Question

1. Describe the major threats in doing business in global markets?

2. Discuss the disadvantages associated with offshore outsourcing? Include examples in your responses.

3. Describe the differences between compliance and integrity-based ethics. Include examples is your analysis.

4. Why is it importance for businesses to giving back to the community? Discuss the long-term economic benefits companies receive for their philanthropic activities.

Answer 1

1) Domestic firms when they enter international market need to take into consideration the politics , economies and culture of the countries where they do business.As for eg ,they need to take into consideration government trade policies which can be loose , restrictive , nationalistic,etc.Nationalistic companies often discourage investment by foreign country.In many cases the companies do not understand the culture of the country where they want to sell their product and so the products fail. It also becomes difficult to conduct business because of lack of economic infrastructure.Business opportunities are better in countries which have proper economic infrastructure.

2)Offshore outsourcing means hiring an external company to do business work. The disadvantage of offshore outsourcing is that it has the risk of losing important data.Confidentiality also gets lost.So loss of data is an important drawback of outsourcing.Eg Many companies in developed countries outsource in developing companies like wallmart, Tesco etc.

3)The difference is that the guiding values of the company are described in integrity code of ethics while the compliance code of ethics punishes or penalizes those who do wrong and tell the employees what their behaviour should be in the company.Eg of integrity code is Nordstroms code of ethics and example of compliance code of ethics is Starbucks.There are pros and cons of both. A disadvantage is that the rules are not strict and advantage is that each employee has their own interpretation what he has to do.A disadvantage of compliance is that there are too many rules and advantage is that the employees know what is expected of them.

4) Investing in the community is good for business . This helps to promote the business. Local newspapers publish news about the company and it is great publicity.This helps to build customers and also build relationship with other organisations.As successful members of the community it is the responsibility of business to help less fortunate people in community.

Three reasons are it boosts employee morale because participating in such philanthropic activities help employees feel good and a sense of belonging develop towards the job.It also helps to build a strong reputation within the community because when businesses help communities ,communities also give their support.Again consumers like companies which are socially responsible.Consumers move to companies with a good cause.