.

The speed at which logistics take place also changed considerably over the past 20 years, with faster airplanes and larger boats that can carry large amounts of goods. Even the billing process is faster, as the post offices have larger fleets of transporters and the practice of "24 hour delivery" is a strategic asset for trading companies to motivate customers.

Costs could be greatly reduced due to more efficient diesel engines in the truck sector and more aerodynamic airplane models that consume less kerosene. In the past, companies tried to control the entire supply chain themselves, which resulted in very high operating costs. Now that some firms have specialized in logistics, a single freighter can transport goods for thousands of companies, reducing overall costs.
    
         Productivity
More and more workers become knowledge workers (Marcus., et al. 2000) as their competence to manage and their skills which are unique to the company grow and so companies need to seek a state of self-governance for these new "effective workers created by technological advance", as the Solow growth model states.

Production processes are shortened due to the computerization of the work space; less mistakes occur and less interference is required. The negative side to this development is the increasing maintenance cost companies are facing, as computer hardware is depreciated at a high rate. 

In general the advancement of technological progress has resulted in a shift in entrepreneur practices, where entry costs become lower, adapting to market conditions is crucial and the business environment is increasingly more dynamic. It is no longer enough just to have a good idea, innovation may come from many different sources and entrepreneurs are forced to keep track o technological progress to stay competitive.  

2.     Entrepreneur’s practices shift due to environment issues and sustainability
Entrepreneur and the Environment
The climate changes and environmental issues such as global population growth, increasing life expectancy, resource scarcity and lack of equity in the world not only drive most existing business organizations to go green but also provide basis for substantial new business opportunities. Many entrepreneurs have seen increasing market opportunities for sustainable products and services. Nowadays, customers are becoming increasingly environmentally conscious.

Besides market demand, entrepreneurs also find that making their business more environmental friendly can bring them benefits including gaining good reputation, improving efficiency, potentially lowering operation costs and having a cleaner and healthier work environment. So more and more entrepreneurs choose to contribute to environment protection while making profits through following practices:
.
2.1 Reduce energy costs
Many companies start to reduce their energy costs to save energy and resources. For example, in the last decade, Continental Airlines has spent over $16 billion to replace its entire fleet of airplanes with more fuel-efficient ones, in addition to installing fuel-saving “winglets” that cut emissions 5% on its 737 model aircraft. Besides, nitrogen oxide emissions from Continental’s busy Houston hub have been sliced by an astounding 75% since the year 2000. Continental alsohave 12 full time “staff environmentalists” on the payroll who are constantly pairing up with engine manufacturers to design greener, more efficient processes into company operations. 
     
      2.2 Use and provide green products
Entrepreneurs nowadays seek to eliminate the use of toxic and non-environmentally friendly products and replace them with environmentally sustainable products, including biodegradable drinking cups or food containers, furniture created from recycled materials. They also provide more eco-friendly products to their customers. S.C. Johnson, maker of indispensable household products such as Windex, has gone on a mission to lessen the environmental impact of its products. Through their use of the Greenlist Process (a system that ranks your impact on the environment by evaluating the raw materials you use), the company has slashed 1.8 million pounds of volatile organic compounds from its Windex line of products. Another 4 million pounds of polyvinylidene chloride has been eliminated from Saran Wrap, a major drop in harmful chemicals that seep into landfills when they are disposed of. The company has also scaled back its coal-fired plants by working to replace them with natural gas and methane powered facilities.
     
     2.3 Increase virtual communication
Due to technology developments, companies can save large amount of energy in daily operation thorough increasing virtual communication. For example, traditionally, entrepreneurs would drive or fly to meet clients or colleagues in distant offices, but now in order to reduce energy costs and the impact of greenhouse gas emissions on the environment, they can have virtual meetings through web cameras in their own offices. Instead of using paper reports and documents, employees are encouraged to increase the use of e-mail for the delivery of reports and documents. They also try to consider utilizing electronic archiving and e-filing systems to help reduce excessive paper trails.Take Bank of America as an example,According to their corporate website, the company reduced paper use by 32% from 2000-2005.Bank of America also runs an internal recycling program that recycles 30,000 tons of paper each year, good for saving roughly 200,000 trees for each year of the program’s operation.
        
