Week 7

Course Objectives:
 Prepare a scholarly reflection paper describing the artifacts in the portfolio and how
they demonstrate skills, knowledge, real-world application, and mastery of the
program objectives.
 Explain professional growth attained during the master’s program or explain your
professional skills to a potential employer.

Prompt
Write a reflection paper that:
 Reflects on your professional growth during the master’s program–

o What were your strengths at the beginning of the program and how did you
leverage them to succeed? (List at least 3)
o What were your weaknesses when you started the program (List at least 3)

 How did you address them?
 Are they still weaknesses?
 What additional professional development can you do to
continue growing in these areas?

 Describes each of your artifacts presented in your profile, the associated skills
demonstrated, and how those skills would be beneficial to the employer.

Instructions:
Write a 2,100 to 2,800 words APA formatted paper.
The document should include:
 Title Page
 Introduction
 Self-Assessment
 Personal Development Plan
 Reflection on the Course (what should we stop doing, what should we continue
doing, and what should we start doing?
 Conclusion
 References – 5 or more references using APA format

Week 4

 

Jargbah, T-BUSN601-Portfolio

American Public University System

Danielle Babb

 

July 23, 2017

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The purpose of three assignment done under the Portfolio project was to provide analyses of various concern related to firms that operate at a global scale. Under the three portfolio project assignment, various concerns related to global business organizations and strategies, management of the global business, environmental factors for the business that decides to go global and the foundation of global business was assessed critically. To attend to the various requirement of the assignment, Toyota Corporation was selected. The selection of the firm was significantly influenced by the fact that the firm is a global firm that is operational to various nations across. Also, considering the diversity of production the company has pursued over the years coupled with the diverse culture and environments factors affecting the firm at its global scale, the company was deemed best to help attend to the various project requirements (Kotabe, & Murray, 2004).

About Toyota Corporation

Toyota Corporation is a well-known global firm in the automotive industry that is headquartered in Japanese. As at 2016 the company had 53 manufacturing plants in 28 nations across the globe. Toyota Corporation deals with a variety of products line at its global market that includes automobile, textile machinery and material handling equipment with the sale of this product lines vary from region to region. Among the nation that Toyota Corporation is operational includes but not limited to the United States in North America, China in Asia and South Africa. The three nations considered in this assessment that is South Africa, The United States and China are members of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) which is considered to boost the growth of international trade and financial stability of member states. However, while South Africa and the United States are members of the World Bank, China is not a member, and thus, China is deemed to be depriving itself of the benefits that member countries of the World Bank enjoy. This said, both China and South Africa are obliged to follow the international trade rules provided by both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank while China is only obliged to adhere to those rules in the international trade provided by the IMF.

In Portfolio Project 1 the assessment various factors of political stability, economic policies, trades tariffs imposed, trading blocks and cultural blocks across the three nations selected were analyzed, and the extend they have impacted on the performance of Toyota Corporation in their drive to go global.

Political Stability Assessment (South Africa, China, and the USA)

In China, the political stability is somehow sound and capable of supporting the growth and development of global interactions of trade. This factor is significantly attributed to the one party system that the country has enriched on for a very long time, and thus resistance that comes along the way with multi-parties is strongly reduced. Despite this factor, the report from Transparency International on corruption and other vices of 2016 rank China as a nation as among the corrupt developed nations in the world. The effects such ranking has to China is that it has put the nation at a great risk of reduced level of both internal and external investment as investors as investors are discouraged with such vices of corruption that has plunged the nation in recent years. In China, the regulations and rules pertaining various public and private issues change more frequent which has significantly impacted on the various decision-making process for both public and private investors.

In the United States, the political systems have failed to be accountable and open, and this issue has significantly impacted on the growth of trade in the country. Unlike China, the Transparency International report on corruption ranks the United States at a better stand than China. Several studies have attributed this to the dysfunction of various government agencies that have been criticized for corruption undertaking. Both the United States and China maintain a judicial that for a long time have protected the interest of trade investors both internally and externally. Despite better performance on Transparency International, the United States recent reforms witnessed in the country has failed to attract reform contribution leading to economic imbalance. Several corruption cases recorded in the United States in recent years have been directed to powerful and renowned politicians.

