Analysis

Project #1: Locational Decision Making

Assume that you are a general manager of a U.S. global company in a particular industry. You are going to expand your business in a foreign country. This is a fictitious business, but can be modeled after/based on an existing business.

Choose two countries from List A and an industry from List B (below). From the perspective of the general manager, identify and analyze the similarities and differences in the cultural (25 points), political and legal (25 points), and economic (25 points) environments between two countries, which may have an impact upon your future business activities/practices (e.g., marketing, accounting, finance, operations management, human resource management). Based on your analysis, choose the country in which you would expand your business. Make sure that your locational decision must be supported by sound reasoning.

Every member of each group should submit a performance evaluation (form provided in blackboard) detailing the performance/contribution of each of the group members including themselves. If the group identifies a member a low contributing member, the professor reserves the right to adjust the individual score on the group project.

Your research questions should be briefly stated in the section of “Introduction.” Discussions should be presented in the sections following “Introduction” and corroborated by relevant facts and reasoning. The results of your study must be highlighted in the section of “Summary and Conclusions” at the end of the manuscript.

Format Instructions

1. The paper should follow APA Format (Library Resource on APA).

2. The length of your report should be limited between 10 and 12 double-spaced pages.

3. Use parenthesis around the last names of the referenced author along with the

published year of the referred publication separated by commas, e.g. (Davenport &

Harris, 2007; Hopkins et al, 2010).

4. Since the bibliography should include only those references cited in the text of the

paper, it should be referred to as "references." References should be listed at the end of the paper. Entries should appear in alphabetical order. Here are the examples:

Davenport, T. H., & Harris, J. G. (2007). Competing on analytics. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 46.

Elliott, T. (2012). 2012: The year analytics means business. Retrieved from smartdatacollective.com, February 10.

Liberatore, M. J., & Luo, W. (2010). The analytics movement: Implications for operations research. Interfaces, 40(4), July-August, 313-324.

Hopkins, M. S., LaValle, S., Balboni, F., Kruschwitz, N., & Shockley, R. (2010). 10 data points: Information and analytics at work. MIT Sloan Management Review, 52(1), Fall, 27-31.

List of countries and industries to choose from:

Chosen country:

Germany and china

Chosen Industry:

Technology