      2.4 Recycle
Recycling is also a trend for entrepreneurs to do make their business green. In the past, when customers bought a new computer, they would throw away the old ones which didn't work anymore. Those old computers become waste and caused pollution to the environment. HP came up with an idea on those old and useless computers. The company has gotten out in front of the computer disposal issue, owning and operating enormous “e-waste” recycling plants that shred discarded, obsolete computer products into raw materials that can be recycled into the industrial food chain. HP has also agreed to take back computer equipment of all brands, and taken steps to ensure that its own products are 100% recyclable in the manner mentioned above.

Starbucks also did well in making use of recycling materials, giving up common paper coffee cups, the company decided to use those coffee cup sleeves made of recycled paper, which saved roughly 78,000 trees per year since 2006.

3.     Entrepreneur’s practice shift due to global market: cross-country collaboration
Nowadays, going global is a dream for many entrepreneurs and also a response to the saturated domestic market. In order to be successful on the competitive international market, entrepreneurs have to know their internal strengths, weaknesses as well as the external threats, opportunities and make the right strategic decision. Neuman Pollack stated that advances in technology, communications, and transportation have transformed the world into a global village, and SMEs can take advantage of this. Off course that these factors are more accessible for entrepreneurs, but accessibility doesn’t necessary mean success? By having more resources and not knowing how to use them is inefficient. Thus, over the past decades, many visionary entrepreneurs have already adopted an important new practice which is cross-country collaboration pursuing the idea of optimizing their resources and internationalize “correctly”. 

According to the Business Dictionary, the definition of collaboration is a cooperative management in which two or more parties work jointly towards a common goal. Therefore, cross-country collaboration is simply involving parties working together at a global level towards a common goal.

Cross-country collaboration
The first international entrepreneurship research started out in 1994, so we assume that this practice goes back a while ago. However, it did not attract much attention until now. Under the circumstances and the impacts of globalization in our daily life, it is normal that this practice is now put in the spot light.

First, this practice is not as clear as black and white because it can take various forms depending how much implications for the degree of control a firm can exercise over foreign operations. For example, options for going global include exporting, licensing, franchising, joint-ventures, and wholly owned foreign subsidiaries (Shrader, 2000), and each of them comes with different degree of collaboration among parties.

Second, the most common reason for small enterprises in adopting cross-country collaboration is the lack of knowledge in the foreign market, (MNCs also have the same challenge) and their resource-constrained nature. Anecdotal and case study evidence has strongly suggested that collaboration with foreign partners is required for young and small enterprises (Shrader, 2000). Local partners have knowledge about domestic market trends, government policies, workforce, distribution channels, supply chain, etc; obtaining these knowledge, competencies can be extremely costly for a foreign SMEs. In that sense, cross-country collaboration is the most cost-efficient strategy, and a wise option for small enterprises.

Finally, we will see one successful example of a type of cross-country collaboration. Franchising represents the most wide spread type of cooperation among entrepreneurs. (Gassenheimer et al., 1996). Nowadays, ambitious entrepreneurs can’t wait to conquer the global market with their products. Pho 24 is a fast-food chain and one of Vietnam's most successful home-grown franchises. Three years after the opening of the first restaurant, in 2003, entrepreneur and founder of Pho 24, Ly Quy Trung had already planned to expand his restaurant overseas through franchising. In 2010, Pho 24 had already opened a total of 77 franchises in Vietnam and overseas (Indonesia, Philippines, Korea, Cambodia, Hong Kong and Australia). For 2012, the company plans to reach a total of 200 restaurants by franchising more in the domestic and the global market.
  

