Internatiomal Business Report Essay, Research Paper

Can Honda Build A World Car? Unlike anyone else, Honda s product strategy in the world s passenger car market differs from other corporations like Ford and General Motors as they continue to pursue global product strategies. For instance, General Motors plans to build all its cars and trucks around the world from just seven platforms, which is half the number they use now. Also, Ford s view, the Ford 2000 global reorganization, which was underway in 1994, which was to develop cars and trucks for worldwide markets from shared platforms.On the other hand, Honda s view on this issue is to reject this state of mind that tricked many automakers before. Instead of shipping the car around the world, only the underlying platform will be used worldwide. Honda s preparation towards the near future seems promising as they expect to use the same foundation for different cars, especially when the Accord platform will underlie a new minivan and a gigantic sport-utility vehicle that is as big as the Chevrolet Tahoe. Furthermore, the following question was probably the most rigid to answer because there are very few companies that are global enough to warrant a standardized product. The battle continues between Ford, General Motors and the most recent and surprising Honda. In the mean time, I do not think that there is a car sufficient enough to warrant a standardized product. However, Honda is undeniably on the right path as Hiramatsu and Kami are headed to achieving that goal. As far as Honda s solution to the challenge of developing a standardized product is concerned, Honda is heading towards the next level. Honda is working on tighter suspension that provides better handling on narrow roads as well as a lighter engine and better gas mileage, which will increase sales in Europe. Therefore, Kawamoto and Hiramatsu s solution was to develop fundamentally different vehicles based on a single frame. Hiramatsu had everything planned out during his research project as he recruited Yozo Kami who was a suspension specialist. Kami s preparation for this mission was irresistible and to achieve the goal he had to find a way to vary the platform s width. Many engineers thought it would be impossible because various automakers have lengthened and shortened platforms where widening it would require an expensive frame. After all the conflicts, Kami discovered a way he could design the brackets that would allow him to hook the wheels to the car s inner frame, just by moving the car s gas tank back between the rear tires. Where other engineers made adjusting the wheels impossible without tearing up the frame. This is a great step to the future as the adjustable brackets allowed Honda to push and pull easily the car s wheels together. As we reach the final test, according to Elliot, a U.S. sales executive reported that the car was not handling properly. Hence, the engineers recalibrated the car s suspension and tightened its steering and got it right this past March. This mission was definitely a success as it navigates Honda to a high standard in the fast lanes. Teens: The Most Global Market of All Teenagers of the 90 s differ vastly from the teenagers of the 60s or the 70s. Nowadays teenagers are more materialistic then they used to be. For instance, the sneakers they buy, the music they listen to, the baggy jeans they wear, etc. Today s teens are more computer-literate and much better traveled then their parents. However, teens today live in a more dangerous world, including pollution, violence, racism, and AIDS. Also, this generation s teenager s biggest beneficiaries of the converging tastes all over the world would be U.S. companies. For example, in 1992, teenagers bought 25% of America s movie tickets and 27% of all videos, for a total of $6.6 billion. As I said earlier, teenagers spend most their money on material belongings such as: $1.5 billion on jeans, almost twice as much as in 1990, and $3 billion on sneakers, which is four times more than four years ago, according to Simmons Market Research Bureau of New York City.Moreover, in order for U.S. companies to sustain their dominance in the global teenager market, it is evident that no network is more popular than MTV. This Music Television network is very popular in Europe. MTV s main concern is simply teenagers. Same as in the U.S. it broadcasts news and social programming like the Tom Green Show, The Real World, TRL, Road Rules, etc. Furthermore, MTV argues that marketing to teens will become very important because it is difficult to sell the same products to an adult in a different country, where they prefer the traditional way of life, just like they were brought up. However, this generation is different as MTV believes that today s teenagers will be different when they get older as they will keep pursuing and buying the same type of clothing as they used to and keep listening to the same music and watching sports.

In addition, the role of MTV is massive in creating opportunities and markets for U.S. products and services all over the world. For instance, the contest between Pepsi and coke and most importantly sports and music. The style of clothing that people wear today is a sequel to the type of music that they listen to. For occurrence, Hip-hop fashion might be best described as urban street wear, relaxing clothes that are comfortable and cozy. Furthermore, U.S. teenagers spend a great deal of money on hip-hop. For example, David Bowen, from Illinois says he has five pairs of Timberland boots, at $100 each. Bowen says, They re popular because a lot of hip-hop artists wear them. They even rap about them. So as you can see, it all relates back to MTV and all their commercials and advertisements that pursues all that it takes to create immense opportunities and markets all over the world.Being an International ManagerAccording to the author, the qualities of a successful manager requires Cognitive Complexity, Emotional Energy and Psychological maturity. Becoming a successful manager is basically the same thing as being a successful parent as you manage your family and take care of them. Therefore, it was not surprising to discover that the most insightful perspectives that come from a manager as from a human-resource practitioners.Cognitive Complexity contains two primary components: differentiation and integration. Differentiation is the ability to recognize various concepts instead of only one. The main point of this process is that it allows you to move from one aspect to another and explore the situation in full. On the other hand, integration, allows you to identify multiple relationships among the many aspects. For example, the cognitive complex manager s ability is to push his employees onto different scales such as working together, the quality of work and the rate they are working at. Then, you can integrate these scales in order to discover the inner pattern between them.Emotional energy is the way people interact and the emotions that they carry along with these interactions. Also, our contention is that in order to become a successful manager is not just about reasoning and rationalizing but it is also about the emotional feelings that you carry throughout your thinking development.Psychological maturity is what psychologists refer to as healthy personality . Philosophers have a system that helps them formulate their goals. Values are the core of this maturity as they prove to people what is important in life and what is not which will give significance towards everything one does.As this study was conducted primarily among executives, in my opinion the results would have been different had the authors employed a more diverse sample because all we really need is the three main qualities to reach our goal.Cognitive complexity, emotional energy and psychological maturity are all the qualities we need to develop a successful international manager. The three core competencies identified by the authors are culturally similar because it is all about various different steps. For instance, in cognitive complexity, you break down the steps and try to create many little steps to help being a good manager.Emotional energy simply requires emotions to go through the cycle and as far as psychological maturity goes, it states the facts and pushes you towards the right path.Moreover, the implications of the study s findings to human resource management decisions in global organizations is to reiterate the fact that the three essential elements are linked together to unify a whole and form a successful manager.