South Africa is among the promising developing nations in Africa. However, reports from Transparency International ranks the country as the most corrupt among the three under consideration. This has significantly lowered the level of accountability in the country slowing down the level of investment in recent years. It is absurd that corruption activities are significantly driven by the political institution for their personal interests while using the funds that are allocated for trade development. The low ranking on the Transparency International as greatly affected the trade levels witnessed as foreign companies are afraid of corruption which is likely to spur instability if not amended. Just like the United States and China, the judicial systems in South Africa governs trade activities in the country and ensuring investors both small and large are protected by providing a fair ground for trade to all.

Trade Policies

Both United States, China, and South Africa have put in place trading policies that significantly govern trading activities in their respective nations. The policies installed ensures that only the right types of businesses recognized by law are operational. However, we cannot say that illegal business are non-existent; there are loopholes, but still, the trading policies put in place in respective nations have been able to control the existence of legal trade to a greater extent. Both countries have invested huge capital to ensure that intellectual property rights and patent rights of trade are sufficiently protected from both local and international threats. Policies to curb corruption that has negatively impacted on trade growth have been established but are yet to reach their full potential of curbing corruptions due to challenges that originate from the political wings of the economy among other challenges. However, the establishment of anti-corruption agencies has made great strides towards the management of corruptions in the three nations.

Product and trade barriers (tariffs)

Products manufactured by Toyota Corporation are sold both locally and internationally. As mentioned earlier, Toyota Corporation deals with a variety of products line at its global market that includes automobile, textile machinery, and material handling equipment. These product lines are faced with tariff and non-tariff barrier depending on the nation that these product lines are exported to. In the United States, for instance, pickups exported to the country faces a tariff of approximately 25%. Following the change of regime from Obama to Trump, Toyota Corporation faces non-tariff barriers with threats from U.S president on high taxes on Corolla cars exports to the United States from the company’s plant in Mexico. Currently, the firm faces the new challenge of acquiring various certification for them to export their products.

Trading Partners and Blocs

Toyota Corporation operates a range of trading blocs and partners across the globe. The Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation is one of the trading blocs in which Japan a country is a member and the firm has enjoyed significant benefits from such membership of improving trading activities and cooperation. In such trading blocs, member states have reduced the tariffs imposed significantly which has helped firms like Toyota in cutting operational costs (Liker, & Convis, 2011). Research done on international trade has attributed recent trade liberalization witnessed across the globe to come from the formation of regional blocs. Toyota also maintains a bilateral free trade agreement ASEAN that has fostered trade activity level for the firm. In foreign nations, there is a general increase in trade with reduced tariffs imposed in foreign nations which have enhanced the level of competition witnessed at the global scale (Wacziarg, & Welch, 2008).

Cultural factors and considerations

Cultural factors and consideration have been on the forefront while negotiating on behalf of the firm at a global scale. The culture of the world is extremely diverse and need a special approach to explore it, and thus the language of the people across the globe has been a key factor as Toyota Corporation tries to stabilize its global market dominance. The firm needs to foster efforts that will ensure the appropriate physical language is used to ensure that the desirable level of confidence and trust is developed. With the diversity of people’s culture across the world, it is important that the firm should respect their belief s and ways of business operations. This can be done through manufacturing products that best suit their needs, proper advertisement and promotion that remains at par with their believes enshrined in their culture and proper customer cares services.

The second segment of the Portfolio project dealt with several scenario situations in which they required to be responded to according to the scenario specifications.

For a U.S manager working in a foreign nation let’s say China they will be forced to adjust their communication character when they are conversing with their China counterparts. The United States is a nation that is characterized by a culture of individualism while in China things are significantly different in that the spirit of collectivism is highly recognized and encouraged across all spheres of operations. Other nations like Australia, people are more of themselves and their immediate families than the outsider.

Toyota Corporation has purchased insurance from OPIC particularly in Africa, and South America where they have operational plants and the economic and political environment is uncertain and thus unstable to predict.  In recent years, Toyota Corporation has granted a lot of patents rights. These patents are related to the production of the automobile that are powered by alternative energy. Patents are also available to protect systems. Human resource has been the cornerstone for the previous recorded company’s success, and thus the Toyota has heavily patented it skilled human capital to ensure their future success is guaranteed.