This example is to illustrate the success of franchising in the food industry (the most common type for this industry). However, cross-collaboration can also be outsourcing-production for manufacturing SMEs in order to take advantage of the low labor-cost in other countries. To conclude, globalization has indeed made everything easier, but without knowing how to optimizing your resources is an issue. Cross-country collaboration allows the firm to concentrate more on its core competencies, leverage others firms/partners assets and grow into the global environment.

4.     Entrepreneur’s practices shift due to political and legal issues in globalization context
No matter how globalization tends to get the countries closer, in particular when it comes to business, we can still observe different entrepreneurship practices and approaches worldwide. 

We actually think that the example of China is interesting, especially considering their role in the current worldwide trade. Government helps more and more entrepreneurs, in particular by helping them to raise funds: 9 billion Yuan have been collected and spread among private investors (6.8 billion Yuan), provincial governments and the state.

However, even if China seems to be willing to help its investors and entrepreneurs, many obstacles still have to be faced and overcome. For example, we notice first that the different procedures to start a new business require more time in China than in OECD countries (38 days against 5.7 days in average). There is also some controversial about copyright, patents, brand names, trademarks and trade secrets since these can easily be violated without getting China really alarmed about this issue. The frame for the entrepreneurship stays sort of hostile and consequently obliges entrepreneurs to adapt themselves to China’s lack of legal and regulatory transparency. Finally, taxes for Chinese entrepreneurs remain higher than in developed countries: according to a report by World Bank, start-ups in China sometimes face unreasonable bureaucracy and fees. Forbes indeed even states in an article that rich businessmen and entrepreneurs sort of have enough reasons to leave the country, considering how Beijing has been targeting and abusing them since 2008. According to Xia Xueluan (of Peking University): “We can only hope the rich people stay out of patriotism”, which illustrates well how entrepreneurship is harder and requires more courage in China…

Moreover, culture also plays a big role in Chinese entrepreneurship for two different reasons. First, entrepreneurship is not really part of Chinese culture yet and this makes it harder for entrepreneurs to take risks. Yan Junqi (vice chairwoman of the standing committee of National People’s Congress of China) actually states that “innovation can more quickly gain a foothold in an entrepreneurship-friendly and failure-tolerating culture”. Secondly, Chinese culture plays an important role in the general Chinese business and consequently also in Chinese entrepreneurship. For example, what certainly has the biggest impact on Chinese business is the Guanxi: if you want to do business in China, make sure first that you have the necessary relationships..! Management, leadership or sometimes even just the everyday business manners are also really specific and have to be taken into account before starting any business. Thus all of these cultural aspects must be considered and illustrate well the entrepreneurs’ practices shift from one country to another.

Conclusion
In the blog, we have discussed entrepreneurs' practice shift due to changes in technology, environment, global market and political and legal issues during past 20 years. Compared with their predecessors who did business twenty years before, entrepreneurs today have more opportunities. They are freer to do business in a emerging global market. Due to technology improvements, they can manage their business in a more efficient and cost-saving way. However, entrepreneurs today are faced with new challenges. Since nowadays consumers stress on companies' social responsibilities, they need to pay more attention to environmental issues .As they do business in global market, they need to know the culture, laws and policies of each country very well. In this situation, only those who are able to seize the opportunities and handle the challenges can survive the keen competitions in today's business world.

