Transhorsa

Globalization is a hot topic in the world we are living in today. It is an ongoing process, and ever more prevalent. Globalization and global business come hand in hand, and you need to employ a special strategy when doing global business taking into the consideration of different languages, customs, values, and cultures, etc.

Globalization is the fact of the matter we must deal with nowadays. Companies with international businesses and operations are abound, and hence the need for Global Business Strategy.

What is the ‘Global business Strategy’ ? Apparently, it is a special kind of strategy employed specifically for global business as opposed to domestic-only business.

I tried to search ‘global business strategy’ in wikipedia but with no avail; yet when I input ‘business strategy’, it came out as ‘strategic management’.  Well, they do sound similar according to dictionary meanings, don’t they? ‘Business strategy’ refers obviously to the strategy used to conduct business or to manage business strategically, and therefore is equivalent to ‘strategic management’.

Let’s see what wikipedia has to say about ‘strategic management’:

Strategic management is the art, science and craft of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions that will enable an organization to achieve its long-term objectives…  Strategic management is the highest level of managerial activity…

A quote from Robert Lamb from his 1984 book ‘Competitive Strategic Management’ which I found revealing as well:

Strategic management is an ongoing process that evaluates and controls the business and the industries in which the company is involved; assesses its competitors and sets goals and strategies to meet all existing and potential competitors; and then reassesses each strategy annually or quarterly (i.e.. regularly) to determine how it has been implemented and whether it has succeeded or needs replacement by a new strategy to meet changed, new technology, new competitors, a new economic environment, or a new social, financial, or political environment.

From the above two definitions, we could come up with the meaning of ‘global business strategy’, which should be a kind of art, science and craft of formulating, implementing and evaluating cross-functional decisions in a changing, be it social, financial, or political environment that will enable a global company to achieve its long-term objectives.  

But what does all of that have anything to do with us? As I wrote first sentence in this article, we now live in the world of ever prevalent globalization, which has a myriad of implications. Whether or not you do business is not an issue, understanding of it helps you to grasp hold of reality better. Now the whole world uses apple computers, Dell, HP, Sony Vaio and so on PCs, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, etc. cell phones, the same brands of just all our daily necessities and luxuries. Global business constitutes the indispensable part of our life. 

What’s the advantage of it, then? For one, it is more efficient. With one concept, one idea, or one design you can have a much bigger global market instead of just a limited domestic one. There could be hundreds of times more consumers to buy your products. It sounds simple, isn’t it? But how about the part when we defined ‘global business strategy’ on the changing environment? Each nation /people has its own unique custom, values, culture, and its unique economic and financial situations. For example, some Calvin Klein commercials which express sexual lure can be considered pornographic in some islamic countries and banned. Therefore, in order to sell their clothes to these countries, you need to come up with different strategies, and in this case, the commercials,now you can’t emphasize a sexy woman’s bodily contour, let’s say, to sell a well-fitting Calvin Klein T-shirt. So you have a new task at hand in order to expand your market to those countries.

There are other phenomena which has been there for a while that bear a tint of globalization, that is the spread of culture through books, music and theaters, etc. It can have profound influence upon a people. For example, China has never saw a sexual revolution as what happened in the west during 1960’s. Twenty years ago people more or less followed the traditional values of celibacy till marriage. In recent years during the process of opening up to the West, pre-marital sex has becoming common and acceptable.  

One day the world is going to be the same everywhere, (who knows). Couldn’t it be boring?

Global Business Strategy