Global Marketing Place

Several factors have forced countries to extend their economic views to events outside their own national borders. First, international agreements are being negotiated in attempt to increase trade among nations. Second, the growth of electronic commerce and related computer technologies brings previously isolated countries into their marketplace for buyers and sellers around the globe. Third, the interdependence of the world’s economies is a reality since no nation produces all of the raw material and finished goods purchased by its citizens or consumers of all its output without some exporting to other countries. Evidence of this interdependence is illustrated by the introduction of the Euro as a common currency to facilitate trade among the nations of the European Union and the creation of trade alliances.

Service firms also play a major role in today’s global marketplace. In many cases, global marketing strategies are almost identical to those used in domestic markets. Rather than creating a different promotional campaign for each country, marketers use the same ad with spectacular results.

Domestic marketing strategies may need significant changes to adapt to unique tastes or different cultural and legal requirements abroad. It is often difficult to standardize a brand name on a global basis.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Consumer Sovereignty

Mainstream economics uses some simple starting points; it believes that they are the best possible. First is that agents have more wants than they can attain, so that they feel scarcity; in fact, for practical purposes, wants are assumed to be endless. Second, third and fourth are that agents are self-interested, rational, and the best judges of their own well-being. These four assumptions are indeed usually good starting points, rather than starting by assuming that agents are completely fulfilled, altruistic, irrational, and not well-placed to evaluate their own situation. They are not equally good as finishing points. Sometimes good arguments exist for not accepting them.

An assumption that agents are the best judges of their own well being is less questionable for businesspeople and corporations, given the resources they have for analysis. Debate focuses more on consumers. The phrase consumer sovereignty is sometimes read descriptively, to mean that consumers are sovereign, in that procedures are induced via profit-seeking and competition  to provide what consumers want. Sometimes it is read normatively, to mean that consumers should be sovereign, their wishes should prevail concerning what is good for them. The normative claim can rest on three different bases: that consumers do make good choices; that the alternative stance is worse – to use someone else’s judgments and estimates of what is good for a person and how good it is; or quite differently, that people have the right to make their own choices and mistakes.

Consumers will not make good choices automatically and unconditionally. Our wants are not simple; for example, some are wants to not to have other wants (such as the desire to smoke or a compulsion to gamble). Establishing a mature balance between wants involves skills. Choice is also unlikely to bring satisfaction if taken on the basis of weak information. Markets often do not provide consumers with full and reliable information, for it is hard to exclude people from information and therefore to ensure payment for it, so its market supply is weakened. Instead, in a commerce-dominated society, one of the main types of information that adults get will be images that say the good life is obtained through high consumption of commodities; there is too little counteracting public information.

The issue of consumer sovereignty goes beyond whether choices are good for the chooser. Other people are affected. Some wants may thus be unacceptable, notably wants that bring harm to others, including even wants to harm others. Mainstream economists have unfortunately often taken a don’t-want-to-know approach to ethics in which they confuse acceptance of all wants with a value-neutral stance.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Corporate Stakeholders

Stockholders are a critically important group. By providing capital, monitoring corporate performance, assuring the effective operation of stock markets, and bringing new issues to the attention of management, stockholders play a very important role in making the business system work. Corporate leaders have an obligation to manage their companies in ways that promote and protect a variety of stakeholders. Balancing these various interests is a prime requirement of modern management. Although stakeholders are no longer considered to be the only important stakeholder group, their interests and needs remain central to the successful operation of corporate business.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Managerial Know-how

People who bring capital, labor, and resources together to fashion them into a productive organization that must face the risks of an uncertain world, occupy strategic positions. Thus, given the same inputs, presumably a country with superior management will do better than one with weak management. The importance of managerial know-how can be illustrated by the airlines industry.

Obviously an explanation of world business involves many elements. But with a basic understanding of the few elements, comparative advantage and specialization.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Management Reshuffles

If you are reorganizing frequently—that’s a killer sign. The disruption that reorganization brings is too great for any sane organization to live with. The worst part is that it will be the same tired old faces who screwed up the last organization that get another chance to do it all again, while someone else picks up the mess they left behind. When everyone moves one job to the left, no one can be blamed for anything.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Group Leader

As leader of a group, you are responsible for creating an environment in which discussing leads to recommendations, recommendations develop positions, and compromise between positions brings decision.

You are the person in charge of creating and maintaining conditions in which free discussion flourishes, arguments are quelled, and factions kept temporary. You are the one designated to get the most from each person; to build the contribution of each team-member into a powerful, decision-making force capable of solving problems.

Seen in this light, your task as a leader is a rather awesome responsibility—awesome, perhaps, but not necessarily intimidating.