References
1.      Dixon, S. E. A., & Clifford, A. (2007). Ecopreneurship–a new approach to managing the triple bottom line. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 20(3), 326-345.
2.      25 Big Companies That Are Going Green | Business Pundit. (2008, July 29). Business Pundit: Your daily dose of smart business opinion. Retrieved April 10, 2012, from http://www.businesspundit.com/25-big-companies-that-are-going-green/
3.      Jones, H. (2011, February 11). Energy efficiency can drastically reduce energy costs | Guardian Sustainable Business | guardian.co.uk . Latest US news, world news, sport and comment from the Guardian | guardiannews.com | The Guardian . Retrieved April 10, 2012, from http://www.guardian.co.uk/sustainable-business/energy-efficiency-financial-benefits
4.      Spaeder, K. (n.d.). Think green: entrepreneurs are turning environmental problems into opportunities | Entrepreneur | Find Articles. Find Articles | News Articles, Magazine Back Issues & Reference Articles on All Topics. Retrieved April 10, 2012, from http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m
5.      Benoit, J. (2010, March 17). Good for the Environment, Good for Business - Greening Your Business | Entrepreneur.com. Business & Small Business | News, Advice, Strategy | Entrepreneur.com. Retrieved April 10, 2012, from http://www.entrepreneur.com/article/2055
6.      Ortmans, J. (2010, October 18). A Bright Future for Entrepreneurs in China. Entrepreneurship - United by the power of ideas. Retrieved April 10, 2012, from www.entrepreneurship.org/en/Blogs/Policy-Forum-Blog/2010/October/A-Bright-Future-for-Entrepreneurs-in-China.aspx
7.      Shasha, D. (2011, December 11). Entrepreneurship boosts China's employment. Xinhuanet - News. Retrieved April 9, 2012, from http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-11/12/c_131243051.htm
8.      G.Chang, G. (2011, May 6). Chinese Entrepreneurs Are Leaving China - Forbes. Information for the World's Business Leaders - Forbes.com. Retrieved April 10, 2012, from http://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonchang/2011/06/05/chinese-entrepreneurs-are-leaving-china/
9.      F.Pollack, N. (n.d.). What Entrepreneurs and Small Business Owners Can Do to Increase Their Chances of Success in the Global Economy. QFinance. Retrieved April 8, 2012, from www.qfinance.com/contentFiles/QF02/g1xtn5q6/12/1/what-entrepreneurs-and-small-business-owners-can-do-to-increase-their-chances-of-success-in-the-global-economy.pdf
10. Shrader. (2000),Collaboration and performance in foreign markets: the case of young, high-technology, manufacturing firms. Academy of Management Journal.
11. Gassenheimer J.B , Baucus D.B & Baucus M.S (1996). Cooperative arrangements among Entrepreneurs : An analysis of Opportunism and Communication in Franchise Structure. Journal of Business Research, vol 36, 67-79.
12. MIT. (2012). On Startups: Patterns and Practices of Contemporary Software Entrepreneurs. Retrieved April 15, 2012, from http://dspace.mit.edu/bitstream/handle/1721.1/37253/85836276.pdf
13. M. Lynne Markus, Brook Manville & Carole E. Agres (2000). Sloan Management Review. What makes a virtual organization work?. MIT Volume 42, Number 1.



         



      

Wednesday, February 22, 2012


Age gap in the technology industry

Welcome to Observateur’s second blog about globalization and global indicators!


This week, we welcome a new team member in our team, Ivy. Ivy is from China and finished her exchange semester in Germany a while ago. Now, she is a final year student in marketing.




For this second blog we chose age gap as an indicator in order to analyse human resources management in the technology industry from a global perspective. Globalization has made boundaries more permeable where distance becomes almost irrelevant, it also has increased the expansion of international commerce and the growth of many MNC’s, including those from the technology sector. As companies are seeking for strategies to overcome the challenges posed by globalization, their employees had slowly become a source of differentiation, managing experienced versus talented workers is a major issue in the technology industry. In this blog, we will collect data from 2 important MNC’S in this particular industry which are IBM and Microsoft.      

Table 1: Age gap between the two countries representing the two regions

Companies/Countries
USA
China
IBM
45.6
32
Microsoft
44 and +
26.5

Table 2: Employee tenure rate

Companies

IBM
8
Microsoft
3


Why there is an age gap between employees from the East versus employees from the West in the technology industry?

