Decathlon Group: Global Management Skills

Based on The Running Room’s current situation, Cisco considers a number of alternatives to her present marketing strategy. On one hand, she could continue to maintain a broad target market to appeal to both casual athletes--with more fashion-conscious products that aren’t necessarily running shoes--and serious runners, while attempting to tap into the growing market for women’s athletic shoes with expanded product lines for female athletes. This strategy would help her maintain her aging loyal customers, as she could offer athletic shoes that reflect the new exercise programs that they are becoming involved in instead of running. Conversely, she could narrow her target market to just serious runners, by investing in the high-end molded running shoes and the additional training and promotion that would be required to sell them. An analysis of The Running Room’s strengths and weaknesses can help her determine that the second strategy is the most worthwhile to pursue moving forward. As a former nationally-ranked runner herself, and with both a proven track record for catering to serious runners (who make up a majority of her sales) as well as the flexibility to switch product lines fairly easily, Cisco’s business strengths would support a shift to a more serious runner target market with relative

A team is a type of organizational group with independent members. They share common goals and work together to meet these goals (Northouse, 2016). The organization where I work has teams at various levels for maximizing the success. These teams include, core teams, coordinating teams, patient aligned care team (PACT), contingency teams, ancillary teams, support and administration teams (Veterans Health Administration [VHA], 2015). Some of these teams have interdepartmental members while others have intradepartmental staff. Successful teams have a concrete blueprint and that contributes to their effective functioning. There are several factors that affect these teams irrespective of the level. The factors comprise the presence of a clear task, separation from non-team members, authority, and stability. The factors like working conditions, team process and bridging the gaps are concerns for the executive level. The complexity of the task, individual skills and their diverse specializations affect the selection of the team members. The team’s meaningful interactions decide their success. Independent teams can help promote friendly competition within the organization and lead to better staff performance. An efficient leader can design and launch an effective team through careful planning and selection of the right members. He/she keeps the factors that affect the success of the team in mind when designing the teams. The patient care units

The company must work on strengthening its position among gymnastic clubs to avoid losing its competitive advantage. Innovating and expanding the customer base is very important in such environment. Maintaining lasting relationships with existing customers and reaching out to potential new participants must continue to ensure

‘ What are the differences of managers’ leadership styles between the Western and Non-Western cultures ?’

Kreitner, R. (2009). International Management and Cross-Cultural competence. (11th ed.). Management. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage

Globalization and technological advancement have dictated the need for managers to deal with multiple ethnic groups with different culture in their day to day interactions. According to Kulkarni (2012), cultures play critical roles in individuals, including values, beliefs, humor, worries, fears, hopes, opinions, attachments, and anxieties.

Cross Cultural management explains the behaviour of people in organizations worldwide, helping managers and firms to understand how to act in business matters dealing with the different cultures. (Adler, 2008)

Cultural differences between countries have strong effects on individual personality and behavior, as well as on organizational culture (Hofstede 2001). These differences can be a significant barrier for an international business leader. Failure to understand and adapt to these differences may

In summary, the home culture of an expatriate predisposes them to certain behaviors and situations. It allows them to operate efficiently in that environment. However, moving to the host-culture changes that operating environment and makes their 'mental software ' less efficient and effective. Culture is clearly a relevant variable when expatriating employees and their families for international business assignments. Training can be applied to ameliorate these effects. Also, training provides insight into the procedural, substantive and informational aspects of their work and personal life in the host location.

Organization wants to achieve the objectives of sustained growth and increased profitability, organization must constant innovation its product or service, also need to carry out some plans to expand its business to enable an organization to have a better development. Organization expands its business cannot be confined to the domestic market must also move abroad, which effectively allows an organization closer to the global market and broadening the scope of business and profitability. However, business expansion is not as easy in this global environment, globalization has not only changed the enterprise competitive landscape also influence the way leaders conduct business (Caligiuri, 2006). Furthermore, with globalization, global leadership in terms of cultural knowledge needed to become more acute and require more advanced level of cognitive ability on the complexity of managing the demand of multiple cultures while completing managerial tasks (Caligiuri, 2006, Grosse, 2011). Therefore, the development of global management skills is very important for the global organizations and managers. Only effective in developing global management skills can help the organization reduce the risk of international business

In this era of Globalisation, cross cultural management is the biggest challenge that is faced by the organisations. Within the business context, cross culture refers to interaction between different cultures. Cross cultural management refers to managing the employees from different cultural background in one environment (Adler, 2008). Cross culture management is a significant issue within the organisations as the success of an organisation depends upon the smooth interaction of the employees. This paper is aimed at providing insight on the cross cultural management and the main issues and challenges relating to cross cultural management. For the purpose of this paper, two articles, “Cross-cultural Differences in Management”, by Amman & Jordan

Managers were concerned about knowing and understanding each and every perspective of their employee’s cultures. As they know that without studying or knowing the culture, coordination cannot be built between the employees. It is the existing perspective of managers dealing with cross-cultural management (Sultana, 2013).

the skill sets and aptitudes to manage in global organizations. These skills include the culture, the

Secondly, another challenge is to increase brand awareness and connect Decathlon China with its customers. To begin, we can see that no efforts are done to bring consumers to the Decathlon’s official website. As a result, Decathlon China should use specific online forums about sports, where people usually tell their purchasing experiences, ask questions, etc. and where Decathlon China could use banners to be visible and attractive. Decathlon China could also hire an employee who will be charged to share its “purchasing experiences at Decathlon China”, so as to convince people to have a closer look at Decathlon China when they are looking for sporting goods. In the same time, we can see that the competition is highly using social media to connect with their customers. Accordingly, Decathlon China should create a company fan page on Chinese local social media, and more specifically, Renren and Sina Weibo, as its target audience usually hang out on these social media. The Decathlon fan page should inform potential consumers, bring them to the official website, but also allow consumers to interact, ask questions directly to Decathlon. As a consequence, Decathlon China should also hire few employees to update its fan page frequently and answer very quickly to the questions of potential consumers to show their reactivity.

First cultural misstep that Alison and John made was their lack of research prior to the task. They have conducted research regarding managers and the ways they communicate decisions overseas. They also gained insight of the success of each division but what they failed to consider some of the psychological cultural differences. They overlooked possibility of different reactions among the managers based on their background. For instance, some managers were afraid to lose their jobs where in fact that was not the case. We can see that from this quote” Every culture possesses a unique mixture of attitudes, values, and social expectations.