As mentioned earlier Toyota enjoys a global operation scale both to stable and unstable nations as well as to countries that considered to be politically and economically risky. The company is operational to nations like Japan and China that offers distributive and procedural political and economic climate for business.  The firm has expanded its operations to nations that are governed by both civil law and common laws of trade. Countries deemed to be governed by civil laws are one that has only legislated actions with some legal requirements are to be fulfilled for business contracts are determined while nations governed by common laws systems, contracts are significantly determined by the rulings of courts that make them enforceable by law and thus final.

The two countries selected where Toyota Company is operational are Japan and China. Japan is the home country where Toyota Corporation is headquartered. Transparency International reports of 2016 indicated China scored 38 while Japan had scored 75 with the two companies facing some corruption cases in recent years. The Toshiba company scandal case of Japan whereby a loss of approximately $1.59 billion was recorded is the well-known scandal to have occurred in recent times in Japan. For China, a range of corruption cases and accounting scandals has hit the nation. The recent scandal being the railway corruption scandal where by it was approximated that at least 190 million yuan was lost in the process.  This was according to the approximation report made from the interim audit concerning the embezzlers who were involved in the accounting scandal.

To counter foreign market successfully, Toyota Corporation has taken some strategies. The most common mode of the entrance that has been widely used by the firm is by am creating a joint venture with domestic firms in states they want to venture in. An example is provided in Thailand for instance; the firm developed a venture with one domestic firm to come up with the Toyota Motor Thailand. In the US the strategy of entrance entailed the development of range retail sales and automobile imports. The company finalizes by creating its own line of production in the United States. While the company’s approach has ensured its success in foreign lands, to others, it has failed dismally. Thus Toyota Corporation needs to broaden its horizons of entrance strategies in order to ensure success in every move they make to a foreign land.

Inclusive to the firm’s general strategies of operations is an exit strategy whenever business fails to pick up in foreign countries. The firm has an exit strategy to every market it ventures in. The corporate social responsibility standard has been the fundamental exit strategy to markets. This strategy has been achieved through the successful provision of support to its staffs who are retrenched following the exit plan. This strategy has attracted mixed feelings in that while the move has been deemed as crucial in helping in career transition of its employee those against such moves have criticized it citing it is unethical (Kotabe, & Murray, 2004).

Toyota Corporation just like any other successful multinational firm has been driven by a vision and mission. The mission of the firm focuses on the firm’s pledge to technological development as a mean of maintaining business growth. The company has pursued the above mission significantly especially technological development as depicted by the novel technological products it manufactures. The mission also put great emphasis on the product manufactured by the firm. The firm takes almost an equal share regarding categorization as both stakeholder model and shareholder model since it is a business that is driven by profit motives and focus on being corporate social responsibility. Among the global firms, Toyota is considered a stateless corporation is operating on a global scale. The recent management of the firm has opted for a centralized organizational structure since favors most the global operations of the firm. However, I would recommend to the firm to adopt a hybrid structure than matrix structure because of increased work flexibility.

Just like portfolio project two, in portfolio project three, the focus was on Toyota Corporation. Also, the responses required the assessment of various scenarios position and responding to the questions based on the specifications provided. In concerns related to labor management, the firm maintains a good labor programs that operate and supports the activities of labor unions like for instance the provision of labor incentives to labor unions. The firm keeps a close watch to the worker’s working hours which operates at par with the global automobile industry coalition guidelines. Also, the company maintains a global human resource department which plays the fundamental responsibility of overseeing that workers and the firms have a better working relationship that is based on the principles of harmony, co-prosperity, and co-existence. Some of the staffs work in the United States while others work outside the country (Monden, 1983).

Toyota Corporation has best leading talents in the modern automobile industry. While providing employment opportunities, the firm ensures it brings the top most talent on board that best fit the position advertised. As a way to support the motion of being socially responsible, the firm does employ expatriates in some of their global plants. The firm has developed a strong training program to the staffs selected to work with them to ensure that the global business leadership is attained. Toyota Corporation competitive edge has increased significantly due to modern technology. To foster employee training and development, the firm has significantly used the internet to offer e-learning lesson programs as a well to ensure the employees remain at par with modern technology which has been a source of competitive edge to modern firms. Employees are provided with access to the website to ensure their online training are done any time (Adler, 1999)

