MPM735/935 International Business Management Trimester 1, 2017 Extra Information for Assignments 1. Assessment tasks Most of the information on the assignments is given in the lectures and in the recordings of the lectures. You should attend the lectures or view the Echo recordings of the lectures to access this information. This document provides some important extra information relevant to all three assignments. Assignment 1: Expatriate Briefing – individual video (15%) Due date: 2359 (11:59 pm) on Sunday, 2 April 2017, by online submission Requirement: Each student must present a video for a total of 8-10 minutes Assignment 2: Country Profile – written formal report, individual or group of 2 or 3 (40%) Due date: 2359 (11:59 pm) on Sunday, 30 April 2017, by online submission Hurdle requirement: Each group member must individually submit the section they contributed to the assignment total of 3000-4000 words (about 1100-1300 words per student) Assignment 3: Entry Strategy – written formal report, individual (45%) Due date: 2359 (11:59 pm) on Sunday, 4 June 2017, by online submission Requirement: Each student must individually submit their full report of 3000-3500 words 2. Company details The assignments are based on a surfboard and surfing apparel and related products organisation called Endless Wave Pty Ltd. Endless Wave was formed in the early 1980s, as a result of two surfing brothers desiring to produce high quality surfing products and related apparel. The company has its roots in Torquay, Victoria, and in the early 2000s moved its head office to St Kilda, a seaside inner-suburb of Melbourne. Endless Wave has been very successful in the Australian market and has a 10% market share. The company is reasonably funky, and teenagers and those in their twenties to early thirties, both males and females, like and wear their products. The product range includes surfboards and accessories, wetsuits, bathers, board shorts, bikinis, t-shirts, jackets, jeans, belts, wallets, and specialised surf products. Endless Wave’s vision and mission is “the quest for the endless wave”. They focus on being an ultimate surfing company, which produces products that support surfers in their quest for the endless wave. This drives the vision and mission for the organisation and its products, which influences the development and refinement of products. Over the years Endless Wave has developed patented technologies for wetsuits (suit-tech™) and surfboards (board-tech™). Their aim is to make the surfing experience faster, more fun and customised to the individual surfer. The organisation mostly designs products in the Melbourne office, and manufactures in Asia (China) and Europe (Spain) through supplier relationships. Endless Wave is a medium to large private company with 950 employees worldwide. The company has a turnover of $250 million per year, with 20% profit. The profits are currently a little lower than previous years because of the recent economic woes in the global environment, but generally it has weathered the ongoing global financial crisis quite well. The company has a functional structure including Global Directors for human resources, accounting, finance, marketing and sourcing. They also have a specialised International Director, who oversees the international activities and business of the organisation. The International Division has international buyers, customs specialists, those experienced in international start-ups, and international business consultants. The other functional areas also provide services to the International Division. The business competes in a specialised and niche market place, although there are other competitors that compete in this niche market, including international and other Australian companies. Endless Wave manages to compete on their inspirational design, while containing costs. Endless Wave prefer to use equity finance for international ventures, rather than debt finance. However, the Managing Director is not entirely against the idea of using debt finance to fund further internationalisation. She just believes that it is important that the numbers stack up. The Managing Director of Endless Wave sat in her office overlooking Port Phillip Bay, and pondered on the company’s prior internationalisation and particularly its next move. Endless Wave had successfully entered 20 markets around the world, including some in Asia, Europe, North America, Brazil and most recently South Africa. Its strategy has always been to target the top surfing locations throughout the world, and expand into those countries from its home base. To manage its operations Endless Wave has regional offices in the key locations of Asia, Europe and North America. These offices assist in overseeing the opening, start-up and management of stores. The Managing Director thought of one country that always ranks very high in the surfing world that the company was not yet in: Indonesia, and specifically the island of Bali. Bali is a major tourist destination – particularly for Australians – but the company has never traded there or anywhere else in Indonesia. As a result, the Managing Director had a high interest in developing Endless Wave’s business there. However, she needs further information to make a decision on whether to enter the Balinese market, and if so, how. In her international division, a number of bright-minded employees work as international business consultants. She sent an email requesting a country profile and entry strategy. She also wants a presentation on the country. You (and in Assignment 2, your group) is the individual (or team) of international business consultants. Your tasks are: to prepare, deliver and record on video a presentation on some aspect of Indonesian business life or an issue relating to Indonesia and world trade (Assignment 1 - individual), to prepare a country profile as a written report (Assignment 2 - group), and to prepare a recommended business plan and entry strategy as a second written report (Assignment 3 - individual). Your client for all three tasks is the Managing Director of Endless Wave. Your country profile (Assignment 2) will examine Indonesia as a whole (ie, not solely the island of Bali) and its business environment from the point of view of Endless Wave. Your entry