We will answer to this question by analyzing 2 different aspects: the rapid evolving market in this particular industry and the saturated knowledge but experienced employees from the previous generation versus the new talented generation with great potential.

1    The evolving market of technologies

  

The history of IT development in most part of Asia is not as long as that in US. Take China for example, IBM, Microsoft entered into China market in late 1990s, while DELL began its business in China in 2005. The education of IT and high-tech started late in China. Not many Universities provided programs for IT and high-tech until 2000. After 2000, a large number of IT and high-tech graduates started their career in this industry. So the average age of IT employees in China is quite young. 

IT industry is a fast moving industry. The employee’s turnover rates remain high in Asia. The reason for high turnover rates varies among different countries. The average salary of Asian employees is not as high as that of American employees even for those working in different branches of the same company. A large number of Chinese IT employees leave the industry after working two to four years, so more than 50% of Chinese IT employees only have an experience of less than four years. Situation is different in India; many India IT employees seek to find jobs in US. Very few Indians can get degrees higher than bachelor. Most of them choose to go to America after graduation. If a company has a high turnover rate, it will be not healthy for them to grow. The costs of hiring replacements and training new employees will be very high. The high turnover rate might become an obstacle for the development of the whole industry in the long term. So managers in IT companies such as IBM, Microsoft and Dell should consider how to keep employees in Asia market. Companies can provide employees with higher salaries, better working environment and welfares.

2    Experience versus talents
Age discrimination in IT industry exists in both America and Asia. But the situation in Asia is worse. In America, if you are above 45 years old and work in IT industry, it will be impossible for you to switch to another company in the same industry. But if you are an IT employee in China, you will be considered old when you turn to 30. 

Employers in Asia tend to hire young graduates. They think employees in IT industry must keep learning new knowledge to make themselves competitive. It will be easier for young graduates to be fast learners. And employees need to work intensively to catch up the project schedules. This kind of task requires them to have bodies in good condition and being able to work under great pressure. Employers think it will be hard for staff older than 30 to manage the projects.

On contrary, American employers value experience more. They prefer experienced employees neither too young nor too old. After many years working in IT industry, many American employees become expert in this field. They can get high salaries and be respected by their colleagues and the society. But in Asia, due to culture differences, the society looks down to technical staff, including IT technical employees. If Asian technical employees do well in his job, they will be promoted to manager. Some of them find they can achieve higher social status and higher salaries as managers; they just leave the industry and go to other companies to pursue a better career. Other technical employees who have been promoted know nothing about management. They struggle as managers and end up leaving their companies.

To solve these problems, managers in both US and Asia should eliminate age discrimination. Managers in US need to treat employees equally regardless of their ages. When US companies, like Microsoft, Dell and IBM, expand their business to Asia, they should stress on long term benefits and pay more attention to employees’ experience and professional skills. In addition, more scientific management systems which can help promoted technical staff to perform better at work should be built in Asian companies.


How MNC’s in the technology industry manage its global workforce?

In this section, we will have a closer look of the internal HR policies in the two companies mentioned above and the purpose of such practice.

IBM: Globally integrated enterprise
According to IBM’s CEO Samuel Palmisano, the vision of a globally integrated enterprise is about doing the right tasks, with the right skills, in the right places. This vision about IBM posed significant challenges for IBM’s human capital and its approach to human resource management. The IBM case study by Boudreau stated that IBM had to face with the problem of how to deploy its more experienced and expensive workforce located in developing countries to projects that increasingly were located in developing countries, while at the same time up skill the developing-country workforce to offer IBM a long term cost and effectiveness advantage.

In order to solve this problem, in 2003, IBM projected a unique program calls workforce management initiative (WMI) with a forecast cost of more than US$100 million over the course of five years. By definition, WMI at its core is a series of strategies, policies, processes and tools that enable optimal labor deployment, built on a foundation of learning. 