Just as there are concepts for improving personal participation, there are also proven techniques for building leadership.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Sun Tzu’s Advice to Strategy Makers

More than 2300 years ago, Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War, an amazing book on the principles of military strategy. Herebelow are some idea extracts:

1. Adopt SOSTAC. He believed that it is essential first to carry out a complete analysis of the situation. The strengths and weaknesses of one’s position, the relationship between one’s goals and the goals of society at large, the intensity of one’s courage and determination, and the worthiness and integrity of one’s objective must all be carefully evaluated. Even then, it seems, SOSTAC (Situation Analysis, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Action, and Control) was emerging—situation analysis, objectives and strategy.
2. Do your Homework. Those who triumph, compute at their headquarters, a great number of factors, prior to a challenge. Those who are defeated, compute at their headquarters, a small number of factors, prior to a challenge. Much computation brings triumph, little computation brings defeat. How much more so with no computation at all. By observing only this, I can see triumph or defeat.
3. Develop some options. Therefore those who are not entirely aware of strategies that are disadvantageous, cannot be entirely aware of strategies that are advantageous.
4. Know your Resources. You must be certain that your resources have been carefully evaluated before engaging in this challenge.
5. Why senior management Support: before engaging in a challenge, a leader must be certain that the organization is prepared to support the expense of a confrontation.
6. Do you hurt your market or environment? Brilliant leaders are always aware of the entire system, both inside and outside of their organizations. They know that to harm or destroy what is outside will hurt their own growth, while employing their rivals and incorporating their resources will enhance their strategy.
7. Put everything in place before making a move. Sun Tzu believed that a true victory can be won only with a strategy of tactical positioning, so that the moment of triumph is effortless and destructive conflict is avoided even before considering a confrontation – for whatever purpose.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Silence as Acceptance

As a generalization, the offerer can never consider silence by the offeree as an acceptance. In some cases the offerer attempts to bring about a situation of this kind by a statement in the offer to the effect that failure to reply will be construed as acceptance of the offeror’s proposal. Usually, the offeree is under no obligation to reply to any business proposal. However, if the offeree requested that goods be shipped on approval, or there is a prior business arrangement or understanding between the parties, silence may be fairly construed as acceptance. These cases are exceptional, however.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

Why People Resist Change?

1. Loss of Control: When people feel on top of things, change threatens them with losing control of their personal area of control or influence.
2. Uncertainty: Predictability is contributing to many people. Change brings uncertainty, which some people find threatening.
3. Surprise: We like new things but hate surprises. Sudden change is very unsettling to most of us.
4. Habits: We love our habits. They are efficient and don’t require thought. Establishing new behavior patterns is difficult.
5. Familiarity: The more we know things, the better we like them. (that’s why companies spend a lot on advertising) The unfamiliar is disturbing.
6. Work: New things usually mean more work (at least at the beginning).
7. Competence: People know that they can do what they already do. Change means they will have to master new skills, and they don’t know if they will be able to do it
8. Ripples: People fear that change in one thing will lead to change in others.
9. Adjustment: People are afraid it will take them a long time to adjust to any change.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.

 

The Seedbeds of Managers

Good managers are not born; they are made. An organization acquires managers in three ways: promoting employees from within, hiring managers from other organizations, and hiring managers graduating from universities.

Promoting people within the organization into management positions tends to increase motivation by showing employees that those who work hard and are competent can advance in the company. Internal promotion also provides managers who are already familiar with the company’s goals and problems. Promoting from within , however, can lead to problems: it may limit innovation. The new manager may continue the practices and policies of previous managers. Thus, it is vital for companies—even companies committed to promotion from within—to hire outside people from time to time to bring new ideas into the organizations.

Finding managers with the skills, knowledge and experience required to run an organization or department is sometimes is difficult. Specialized executive employment agencies—sometimes called headhunters, recruiting managers, or executive search firms—can help locate candidates from other companies. The downside is that even though outside people can bring fresh ideas to a company, hiring them may cause resentment among existing employees as well as involve greater expense in relocating an individual to another city.

Schools and universities provide a large pool of potential managers, and entry level applicants can be screened for their developmental potential. People with specialized management skills are specially good candidates. Some companies offer special training programs for potential managers just graduating from college.

When exposed to advertising, the consumer is not merely drawing information from the ad but is actively involved in assigning meaning to the advertised product.

My Consultancy–Asif J. Mir – Management Consultant–transforms organizations where people have the freedom to be creative, a place that brings out the best in everybody–an open, fair place where people have a sense that what they do matters. For details please visit www.asifjmir.com, and my Lectures.