University of Bradford Business Worksheet

Description

Choose and answer 3 out of the 5 questions below.

Each question consists of several sub-questions: you need to address each of them.

The word limit for each question is 1,000 words.

Each question is marked out of 100% and counts for one third of the module mark.

Question 1:You are a graduate within a large and financially strong British food retailing company with competitive advantages in marketing and information management. Following a slowing down of domestic sales and the problem of UK planning legislation to domestic expansion, management plan to invest in their first European market. The company’s cohesive management team of mixed nationalities and gender have currently no experience of international market entry. Write a report to the Managing Director discussing the following:

The possible strategic rationales and benefits of international market entry to the company (50 marks).

The possible factors influencing their choice of entry mode (50 marks).

Question 2:Explain the three basic decisions that firms contemplating foreign expansion must make. Use examples where possible to clarify your answers (50 marks).

Outline the various roles of a foreign subsidiary and discuss the organisational and host government factors that can determine the evolution of foreign subsidiaries? (50 marks).

Question 3:‘Firms develop international operations gradually; via a sequential mode pathway or establishment chain, enter initially perceived culturally similar markets and learn through market experience’. Critically discuss this statement (100 marks).

Question 4:Multinational companies can adopt the following approaches to managerial staffing within foreign subsidiaries: ethnocentric, polycentric, and geocentric.

Discuss the potential costs and benefits of each staffing approach (50 marks).

Advise what measures companies should take to mitigate the potential limitations of using host country managers and expatriate managers (50 marks).

Question 5:Examine the attractiveness of the UK market for FDI, assuming a deregulated post-Brexit UK economy aiming to compete against the European Union’s Single Market with lower social, environmental and food safety standards, interventionist industrial policy allowing targeted state aid and lower corporate tax for companies settling in Britain. Give examples in at least two different sectors. Draw conclusions with regards to the nature of Brexit in an increasingly interconnected business world (100 marks).