Creating and Leveraging Knowledge - International Management - Lecture Slides, Slides of International Management

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Creating and Leveraging

Knowledge

The Importance of Worldwide

Learning

• As MNCs have found ways to compete in the areas of global scale efficiency and local responsiveness, the competitive battle is now in the area of linking and leveraging resources to capture advantage through worldwide learning.

Managing Activities and Tasks: The

Operational Challenge

• MNCs must be organized and managed in such a

way that it will encourage rather than restrain or kill

the natural human instinct to learn.

• MNCs must be organized in such a way that

knowledge is developed and diffused to support

effective worldwide innovation and learning.

Managing Activities and Tasks: The Operational Challenge

• MNCs must make decisions on how to manage

different functional activities across national

boundaries

• International dimension of each functional area

poses different demands on the managerial activity

of MNC

• Focus is on major approaches of dealing with this

task.

Center-for-global-management Process

• Functional activities are managed centrally at the headquarters
• Allows for consistency, economies of scale and specialization
• may be insensitive to local market needs
• implementation may be difficult (P&G’s case in terms of Pampers)

Center-for-global-management Process

• for this to approach to be successful, input from subsidiaries very important
• extra effort should be made to be responsive to local concerns
• the movement of personnel across functional lines and across national boundaries to prevent a “tunnel” vision.

Local-for-local-management Process

• there must be strong cross functional integration within each subsidiary, and at multiple levels, e.g.., article team, group management team and senior management committee, example of integration at Philips subsidiaries
• local managers must understand corporate/central DM process and vision, to avoid being “loose cannons”.

Locally Leveraged Activities

• Using special resources or expertise of a subsidiary to meet worldwide demand for a product or service
• knowledge gained in one area can be applied to other regions (P&G using All-Temp Cheer)
• approach may prove difficult if product is not suitable to other areas or for lack of suitable transfer method
• Not Invented Here Syndrome

Choosing an Approach

• Possible to use all the approach by a MNC
• Different businesses, functions, and subsidiaries

must be dealt with in different manners

• Corporate HQ and subsidiaries must have an

interdependent relationship

• control should focus on differentiated coordination

of managing information, data, resources and

knowledge.

• Create Learning organizations

Creating a Learning Organization

• What is a Learning Organization?
• An organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights” –

How to be a learning Organization

• Systematic Problem Solving
  • What about problem finding?
• Experimentation
• Learning from past experience
• Learning from others
• Transferring knowledge
• Foster an environment that is conducive to learning
• Open up boundaries and stimulate the exchange of ideas
• Create learning forums