Strategic Perspectives of a Glo-Bus Business - Case Study Example

? Strategic perspectives Strategic Perspectives Summary A GLO-BUS business is an enterprise that is PC based and is intended for those who are involved in the digital camera business on a global basis. It is designed in a way that, one runs a company and competes directly with the companies that are managed by other members. Its operations are intended for people with digital cameras. To become part of the GLO-BUS team, the participant needs to follow the group’s guidelines to be familiar with the procedures that are involved in the exercise. These include knowing how the digital camera operates in a market environment. A member needs to know the causes and effects that are related to his company in terms of governance and explore the software to manage his allocated company. The causes - effects and revenue profits relationships are determined by the stability of a business and its economic ethics. GLO-BUS enables its participants to apply their school business knowledge logically in handling business related matters. This exercise is realistic in a way that, those involved in it are exposed to managerial experiences, which are critical in the day running of the business (Hoffmann 2007, p.43). Introduction Reflective practice techniques can be useful in analyzing ones Glo-bus team experience. The reflective practices include taking part in self assessment to indentify the areas I can develop to become competent. Glo-bus experience allows its team members to make decisions in a year. During this period, the co-managers and I decide on the designs that we are going to use and the camera line performance, which in this case are always ten decisions to be made. Teachings on product operation and the compensation of workers are also offered. Others include knowing how to deliver prices and marketing, taking part in social responsibility by being a good citizen and being in charge of operations that govern the company. Participation in the team also instills us with the skills of accounting, providing more opportunities in becoming shareholders, which allows us to import duties and check on the exchange rates. Based on the reflective practice, the above actions require the team members to assess themselves properly to be able to implement them. According to reflection theory by Boud et al (1985), experience alone is not enough when it comes to learning. They perceive structured reflection as a way one can learn from experience Boud asserts "Perhaps if we can sharpen our consciousness of what reflection in learning can involve and how it can be influenced then we may be able to improve our own practice of learning and help those who learn with us" P. 21. Based on Glo-bus, we also learn that when presenting a report on results, it is important to involve the detailed information about the company, revealing its statistics and reports of other companies and their market performance. The decisions issued by the instructor determine the decision periods that will guide us on how our company will be running. To be familiar with the management, software practice has to be applied to understand the information provided on the screens and in reports. Decision and report screens are designed with help buttons that include elaboration on the cause and effect relationships, to give advice and guide us on what to do. In analyzing the experience gained from Glo-bus, reflection in action enables us to think critically and to understand the concepts we are taught and to deal with problems when they arise. The action that is reflected during our experience implies that, we should think critically and maintain our experience for future use. Our experience as being part of the Glo-bus team had both positive and negative effects and some of the critical incidents that affected me and our team were varied. Starting with the positive critical incident, I will apply the Kolbs learning cycle whose theory consists of four stages that are involved in learning. It provides an explanation on how individuals use different learning techniques and elaborates on experimental learning that affects us in general. The first stage is having a concrete experience which also implies the real action of participating in a learning session. This is attained by attending seminars and workshops and for my case, my group consisted of five members who were four girls and a boy. In our team, one of the girls was the leader. She motivated the team to work extremely hard and formulated a structure that guided us (Bolton 2010, p. 243). She devised the group’s meetings that occurred weekly and led all the sessions. We had discussions that revolved around our actual experience in our learning process. Our second stage, based on Kolbs theory, was about the reflective observation that involved reviewing on what we had learned. We learnt new aspects such as the behavior of people when they are new; they tend to reflect on their teaching experience in a natural way. When the experience is painful, we become less confident in our abilities. The third stage we discussed was the conclusion that involved learning from our experience. This included information based on education theory that required reading of relevant literature. Through this, we found out that reflection brought together the theories that analyzed the past actions. The last stage was to apply what we had practiced through experimenting. According to Belbinstheorey, when people realize what they are capable of doing, it assists their colleagues when selecting teams. For instance, nine people in a team make it more successful. This however, depends on the roles allocated, for example, the coordinator instills interaction and decision making in a group. Other characteristic include implementing on the team’s idea and their actions. In reference to Maslow’s motivation theory, all people act in a manner that concentrates on basic needs, before dealing with other needs. This had consequence on me as I learnt to address basic needs first like