INTBUS 7506 International Business Strategy : Enhance Sustainability

l aim of this corporate level strategy is to help the company to achieve a strategic fit, which enables the company to attain synergy. Principally, synergy is the capability of multiple parts of the company to attain a greater overall togetherness obtained when efforts of different parts are added. Synergy is attained when firms combine with similar financial, marketing, management and operation efforts.

The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) matrix illustrates the significance of the Blue and Red Box product of the Blue Buddies. The findings of the matrix stipulate that the Red Box product be represented by the question mark upper right side). However, the Blue Box is on the left side, and denoted by the ‘cash cow.' The source of income formulated by the organization has high relative market share and low market growth rate. Since there is a relatively high share of the market, the generation of profits from the Blue Box products is also high whereas the growth of the market and investment required is low.

 As such, additional funds can be utilized to enhance the global expansion of Blue Buddies' divisions and products. The question mark denotes the Red Box Products, which have significant growth in the market. However, the Blue Buddies itself is unable to achieve a significant share of the market from the Red Box Products. The red ocean is the worst for the organizational case because the market is expanding yet Blue Buddies is unable to capitalize its strategic situation (Carton, 2017). When the ‘question marks' are maintained this way, they will lead to absorption of cash, which will ultimately escalate to a ‘dog' when the growth of the market diminishes. One of the most fundamental critiques of the matrix is concerned with the conclusion that greater market shares signify more profit, which might not happen as intended. There is a probability that the Blue Buddies has a lower share of the market, because of strategic marketing and higher prices, irrespective of its high prices. Resultantly, this leads to more profits, regardless of the minimum share rate. In that regard, the BCG matric is limited and cannot deliver a realistic picture.

International & Cooperative strategy

The Blue Ocean Strategy and methodology is applicable in Blue Buddies' case study to formulate a customized process of management, about the new marketing perspectives, in addition to organization practices in the global extent. The action plan illustrated is based on strategic enhancement of Blue Ocean'; implementation, development, control, and evaluation of Blue Buddies strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats as indicated in figure 2 below.

The company has comprehended its strategic position after the 46^th years that its global expansion in the Starland has overextended the company too narrowly. Moreover, there is an increased number of complaints from the company's suppliers at Roundland. In that regard, the company needs a low strain and cost remedy in order to be sustainable in transnational and multi-domestic markets. Non-clients have also provided their numerous concerns, which include the intensity of risks realized when purchasing gaming consoles that have a connection problem with the present television sets (Carvalho, 2012). Another issue is that non-clients are apprehensive concerning the process of maintenance and repair when consoles break down.

Concerning the potential future strategic alliance of the Blue Buddies, it is affirmed that when confidence exists in the Blue and Red Box products, the use of a concentric strategy to establishing a standard warranty of three years is advantageous. Accessing assistance after sales is a major concern for clients. However, the customer's fundamental questions concerning the ‘after sales help' were about the position to return the broken consoles and who were the distributors and salespersons (Chan Kim, & Mauborgne, 2005).  The significant values, incorrectly predicted, were multimedia adds-on, console power, online gaming systems, and the audio sophistication. On the other hand, the controller sophistication, rechargeable batteries, and exergaming systems have surpassed the expectations of the market. About the competition rate, the prices of the Blue Box products are high and unfordable for the clients. The company lost the profit margin since there were inadequate attributes either eliminated or reduced.

The choice concerning the strategy for diversification of the Blue Buddies Organization denotes a significant scope of a decision-making process that is capable of influencing the industries and markets that the organization will compete against in future. Organizations can expand or decrease their diversification level for multiple reasons. These include, for an economic motive to pursuit economies of multiservice scope and scale, which will result in the lowering of the per-unit expenses through an increase in sales and fixe-expenses reducing profits connected to strategic growth using diversification (Cheng, & Yang, 2013). Even though the concentric approach and the entropy measure are denoted inversely, they depend on the same fundamental supposition concerning the SIC systems, whereby the validity of the hypotheses are questionable. In SIC, organizational activities are collected as a single industry (4-digit level), which is aggregated to industrial groups (3-digit levels) and lasts to major groups (the 2-digit levels).

Merger & Acquisition Strategies

Merger & Acquisition (M&A) are illustrated as an alliance of industries. When the two terms are differentiated, Mergers form a single company by combining two of them, whereas an Acquisition is only company takin over another. With the fundamental objective of maximizing wealth, the Blue Buddies should keep evaluating numerous chances using the methodology of merger and acquisitions (Child, Tallman, & Faulkner, 2005). The need for a consolidation strategy for M&A arises due to the company's vision to expand. This alternative is used to expand organically, or within a firm, which can happen due to various instances. M&A strategy for the Blue Buddies involves synergies that involve management competencies and costs, which would be operational.