On the figure posted below, we can see that the development team of WMI has thought clearly about different challenges that IBM is dealing with and that they needed to change in order to transform its HR management strategy to one’s of its strength.





This investment made by IBM was indeed a strategic decision in terms of international HR management and the expected payoff is now a reality. IBM job’s repertoire has shifted from a million individuals to only 331 roles. In some cases, this achievement can give IBM analysts an understanding whether certain qualifications and experiences are associated with improvement in sales quotas or not. There is only one global application transaction thanks to the data base system by WMI and this centralization is solving the talent supply management issue. Using the same language to communicate (defined by the Taxonomy) has improved capacity management by matching demand and supply more accurately and efficiently. The number of idle workers is decreased and the fill rates are improved to over 90% in global delivery.

This system helped IBM to move one step toward its CEO’s vision of a globally integrated enterprise. Over five years, IBM invested US $230 million in this project but received a large sum of US $1.5 billion benefits!

Microsoft: enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential. 

Microsoft is considered by many as an ideal place to work, and the company has won several awards for its commitment to diversity and their flexible work arrangements in the past. Since 2005, Microsoft aimed to be an employee-driven organization by offering employees flexibility, work/life balance, flexible benefit plans. According to Priyadarshini, Microsoft has adopted the `` Performance Culture Model`` as the best approach to drive its success where all the critical people metrics are categorized and measured. There are up to nine different categories such as diversity, talent management, manager capability, etc. with many performance measures.


                                          Microsoft India HR growth model

From the beginning Gates said that his employees were the greatest assets of the company: `` it’s the effectiveness of our developers that determines our success`` and `` take our 20 best people away, and Microsoft will become an unimportant company``. The Placement Offer data over the past few years has confirmed that Microsoft is an aggressive recruiter and is often the first company to offer jobs to elite graduates, as well as head hunting talents at others companies. Microsoft values their employee’s creativity and analytics abilities rather than their experience.

Hiring the right people is very important for Microsoft, they adopted the ``n minus 1`` strategy which means less people are employed than are required. It is crucial to hire the right people rather than just filing a position. Microsoft also focus on motivating its workforce, the HR department invest in understanding employee’s needs and give them the opportunities and environment to allow self-development.

Microsoft also adopted a consistent reward system where employees has two annual reviews where they can discuss with their managers about their performance evaluation and negotiate pay increases, bonus awards and stock options if an employee is considered a long-term asset of the company. This system offers two rewards paths available, allowing those with technical skills to advance as experts and those with strong conceptual skills as managers.  


Blog Extension

 

Thanks to all the comments which have let us gain further insights into our blog's topic. Some readers thought our wording "aging gap" means age distribution in China and America. We think it is necessary to make it clear that we are comparing the differences between average age of IT employees in China and that in America and investigating the reasons behind.

There is also a commenter thought that U.S held no more importance in experience when it came to IT companies. In our blog, we explained that there is age discrimination in IT industry of both two countries. When we say that Americans value experience more, it doesn't mean that they always put experience before age. They will consider more about experience when hiring and laying off employees, while Chinese managers tend to hire fresh graduates. As it is stated by another commenter, Americans value on experience and Chinese value on certificates. Americans prefer employees with experience neither too young nor too old. This can also be supported by the example in the same comment that when young employees come in and take over, the first to go are the order ones (beyond 50) and the completely inexperienced ones.

One of the commenter mentioned about the influence which aging problems will bring on China IT industry in next 20 years. We believe that this issue will affect the average age of Chinese IT employees. For example, there will be more “old” employees in 2050 in IT industry than that in today. But we should also consider other factors, such as new technology, changing perceptions and new management systems. For instance, maybe in the future, more advanced technology allows fewer people to do more tasks. There are fewer employees needed in IT industry. So companies will lay off old employees and hire new and young ones. In this situation, the average age of Chinese IT employees may still stay low.

