culture and international business

Word length: 2,000 words (excluding executive summary and appendices) This is a group assignment involving 4 or 5 students with a mix of cultural backgrounds. Please keep this in mind when forming your groups; it is very important to have a mix of group members from different countries and regions, as you will be reporting on your team’s cultural differences in item 1 on page 2. Tasks: 1. Choose a company that is involved in international business and has experienced significant intercultural communications or other intercultural issues (problems, misunderstandings and failures) which could have been avoided by better intercultural awareness and practices. As a hint, the intercultural issues experienced could be related to, but not limited to, the following: • A company’s marketing campaign in a foreign country • A company HQ’s relationship with its overseas subsidiaries • A company’s HR practices between different cultures, and the difficulties encountered with them • Labour relations among different cultures • A company’s negotiation with other companies from different cultures • Cross border acquisitions and joint ventures 2. Write a business report to: a) Introduce the company of your choice and describe the intercultural communications or other intercultural issues (problems, misunderstandings and failures) that it has experienced; b) Identify and discuss appropriate theories or concepts that you have learnt on culture and/or communication that could help this company develop better intercultural awareness and practices; c) By applying the theories or concepts you mentioned in b), explain to this company why they have experienced the issues you mentioned in a) and analyse how this company could have avoided those issues d) Recommend what the company could do now to solve the issues they have experienced. To find the company information and any other data you need for this report, you could use secondary sources such as news reports, articles, internal company documents, press releases, articles in the local press, etc. Please note that primary research (i.e. interviews with contacts within the companies) is not required. A Few Notes about your Report Your report should be in a professional business report format. In other words, your report should contain an executive summary (not more than 1 page) at the beginning of the report, and then a proper report introduction, followed by the main body (and you should section the main body appropriately and give appropriate section headings), and a conclusion to round up your report. This then should be followed by the appendices (see the next section for details). An executive summary should clearly state the aim and objectives of your report, the key findings and the main conclusions and recommendations. It should not be longer than one page. Please note that the executive summary and introduction of the report serve different purposes and hence the executive summary cannot be treated as a replacement of the introduction or vice versa. Please also make sure that you make use of the appropriate concepts/theories/models that you learn on the module in writing your report, and reference them properly. Both relevant academic reading outside the lecture slides and notes (at least two), and research on relevant secondary information/data should be evident in the report. Take care to correctly reference all your sources of information, both in the text where you use the information and at the end of the report. A link to the library fact sheet on referencing can be found in your module handbook. Reports will be assessed for the usual criteria of content, structure, analysis and written presentation but also for their correct citing and referencing of all sources. 4. Any other appendices that the group feels necessary to include