strategy (Assignment 3) will however be limited to Bali only. As consultants, you have discretion in then advising which entry mode to choose, which strategies, structure, marketing approach and so on, for the company to take advantage of this business environment. You also have discretion on advising how much capital to allocate for entry into Bali. 3. Helpful Hints Assignment Planning Deakin has an excellent Assignment Planner available to help you organise and plan your assignment. You can find the planner by going through the document “Your rights and responsibilities as a student in this unit” that is on the Unit Information page of the website, under List of Resources. You can also go directly to the planner at: http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/studying/study-support/academic-skills/assignment-planner We strongly recommend that you use this planner for all three assignments. Hints for data collection You will need to become familiar with the surfboard and apparel wear industry generally in Australia, internationally and in Bali. Austrade is a useful reference providing details of the Australian Government assistance for international businesses as well as with information about other Governmental help and overseas markets. Government websites may have information for the industry, but not always. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) publishes ‘Country Economic Briefs’ on countries including Indonesia every year. The Economic Intelligence Unit (EIU) in London publishes a ‘Country Report’ and a ‘Country Profile’ on Indonesia regularly. The major international accounting and advisory firms all publish ‘Doing Business in Indonesia’ reports which can also be helpful. In addition, there is plenty of information available on Indonesia generally, or Bali specifically, through various local and international sources, both through the University’s databases and on the Internet. Please always check the quality of the sources used for your assignments, remembering that using information from Wikipedia or “no-name” websites is not generally a good idea unless you can verify the information from a known or trusted website. Endless Wave is a fictitious organisation (that is, it is made-up, invented for this exercise). It is based on the facts of various surfboard and apparel wear companies from around the world. The organisation is created solely for the purpose of completing your assessment for this unit. Marking rubrics Marking rubrics help you to address the criteria for each assignment and they are used when marking each assignment. You should read and analyse the rubric to help you prepare your assessment tasks. A copy of the marking rubric is provided at the end of each assignment description. The rubric will be used to assess and provide feedback on your work. Reading requirements As a postgraduate student you are expected to read widely. You should demonstrate a sound grasp of the international business management literature and draw on a range of theoretical concepts and frameworks to inform and reinforce your discussion and analysis. A requirement of the assignments is to use a variety of good quality source information (including daily or periodic media, business databases, journal articles, professional reports and the internet). Use of the lectures, textbook and other academic sources will be necessary but NOT sufficient to complete the assessment adequately, as that material is dated in terms of the detail of the environmental factors and does not provide the level of detail required of the environment in the selected market. You need to put the context of your assignments into the current real world. Guidelines for group work You may run into some issues when organising group work. These may result from different expectations and attitudes to work, other commitments that group members have, etc. The Unit Team expects that all group members will contribute equally to all assignments. Students can work individually or in teams within your group to collect, assemble and write up data. Each student’s sections should be collated with others, and the discussion and presentation of the data should be undertaken as a full group. Each assignment will be assessed as a complete and coherent presentation or paper. If group members run into problems or believe that a group member is underperforming, not responding to messages, or not making an equal contribution, we suggest that you contact the Unit Chair to deal with the situation as soon as possible. Some remedies include the Unit Chair contacting and counselling the group member, or applying a reduction in marks to the underperforming group member based on their reduced contribution. It is important to contact the Unit Chair as early as possible when issues arise so as to rectify the situation as soon as possible and so that the problem does not carry on to the next assignment. 4. Support and Assistance Writing style requirements It is important that you understand what is required of a particular writing style to maximise your chances of academic success. For assignments 2 and 3 you are required to write a report. This link gives help on report writing: http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/study-support/academic-resources report writing Referencing Referencing involves acknowledging original sources of information when producing work. By referencing correctly, you not only give weight to any arguments or statements made in your work, but you also avoid plagiarism. The Harvard Style of referencing is used for MPM735/MPM935. It is very important to reference your work completely and correctly. This link takes you to the Deakin guide to referencing: http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/study-support/referencing Research skills The library provides many resources to support your research. This link takes you to the Deakin University library: www.deakin.edu.au/library/research/index.php Study Support The Division of Student Life provides free one-to-one study support with a Language and Learning Adviser or a Writing Mentor. The following link takes you to Study Support: http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/study-support * * * * Dr Murray Frazer 21 February 2017