food and water, before moving to the complex needs (Redmond, 2006). The next incident is negative and is about one member of the group, a girl who was conflict oriented. She showed conflict towards me and to another Asian girl in the group. She failed to listen to us or either take any consideration in whatever was discussed in the meeting. Instead she concentrated on her own issues. She went ahead and made her own decisions without informing the group members. According to Hoff stead theory, on different cultures and their perspectives, technology has brought people together basing on the fact that we operate globally. This has further brought people with different cultures to work together despite their background. He terms the idea of relating with people of other cultures to be interesting and also frustrating with uncertainty. He refers cultural diversity as connecting with different people around the world, an aspect which involves aspects like motivating people, and implementing on various projects to develop strategy. The consequences of the cultural differences indicate that what applies in a particular location may not work in another place. Hofstede goes ahead and explains that in an organization that has 40 people from different countries, one culture can be contrasted from the other by applying four cultural dimensions. He also found out that the present model that defines culture relies on the fifth dimension. His research on culture is determined by the highest score that is exhibited in the society. The examples of the dimension of culture include the power or the distance. This implies the inequality that exists and how it was absorbed by people with or without power in our society. When power and distance is varied, it reveals that the society has accepted power distributions that are not equal and people get to understand where they belong in the system. Low power and distance implies that power is equally distributed and people in the society perceive themselves to be equal. The next concept is application, which explains that in high power distance states, reports are only send to the top managements where those who attend the meetings are few and powerful leaders. Another aspect is individualism, which refers to the strong bond that people have towards others in the community. High individualism encourages respect for confidentiality, while low individualism emphasize on building skills and becoming experts in certain matters. The issue of culture had effect on me. In relation to Hofstede’s theory, I understood why cultural diversity brought people together despite their backgrounds and I learnt to socialize with people from different ethnic groups. The third incident is about a negative incident that turned out to be positive regarding the overall communication issue we had as a group. There were a few occasions which I couldn’t attend the meeting because I was unwell. Based on my condition, I decided to inform the Asian girl to seek permission on my behalf. Unfortunately, she failed to attend the meeting on that day but managed to send them a message. The situation resulted to hostility and tension, which involved two of the team members; my Asian friend and I. My colleagues decided to inform the teacher instead of discussing the issue with me first. This step made me annoyed and I decided to call for a meeting in which we discussed the issue and solved it. As a result, it brought back the good relationship and a humble environment to work in. Hofstede’s theory explains aspects, which affect us in a way that it may lead to stress, depending on our experiences. This occurs when we become harsh and jump into making incorrect conclusions about the motives of people. This situation results to unhappiness and stress. This also makes one to behave weirdly and unfairly to other people. There are also tools that change the habit of thinking negatively. They include having thoughts in awareness, thinking rationally and positively. A person happens to think negatively when he fears what will happen later and also doubts his abilities, which change his confidence and performance affecting him mentally (Hillerband, 2010). This can only happen when a person thinks about a stressful moment in his life. An advice on this is to release the thoughts in order to be able to manage stress. Negative thoughts can be avoided by thinking rationally. This is because a person challenges his own thoughts. This can be done by applying several methods. One is becoming worried of how other people will react. If people respond well towards a person’s performance, this implies that they are able to take control of their actions. The above theory had a positive consequence on me as I learnt on effective ways of managing stress. References Redmond, B., 2006, Reflection in action: developing reflective practice in health and social, Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. Bolton, G., 2010, Reflective Practice: Writing and Professional Development, New York, NY, SAGE Publications. McIntosh, P., 2009, Action research and reflective practice: creative and visual methods to facilitate reflection and learning, London, Taylor & Francis. Hofstede, G., 2002, Exploring culture: exercises, stories, and synthetic cultures, Washington, Intercultural Press. Piepenburg, K., 2011, Critical Analysis of Hofstede’s Model of Cultural Dimensions: To what Extent are His Findings Reliable, Valid and Applicable to Organizations in the 21st Century? London, GRIN Verlag. Hillerbrand, J., 2008, Cross-Cultural Competence: Analysis of a Sino-Western Negotiation Setting, Canada, GRIN Verlag. Hoffmann, S., 2007, Classical Motivation Theories - Similarities and Differences Between Them, Canada, GRIN Verlag. Harold, A., 1987, Motivation and personality, London, Harper and Row. Globus, G., 1987, Dream Life, Wake Life: The Human Condition Through Dreams, Canada, SUNY Press. Madaan, S., 1989, Fundamentals of Retailing, Washington, Tata McGraw-Hill Education. Prabhu, P., 1989, Grid and Cluster Computing, London, PHI Learning Pvt. Ltd. Read More