MGT3001-Global Management

Objective

Assignment 1 will assess your understanding of relevant concepts/theories of Modules 1, 2, 3 and 4 and ability to apply these concepts/theories to analyse practical management problems from the real world. Firstly, you will need to use your own observation and/or past experiences to identify an unresolved management problem from your own organisation/community/country. Then you will need to conduct research into the literature to find a successful solution to the problem from another culture. As cultural differences may impact on effectiveness of the borrowed idea/practice, you will need to evaluate the feasibility of implementing the borrowed idea/practice into your own culture by conducting critical discussion in the final part of the assignment.    

Task 1: identifying the problem 

Using your own observation or past experiences, identify a culture related practical management problem from your own organisation/community/country. You need to firstly describe what the problem is. Then you need to explain which historical and/or cultural factors (both national and organisational) may have contributed to the problem and why the problem has not been resolved so far.

Task 2: researching for solution 

Once the problem is identified, you will need to research the literature to find a successful solution to the same or similar problem from another culture. You may firstly explore why the other culture also has experienced the same or similar problem (e.g. maybe due to a specific economic or social development stage). Then you may go ahead to analyse how the other culture has embarked on a successful solution to the problem (did it also get the idea from another culture?) and why you believe the solution is successful in the other culture.  

Ideally, the other national culture you research into should be from a different culture cluster. For example, if your own national culture belongs to the individualism culture cluster in Hofstede's classification, then you should choose a collectivism culture to research for the solution. In this way, you can ensure that cultural differences are reflected in the solution and can be critically discussed in Task 3.

Task 3: evaluating the solution

In this final part of the essay, you will need to critically evaluate whether you can implement the borrowed solution to your own culture. 

Your discussion in this part needs to be related to major national and organisational culture theories from Modules 3 and 4. That is, you need to discuss in depth how cultural differences between the source culture and your own culture may impact on feasibility and effectiveness of implementing the borrowed solution to your own culture. If your discussion ends up with finding that it is difficult to implement the borrowed solution to your own culture in its original form, then will it be possible for the borrowed solution to be modified in some way so to be effectively implemented in your own culture? If modification is necessary, what kind of modification should be made?