Advantages of Consolidation

• Reduction of costs: The consolidation of corporate activities decreases all the functioning redundancies such as unessential staff and management functions. Resultantly, capital and operational costs reduce hence improving the bottom-line of production. During the process of consolidation, Blue Buddies functions will be re-engineered to deploy systems that enhance performance.
• Entice Partnership: Organizational consolidation is the dominant methodology, which enables a company to facilitate corporate leadership. Considering Blue Buddies greater organizational size, the company would be able to establish a transnational and regional brand to enhance its purchasing power (Cogan, 2012). When the firm purchases out a competitive industry, it decreases its amount of competitors. Moreover, it will limit the number of clients for brand distributors.
• Economy-of-scale Enhancement: Consolidation enhances the purging of any matching assets. Through the reduction of facilities in the Blue Buddies, funds and operation actions are limited significantly. Consolidation is also necessary for enhancing communication within various organizational functions, like marketing and production.

Disadvantages of Consolidation

• Formation expenses: the process of consolidation involves many legal bureaucracies to be followed. All these formalities are expensive and time-consuming when forming them.
• Goodwill Loss: When exercising merger, the absorbed firm diminishes its entity, and as for amalgamation, the combined firms will lose their entities (Daft, & Marcic, 2014). In that case, the initial goodwill created by the consolidating companies will have been lost.
• Capitalization issue: When organizational units combine, capitalization might be surpassed. In that case, the shareholders of the companies might not retrieve back their initial capital

Corporate Governance

The Blue Buddies Organization considers global expansion and sustainability as a long-term improvement of its corporate values and organizational priorities. The corporate governance of the company should formulate a positive association with the relevant stakeholders, customers, community, business partners and employees (Dive, 2008). Moreover, the relationship should include a consistent provision of strategic products, which satisfy clients. The Blue Buddies should seek to enhance its corporate governance and apply general codes and principles of governance.

Figure 2: Corporate Governance Structural Illustration 

 

Policies that safeguard the interests of relevant stakeholders to invest in future include, but not limited to

Objective and Nature of Blue Buddies' Policies: The Blue Buddies protocols are formulated to define the rules that Blue Buddies has stated to be relevant to extreme situations in the company. The rules bind neither corporates nor business members.

State or Federal Rule Compliances: The Blue Buddies Organization expects that businesses will abide with all the guidelines in state and federal dimensions, including the stock exchange entry regulation.

Divulged Corporate Governance Ethics and Policies: Blue Buddies has a belief that each company needs to create a written divulged governance policies and procedures, including the code of conduct applicable to all the directors and employees (Estrin, & Meyer, 2007). The company hopes that the board of directors will meet the standards to safeguard the interests of shareholders.

Shareholders' Accountability: The practice and structure of corporate governance need to enhance and safeguard the accountability of the company to the relevant shareholders to assure equal treatment.

Participation of shareholders: Shareholders need to have a significant ability to take part in voting, including fundamental choices affecting Blue Buddies’ viability. Shareholders also need to participate in significant chances to nominate or suggest directing candidates, formulate processes of evaluation and selection.

Justification

Based on the corporate governance policies, the Blue Buddies believes that firms need to adhere to a specific formulated guidelines of corporate practices and current corporate residency (Gündüz, 2018). Adoption, promotion and efficient implementation of rules for effective conduction of the firm and its relationship consist of fiduciary obligations to enhance continuing venture activities in the future.

Code of Conduct

The essential features attributed to the Blue Buddies employee’s code of conduct include:

1. Be all-encompassing – we harbor communities from every kind of heritage and nationalities. It is inclusive, although not restricted to individuals centered on the sexual status, gender personality and appearances, color, age, size, family status, social levels, literacy levels, religious background, and physical capabilities.
2. Being understanding – everyone relies upon the production of high-quality work within the firm (He, 2008). The primary assessment will thus influence various clients and members thus one should consider these penalties into considerations in order to make wise decisions.
3. Being courteous – everyone will not agree in most times, thus being at odds is not a requirement in having a bad-mannered character. Therefore, it makes the majority of individuals encounter certain aggravations in due time, although such annoyance should not be permitted to influence individual characters (M. Ramanuj, 2012). Any surrounding which is considered to be a threat to the business is thus known to unprolific to most individuals.
4. Selection of adequate words to be used – individuals should carry out their daily activities in a proficient manner. People should be humble and generous to other prospective partners in the business (Jeannet, & Hennessey, 2004). Weird and nuisance character are prohibited in the business. All this incorporates various factors which are highly restricted to: various aggressive intimidations, other defiance, prejudiced languages, and comic stories, allocation of sexual open material/brutal items in media devices or any alternative means, personal affronts, specifically for individuals who are enacting racism or sexual characteristics and other undesirable sexual behaviors.
5. Not being pestered – commonly when individuals are questioned and asked to impede the progress of issues they should do so. In an event where there is certain misunderstanding people should comprehend the reason why. The significant disparity linking personal thoughts and differences should highly be evaded (Jeske, & Santuzzi, 2015). The primary concern is that many disparities concerning various issues should be handled and solved appropriately.
6. Differentiating to strength - power is always obtained through an assortment of various issues. Diverse individual comprises of unique viewpoint based on particular issues and concepts, which are highly worth in for the process of handling various problems and issues used for the creation of specific ideas and concepts. Not being in a position of comprehending people's opinions does not imply that individuals are wrong about certain perspectives (Kalasin, Dussauge, & Rivera-Santos, 2014). Individuals should bear in their minds that people always make mistakes thus holding someone responsible a particular action does not solve any problem. As a substitute, people should focus on finding solutions to these problems and being educated when they make certain mistakes in the long.