Product sales records for the firm vary from region to region with such factors like economic growth, geographical features, and climatic conditions being some of the key factors that influence the variation in the export levels recorded for different regions across the firm’s global market. One promotional strategy the company has employed over its global market that has, in turn, ensure the success of the firm on the global scale is the differentiation strategy. This strategy differs in that in aims to meet consumers both local and global consumer’s specific needs. The company manufactures products to be sold both locally and internationally. These products are produced while keeping in mind the requirements and needs of local consumers (MacDuffie, 1995). The difference in climate and environmental factors makes the differentiation strategy very important for the firm. In nations where Toyota Corporation is the operation, the firm has significantly made use of dealer as their key distribution channels in various nations where they are operational. Also, consumers who may have which to import the products directly from the plants are facilitated. All these undertakings are aimed at ensuring efficiency in their operations.

Toyota Corporation imports and exports the three product lines that is the automobile, textile machinery, and material handling equipment in over 150 global nations both developing and developed nations. Also, the firm imports the raw materials for production purpose from a range of nations across the world (Monden, 1983). Changes in the value of transacting currency will significantly impact on the profit generated by the firm though the level of demand will certainly be very high. The price charged per unit cost may vary but suppose the value of transacting currency increases more that the US dollar the lost in the exchange rate and value can be offset by the changes in the value of goods purchased.

The firm contracts with a range of local and global firms that are of different sizes and capacities. In the nation like the United States where the firm is operational, Toyota Corporation own production plants that are involved in the manufacture of a range of automobile brands, textile equipment, and material handling equipment. Other nations where Toyota is operational includes Japan where the firm is headquartered and Germany. Each of this manufacturing line maintains different supply chain management. The three lines of the supply chain include a substantial global sources of supply, strategic outsourcing, on-site warehousing and replenishment procedures that are conducted on a daily basis (Monden, 1983).

Toyota Corporation has been involved in outsourcing and insourcing of goods and services. The skilled employees have been insourced and outsourced across the globe in various plants they have opened. Such move has been driven by their focus to ensure a smooth running of their plants before they start depending on the localized employees.

Conclusion

The paper coverage has involved the assessment of various concerns related to firms that operates at a global scale. The Toyota Corporation was selected for the purpose answering the various question presented in the portfolio projects. At its global scale of operation, Toyota Corporation has made use of its in-house and outsourced personnel to stir its global success as well as adjusting its supply management to meet the specific each plant divisions (Adler, 1999).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

Adler, P. S. (1999). Hybridization: Human resource management at two Toyota transplants.         Remade in America: Transplanting and transforming Japanese management, 75-116.

Baden-Fuller, C., Targett, D., & Hunt, B. (2000). Outsourcing to outmanoeuvre:: Outsourcing re-            defines competitive strategy and structure. European Management Journal, 18(3), 285-    295.Business Issues, Competition and Entrepreneurship

Dominguez, Alejandro L. (2008). Global Management: Strategy, Challenges, and Uncertainties

Dür, A., Baccini, L., & Elsig, M. (2014). The design of international trade agreements: Introducing a new dataset. The Review of International Organizations, 9(3), 353-375.

Hockey, Lee R. (2010). Global Operations Management  ISBN: 9781616683511

Kotabe, M., & Murray, J. Y. (2004). Global sourcing strategy and sustainable competitive            advantage. Industrial marketing management, 33(1), 7-14.

Kotabe, M., & Murray, J. Y. (2004). Global sourcing strategy and sustainable competitive            advantage. Industrial marketing management, 33(1), 7-14.

Liker, J., & Convis, G. L. (2011). The Toyota way to lean leadership: Achieving and sustaining   excellence through leadership development. McGraw-Hill Education.

MacDuffie, J. P. (1995). Human resource bundles and manufacturing performance:           Organizational logic and flexible production systems in the world auto industry. ILR       Review, 48(2), 197-221.

Monden, Y. (1983). Toyota production system. Favor de rectificar..

Peet, R. (2009). Unholy trinity: the IMF, World Bank and WTO. Zed Books Ltd..

Related ISBN: 9781604561425. 9781606927441.

Subrin, S. N. (1987). How Equity Conquered Common Law: The Federal Rules of Civil   Procedure in Historical Perspective. University of Pennsylvania Law Review, 135(4),     909-1002.

Wacziarg, R., & Welch, K. H. (2008). Trade liberalization and growth: New evidence. The World Bank Economic Review, 22(2), 187-231.