The comments also make some suggestions on improving the blog's content. Many of them are also interested in why there is a bg difference in the average age of employees in IBM China and Microsoft China. Maybe we can have a deeper look into manage systems and recruitment process in IBM China and Microsoft China and further discover the reasons behind in our future study of international management.

References

Society for human resource management. (2012). Strategic Hr Management - Case Study. Retrieved February 22, 2012, from http://www.shrm.org/Education/hreducation/Documents/Boudreau_IBM%20Case%20Study%20with%20Teaching%20Notes_FINAL.pdf

IBM Global Business Services. (2012). Human Capital Management. Retrieved February 22, 2012, from http://www-935.ibm.com/services/us/gbs/bus/pdf/gbe03071-usen-talentpart1.pdf

Scribd. (2012). Microsoft's HR Strategy - An Analysis. Retrieved February 22, 2012, from http://www.scribd.com/doc/13286642/HR-Planning-Strategy-at-Microsoft-Inc

CRI Online. (2012). IT Young Graduate Employment Strategy. Retrieved February 22, 2012, from http://gb.cri.cn/2201/2005/04/11/1425@511316.htm

Sina Blog. (2012). Age of employees in IT industry. Retrieved February 22, 2012, from http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_5af292480100qjbd.html

Bricklin. (2012). The Value of Experience. Retrieved Februar 22, 2012, from http://www.bricklin.com/experiencevalue.htm

   

    


Wednesday, February 1, 2012

MNCs vs. SMEs


Welcome to our first blog, we are 3 exchange students from 3 different countries. Our group name is Observateurs!



Alice is studying in Canada but originally comes from Vietnam.
Guillaume is half French, half Polish but lives in Germany and studies in the Netherlands.
Paul is French and studies there but got some professional experience in Germany.
We hope that our international profile will help us to share our perspective throughout the 4 blogs. 

In this blog, we would like to speak about an international phenomenon that a lot of people would think is true and show you how limited it might be:


‘’ONLY multinationals companies can succeed in today’s globalized world!!!’’

 BUT SMALL AND MEDIUM COMPANY SIZED ENTERPRISES (SMEs) CAN BE AS SUCCESFULL THANKS TO ADVANCED TECHNOLOGY, LESS CULTURAL BARRIERS AND SUPPORTIVE GOVERNEMENTAL ENGAGEMENT.   


In today’s world, globalization is THE current trend, every firm wants to participate and have their own share out of it. Of course that Coca-Cola, KFC, Adidas have already internationalized and still conquer the world. It is very common to think that multinationals are the only players in globalization. In our first blog, Observateurs will try to demystify this perception and then prove that SMEs also have a great chance to go global.


Advanced Technology

Internet
Since the beginning of public internet usage in the late 1980s,  the global coverage has dramatically increased and its access has become easy and cheap. No company can afford not to have internet presence, as it is the most cost-effective link to the largest possible customer base. Although the dependence on this medium of communication has increased significantly over time, it brought with it the advantage of fast information transfer and the possibility of simplified connection between company internal elements like server systems and employees and company external elements like virtual conferencing with business partners. All these aspects have empowered entrepreneurs to have an easy access to the market they are targeting and have a large customer reach at relatively low cost. This situation diminished the risk of starting a business, as the cost of entry is becoming ever lower. 

Logistics
The constant increase in efficiency and effectiveness of logistics operations has changed the global perception of the timeliness of transaction and production. With every transport route becoming shorter and all production processes becoming more efficient and thus cheaper, consumers expect decreasing delivery time, putting competitive pressure on that part of business. Large scale transportation companies like DHL and UPS take an oligopolistic stance in many markets, as the entry costs for truck and ship fleets are very high. But although globalization has lead to limits in this industry, small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) can make use of those large networks, as they can provide the service of fast delivery at small transaction volumes. The approach of faster global transportation is certainly not ecological, but in terms of bringing supply closer to demand, it has opened a new way of doing business, where even the most remote consumer can purchase from anywhere at any time. 