In compliance with the organization's workers code of conduct, it will uphold the augmentation of one's educational progress and also be beneficial to the organization in the end. On the other hand, clear comprehension of the disparity existing on what is required to be done and not to be done within the organization results to the safe working environment. On most occasion, people use bunk offices because they do not fully understand if such activities are incorrect or affect ethical conduct (Klein, Mahoney, McGahan, & Pitelis, 2013). Workers principles always make sure that staff members abide by various rules and regulations additionally ensuring that they work for the firm.

Strategic Leadership

Certain traits of the high ranked managerial personnel members of the Blue Buddies firm in the final simulation included:

• Perseverance – the most significant factor to be considered during the process of transition in the company, can include incorporating hard work and also doing strenuous activities when the need arises. Blue Buddies managers possess the motivation and the endurance which was necessitated for the process of instituting change when it was hard and much elusive and painful in some occasions for the organization (Kong, Lartey, Bah, Biswas, & Jaladi, 2018). Thus if the plan was much unproblematic, then every individual would thus be flexible, inventive, and also equipped for future changes that would occur. Additionally, managers have designed the mindset and physical ability to produce results, unlike others who surrender impulsively before the final plan is out.
• Stirring – This involves the process of managers getting various members of the organization get involved with various processes in the organization (Leavy, 2018). The most significant works of known leaders in the organization are known to provide rousing leadership skills and excellence. They can easily convince individuals to get involved with the process which makes them take forward the strategic objectives of the firm. Failure to motivate others people will lead to the creation of a dangerous group, which makes rejection of the current plans and thought initially, presented which are targeted to increase the living standards of various individuals (Kovacic, H. 2012). Consequently, managers will also be in a position of sharing brand new thoughts and ideas, with the aid of assisting different individuals to alter the different perspective of the team members. This will make them celebrate the development and also reduce tension through the introduction of fancy activities within the development.
• Being responsible – in any risk events managers should be in a position being accountable for any risk that might emanate. Additionally, they should not be cruel, but they should consider making of precise prospects (Lee, & Soman, 2008). This is because they are aware of the often mistakes done by several individuals, with the downfalls experienced in the process. Even though is typical behavior among various individuals, most strategic managers can be unrelenting through the counterchecking, providing service aid and also put up with various flaws, although in the long run they are focused in attaining effective performance (Krug, 2009). Therefore, in an event where you aspire to become among the strategic management team one needs to roll on and possess the positive attitude, which will aid in conveying a reasonable percentage in order to get to the projected objective.

Managerial succession plan 

Centered on the structured shared skill plan and other consequent professional advancement schemes various improvement outlined below has contributed to the success of the planning position.

1. Deputy Director 2 (PN 20007000)

All based techniques mentioned in phase 3 of the skill sharing scheme has been applied. Generally, these stated policies are overall attendance in a congregation, job shadowing, core introduction of the career development schemes, significant progress made, which comprises of around 70% of the commodities under completion (Lee, 2013). The improvement of various projects is estimated obtained through weekly meetings involving the successions planning position and the capable successors. Thus the offices account the weekly findings to the headquarters that are responsible for trailing and observing several HR activities.

2. Human Capital Management Administrator 2 (PN 20008000)

All the approaches employed in the process of knowledge sharing have already been implemented. Roughly, such strategies include the use of SOP review, job shadowing, completion of managerial roles with the help of office support based on the career improvement scheme, this shows that the critical advancement has already been achieved, estimated to about 85% of the selected commodities by the managerial body (Øivind Madsen, 2017). Advancement in the direction of completing a specific task is evaluated through weekly based summits amid the current planning body and the prospective successor involved in the plan. Therefore the personnel in office thus provide a summed report to the managing body for evaluation and supervision.

