It is intended to describe a few critical elements of the achievement motive which would be helpful to global managers. These critical elements are relevant from the standpoint of corporate business management. The success orfailureas a global manager, especially when he is posted to a new country, depends on a number of factors and these factors may not always be within the control; very often such factors constitute the workenvironment. These include the job, organization, nation and the world around us. After all, a manager does not function in a vacuum.
Therefore, as a manager when one thinks, or take decisions, he cannot neglect the limitations of environment recruitment and selection of your required staff. You can’t do without thinking about your environment. As a business manager, you have to constantly evaluate your precisely define ‘ environment”, classify business environment on the basis of some criteria; identify some of the critical elements of economic environment of business establish the nature of interaction between economic environment and business management; and analyze the interaction between economic and non-economic environmental variables (Beaumont, 1993).
Critical Elements
Educationandcultureas an ingredient of the sociological environment, In this category one may list the attitude towards education; the need for business education; education matching the skill requirement of industry and manpower utilization, the role of business schools and executive development programmes, education versus training; correlation between formal literacy and the level of culture; the spread of education and its the impact on business ethics; material progress and business morality; business culture and organizational culture.
The critical elements of the socio-cultural environment are: social institutions and systems, social values and attitudes, education and culture, social groups and movements, the socio-economic order, social problems and prospects, etc. The global manager is therefore to strike a balance between the interests of all groups or stakeholders. The business has therefore to be run in a socially responsible manner. This is necessary if the business has to survive and grow in the long run.
Business Culture
Environment furnishes the macro-context; the business firm is the micro-unit. The environmental factors are essentially the “ givens” within which firms and their managements must operate. The value system of society, the rules and regulations laid down by the Government, the monetary policies of the central bank, the institutional set-up of the country, ideological beliefs of the leaders, the attitude towards foreign capital and enterprise, etc. , all constitute the environment system within which a business firm operates.
These ‘ totally static, some are relatively static and some are very dynamic — they are changing every now and then. Some of these factors can be conceptualized and quantified, while others can be only referred to in qualitative environmental (Galbraith J. 1978). The environmental factors generally vary from country to country. The environment that is typical of a developing country may not be found in other countries like the USA Russia, UK, and Japan. There may be some factors in common, but the order and intensity of the environmental factors do differ between nations.
The environment differs not only over space but also over time, within a country sometimes the environment may be classified into market environment and non-market environment depending upon whether a business firm’s environment is influenced by market forces like demand, supply, number of other firms and the resulting price competition, or non-price competition, etc. , or by non-market forces like Government laws, social traditions, etc. The environment is classified into economic and non-economic. Non-economic environment refers to social, political, legal, educational and cultural factors that affect business operations.
Economic environment, on the other hand, is given shape like the fiscal policy, the monetary policy, the industrial policy resolutions, physical limits on output, the price and income trends, the nature of the economic system at work, the tempo of economic development, the national economic plan, etc. The non-economic environment has economic implications just as the economic environment may have non-economic implications. Since the environment is the sum total of the history, geography, culture, sociology, politics and economics of a nation, the interaction between economic and non-economic forces is hound to take place (Hamel, G. 1989).
As well as being aware of the influence of the external environment, global managers should also be conscious of the internal environment of their organization. Factors to consider include: the culture/climate of the organization; the pressures being generated by change (whether the introduction of newtechnologyor a recent takeover or merger); union or professional association activities; changing workloads; staffing issues; the nature of reporting andcommunicationchannels; level of morale; the profitability and/or effectiveness of the organization. Read about limitations of Manpower Planning
Global Managers should keep informed about important factors and developments in both their external and internal environments. They can do this by constantly ‘scanning’ their environment, which is, by establishing and maintaining a network of contacts, maintaining good communication channels, keeping up-to-date in their field and monitoring important issues and activities (Yvonne 16).