 
Cultural differences

The decision to go global and enter new markets can be very profitable but can also cause losses. The risks and chances balance is determined by the strategic decision and how the firm will implement its business overseas. One important factor that all enterprises going global need to account for is: cultural differences. For the multinationals, it seems to be easier for them to prevent this type of problem thanks to their resources (business intelligence, market analysis, investment fund, networks). Cultural identity is unique and crafted by the social beliefs and habits norms of the population in a particular region.

First, the problem of cultural differences is somehow minimized nowadays thanks to the importance attributed to education and knowledge in the third world countries. In fact, most of the actual generation of entrepreneurs can speak at least two different languages.

Second, the human capital transfer and easy interconnectivity between countries can also diminish cultural differences and widen people perspectives and better understanding of different cultural beliefs. Immigration, travel, social platform, media diffusion, etc. have played a great role in decreasing barriers in communication and cultural differences.

Third, the native people point of view has also changed during the past decade vis-à-vis investment from abroad. In developing countries, the entry of a new firm usually means more jobs opportunities for the local habitants and a chance of improving their quality of life in the first place. Finally, to avoid failure from cultural differences, SMEs should be aware of this issue and adopt cautious developmental strategies.                         
Supportive government engagement

ð  Worldwide organizations
o   Foundation of the WTO in 1994: aims to supervise and liberalize the international trade. It keeps the countries from closing their borders and consequently help the companies to think global.
ð  Regional organizations that also help to some regional engagement. As well as the WTO, these organizations lead the countries to less protectionism and less trade barriers.
o   Free Trade Agreement between 2 or several countries: North America Free Trade Agreement, ASEAN Free Trade Organization

ð  Government policies that generally support international trade
Subventions are often dealt to SME in order to help their international development


An example of SME that chose to go global: Lingo24

Lingo24 is a translation company based in UK. It was founded in 2001 in Scotland (by Christian Arno, 22) and got global pretty quickly as it was employing people in France, in China, in New Zealand and in the USA only two years after its creation. The company is now implanted in 10 countries, it has clients in more than 60 countries and its turnover reaches 4.67 million Euros in 2009.

Considering its success, Lingo24 placed number 81 on The Times’ Fast Track 100 List (fastest growing translation agency in the UK) in May 2011. The company could even belong now to the flourishing category of micro-multinationals. Indeed, Lingo24 stays a SME as there are less than 250 employees and the turnover does not extend 43 million Euros (European Union definition) but it presents some of the aspects of multinationals mostly because of its internationalization.




Blog Extension

The confusion that many readers had about whether or not the applicability of our analysis towards the ability of SMEs to go global is limited for specific industries or can be applied industry-wide is founded, but we did specify that in most cases SMEs that are effectively able to reach a global market most often are found in dynamic tech environments. It is true that some markets are excluded from this trend, like some local food production sector. 

When it comes to funding for SMEs, some readers were saying we did not give enough detail about the current situation and were wondering about the ease these firms have to request proper funding. So as a matter of fact, in Europe, there is a venture capital fund which actively supports the business processes of SMEs by giving targeted funding for promising projects. It is very simple to request such a funding, as it can be done through online applications. The only possible drawback is that when a project seems risky, the management of the venture capital fund will require a controlling share in the business, to be able to channel funds more effectively and avoid wasteful use of resources, especially in uncertain market conditions.  

Many of you stated that our example was good and illustrated well the phenomenon we wanted to speak about: SME’s can make it global. However, you also pointed the fact the translation industry, especially on the internet, represents a niche and consequently an exception. We actually understand what you are saying: doing business with/on the internet makes it easier and SME’s certainly would have difficulties to go global in other industries. We also precized that this business shift is actually possible thanks to the development of new technologies and the internet is the main element of the technological revolution that we lately experienced.