3. Human Capital Management Manager (PN 20009000)

It is estimated the about 50% of the policies mentioned in level 3 of the skill transfer scheme has already been instituted. Principally such approaches include: job shadowing, SOP review, the introduction of various career development schemes, limited progress has been done which comprises of about 35% of the mentioned items to be completed (Oxley, Rivkin, & Ryall, 2010). Advancement about completing a particular task has not yet been established. Thus various arrangements which are aimed at doing such are inclusive of various weekly statements which are emailed by prospective successors to the individuals in the offices, who provide additional support when required. Thus this activity is thus evaluated after six weeks. Therefore the chief merits existing between the leadership succession schemes provide the capacity to the Assistance Director of Administration on focusing the productive labor force and the succession planning of several staff members who are aspiring to improve the future action from where there is proper documentation of various positions (Randall, 2015).

Strategic Entrepreneurship

In order for the Blue Buddies organization to improve its entrepreneurial plans and administer increased and fundamental innovation processes, it has to make use of various innovative techniques for the firm. This type of entrepreneurial approach focused to be instituted by the organization is to increase and uphold with the company's competitive through the modification of various internal systems, structures, and its ability to innovate. Alongside the framework used, much stress if pointed out towards the chief factors associated with the internal organization functions which are carried out (Renou, 2006). Due to this much attempt is focused on the production of rigid managerial tools within the company's policies in order for their implementation process. The company's transformation provides that capability of the business acquire maintainable competency without changing the organization's strategic policies, the offering of other products, and covering other markets aspirations.

Indeed there are exist various scenarios when the firm's innovation process is considered as an essential factor within the whole company's operations, which include the business processes in re-engineering (BPR), which is mainly targeted at structuring and improving the organization's value chain respectively (Schwartz, 2014). Additionally, the reconstruction of the organization mainly related the involvement of a single transformation practice which is profound to have the profound effect on the firm's body, for example, the deliberate reformation attempts, or minor transformation processes which attribute to an increased level of efficiency during the implementation process. Nevertheless, it is correct that the company's rejuvenation process, the implementation process should be familiar to the prospective initiative.

The section below explains various levels in commencing, managing and finally triggering Blue Buddies recovery program.

Level 1: Inspiration of need for amendment

The present status will be denied, the present believes confronted, and the unknown factors upheld. Thus the transitioned mindset required for brand revival is necessitated for the creation of a practical solution in the event of failure or success.

Level 2: Possessing an individual mindset and the generation of the intellect of understanding

The greatest brand tools are not based on the sex and the one’s level of income. Thus most individuals have the feeling that they have a close relationship aside from the purchase of a product of service.

Level 3: Admiration of being disregarded

Commodities which are in alignment with the current trends in the marketplace abide by the customer's rules and consideration. They significantly influence the comprehension of consumer knowledge of the topic which profoundly impacts the livelihood.

Level 4: Imagine as one and do as one

One should be highly considered during strategy implementation process. Although it might be intimidating when using ineffective strategies since poor implementation process will result in poor performance.

Level 5: The type of brand

The type of brand in an organization is useful for the improvement and adjustment of the company’s brand. This will determine the mindset, execution process of the organization’s activities.

Monitoring Strategic Performance

Blue Buddies market performance can expertly be evaluated through the use of a balanced scorecard, which carefully outlines the organization's aims and objectives (Rush, 2012). Being in a position of settling on the use of a capable, balanced scorecard of will commence a new beginning for the organization success. The primary keyword used in this section is "journey" which structures the scorecard system which provides the timeline of the project. Being attached to the balanced scorecard model will provide a beginning for the improvement and thus signify a significant cultural disparity within most firms (Varia, 2005). The effective use of a balanced scorecard will be a signal for the effective performance of the managerial process which increases the possibility of increasing organizational transition and uphold accountability in the organization.

Commencing with level one which relates to organizational appraisal, pains, values, change management and the scorecard improvement processes prepared, visions and missions will be authenticated. Level two relates to consumer and shareholder costs proposals which are highly precise and are used in the creation of the company policies. In level three comprise of the aims and objectives followed by step four involve the strategy maps of the organization. Level five involves the improvement of critical strategic procedures (Violet, & H.Josiah, 2011). Level six is used for the establishment of various initiatives which provides a basis of fruitful strategy. Level seven involves the automation process while level eight relates the migration of the scorecard into various business units which helps the HR relate the corporate visions and strategies in function. Level nine is an evaluation process which is for the completion process, thus to comprehend the managerial systems specific changes should be included in the company's strategy.

The application of BSC in the company is limited to financial costs ventures and time. The BSC system needs a substantial investment since it is a long-lasting solution. Blue Buddies requires to manage its systems regularly and actively, which means time and finances need to be invested (Wratschko, 2009). In that case, Blue Buddies’ workers need to understand the operation of the system, which might force the company to spend more to facilitate the training of non-competent staff.

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