Designing A Sales Subsidiary Structure

Organizational structure is a system used to define a hierarchy within an organization which improves operational efficiency by providing clarity to employees at all levels of a company. A systematically outlined structure can also provide direction for internal promotions, allowing companies to create employee advancement routes for entry-level workers. In other words, it identifies each job, its function and where it reports to within the organization. Harley-Davidson’s organizational structure, for example, assists centralized control of the business through the company’s arrangement of its components in terms of their interactions and functions. As one of the world’s oldest motorcycle manufacturers in the world, Harley-Davidson Inc. maintains this organizational structure and centers its current focus on a limited number of markets. While the business continues to grow by international expansion, Harley-Davidson’s corporate structure focuses mainly on the fact that most of the company’s revenues are generated in the United States. Thus, Harley-Davidson has a functional organizational structure that is based on the company’s current focus on the motorcycle markets in developed countries, especially the United States, in addition to ensuring centralized control of business activities. The basic characteristics of Harley-Davidson’s organizational structure include Function based groups, Centralization, and Global hierarchy.

The internationalisation process of the firm has been a subject, which has been motive of study for a number of

At the time of development of globalization there were many concerns about its benefits. However, it has brought significant changes in all segments of human life and International business is one area in which it contributed heavily (Reich, 1998). Companies all over the world are currently formulating their business strategies mainly after considering the trends in global market instead of domestic market. Outsourcing and offshoring are some of the new business principles emerged in this world after the implementation of globalization (Samimi and Jentabad, 2014). The core of these new business concepts is to exploit the business opportunities in overseas countries as much as possible (Samimi and Jentabad, 2014).

Stages of company Internationalization (Uppsala Model) 1. International Marketing – Ethnocentric Orientation 2. Multinational Marketing – Poly centric Orientation 3. Global marketing – Geocentric Orientation 4. Transnational Marketing – Glocal

In Phase II we ensured external competitiveness by analyzing the external market survey data on total

2.     Given the markets the company is operating in, what is the best structure for the sales force? How did you decide?

Considering the conducted research and analysis, it can be clearly seen that the international strategy is not effective, that is why, needs to be fixed. Moreover, the company has a success in the local market, so it may be reasonable to put the efforts to promote inside the country.

The Daniel Gill, the chairman and CEO faces the possibility of changing the organizational structure of Europe, Asia/Pacific, and the Western Hemisphere. The current organization includes an International Division which oversees production and marketing for countries outside the United States. The goal of changing the organizational structure of these three regions is to increase sales growth internationally and decentralize responsibility away from headquarters to field operations.

Companies go across borders in search of new market opportunities and in turn, have to focus on increased productivity as competition intensifies. Organization structure and job design are carefully selected by managers to ensure that work are coordinated well with less hurdles to achieve the established goals in the planning process (Wren, 2001). In the Autodesk’s Sales department, the structure is similar to a family tree where the Sales Managers coordinates the works of the Resellers and report to the Sales Director who is in-charge of the department.

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

INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT: CULTURE, STRATEGY, AND BEHAVIOR, EIGHTH EDITION Published by McGraw-Hill, a business unit of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., 1221 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020. Copyright © 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved. Previous editions © 2009, 2006, and 2003. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written consent of The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc., including, but not limited

The world offers significant business opportunities for every company, however, opportunities are accompanied by significant challenges for managers. Managing global operations across diverse cultures and markets represents a big challenge and opportunity for companies. To compete in the global market and be successful, companies must learn the strategies, policies, norms and technology necessary to conduct international business. The opportunities for global expansion are numerous, and attaining success is a matter of developing the right strategy to win local markets and its consumers.

The most challenging decision that a company may face in internationalization is the degree of standardization or adaptation in its operations. The question of standardization or adaptation affects all avenues of a business’ operations, such as R&D, finance, production, organizational structure, procurement, and the marketing mix. Whether a company chooses to standardize or adapt its operations depends on its attitudes toward different cultures. These attitudes are defined by three orientations toward foreign culture: ethnocentric, polycentric, and geocentric.

International strategy has been used by Volkswagen and Suzuki, which involved autonomous subsidiaries. International strategy can be considered an ethnocentric strategy which is characterized by the application of the marketing strategy of the home country to all foreign markets without adaption to local environment (Morschett, Schramm-Klein, & Zentes, 2011). They used the multinational type of strategy, which focused on the local responsiveness. Subsidiaries operated on autonomous or n loose federation. They engaged he contracts to come into partnership of their companies. Also, the study found that the two business people had autonomous of their companies’ progress. They also used shares were bought shares

The Suzuki Company, since its establishment as a textile industry venture, and the subsequent later diversification into the motor vehicle industry, has applied the subsidiaries expansion approach. In this regard, besides having its key manufacturing facility in Japan, Suzuki expanded its operations into India and Pakistan among other Asian nations through establishing organizational subsidiaries in the respective markets. A subsidiary expansion approach involves the development of organizational production unites in the new markets, which, besides following the strategic guidelines and strategies as per the headquarters, have their own production schedules and designs. In this regard, the subsidiaries operate as unique and autonomous profit unit centres in the respective markets.