Essay Instructions: Country Report Project
Student(s) will be asked to do the following:
Select a country, other than your place of origin, with prior approval of the instructor, and, unless otherwise indicated, write a minimum twenty-plus page country report with recommendations to the President of XYZ Corporation, which is planning to expand its global business operations into the country of your choice. XYZ must be a fictitious company. Your report should comply with the evaluation standards below including the integration and use of information literacy and technology fluency in your research. The first part of your report should briefly discuss, in no more than two pages, your company including the nature of its business, its mission statement, history, demographics, strategy and structure of the firm, and any other pertinent information about your company up front. The second and major part of your report, a minimum of fifteen or more pages, should critically examine, analyze, and evaluate all salient factors in the business environment impacting your company which may include but are not limited to:
physical and demographic profile (geography, resources, population, workforce characteristics, etc.)
cultural/social, political (political system, political risks etc.), legal and economic(level of development, inflation, etc.) profile
trade, investment and foreign policy profile
You report should explore the positive and negative aspects of the specific environmental variables which will impact business operations in the selected country. The other three-five or more pages should include specific recommendations, implementation and evaluation strategies that XYZ should undertake based upon your findings.
Project Evaluation Standards
The Country Report Project will be evaluated according to the following standards:
I: Definition and Scope
A well-defined project including the purpose, assumption or hypothesis of your country research.
Description of your company, which must be fictitious, including the nature of its business, demographics, history, operational strategy and structure of the firm, and any other relevant information about your company.
Mission statement of your company
II: Identification and Analysis of Country Variables
Inclusiveness of variables
Relevancy and saliency of variables
Organizational categories and substantive analysis of variables:
Physical and demographic profile (geography, resources, population, workforce characteristics, etc.)
Cultural/social, political (political system, political risks etc.), legal and economic(level of development, inflation, etc.) profile
Trade, investment and foreign policy profile
III. Strategic Recommendation and Implementation
Alternative propositions
List, discuss and analyze four specific strategies your company could pursue including, but not limited to, direct investment, joint ventures, licensing, franchising, exporting, turnkey project, and management contract. Provide the advantages and disadvantages of each of the three strategies selected extrapolating salient observations from the variables discussed and their impact on your strategic choice. Are the critical analytic perspectives interwoven with the preceding variables from which a reasonable conclusion could be deduced? Are they logically synchronized?
Identify, select and analyze the best strategy of the four discussed and explain why this is the best strategy for your company. You will need to engage in a comparative analysis using, for example, a pro and con approach to demonstrate why your recommended strategy is best for the company.
Strategic Implementation
Analyzes specifically how you would implement the best strategy you have recommended for the company to pursue. What substantive specific steps should be taken to implement the recommended strategy? If, for example, you recommended an export strategy, then you will need to analyze and elaborate on your strategic initiatives to include an examination of such variables as various forms of exporting, logistical considerations, government policies, marketing and distribution concerns, the export process and export intermediaries. Your analysis, should be juxtaposed in context of the core competencies of your company; you may also wish to discuss the corporate culture and its leadership view (ethnocentric, polycentric, geocentric) that may impact your strategy.
Strategic Evaluation
Seeks to analyze any unforeseen anticipatory or contending futuristic events and recommends a fall back strategies with imaginative “out of the box” thinking and solutions. Challenges students’ originality and visionary leadership. What, for example, if as a result of your recommendation, your company chose to export all of its products to Chile, becoming very dependent on the economy of that country, then after years of successful export business relationship, a revolution were to occur, with anti American sentiments interrupting the prosperous trade relations between the two countries, what would you do? An effective strategic evaluation would include, for example, an export diversity strategy. Think creatively of different scenarios and provide viable fall back solutions.