International Management Issues - Assignment Example

The company has more than 820 stores and 63,000 employees. The company is next to South Africa include working in Angola, Egypt, Ghana, Madagascar, Mauritius, Namibia, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In 2004 the chain opened its first store outside the African continent, in India. All stores are connected to the central computer in Cape Town, whereas sales per quarter are tracked via satellite (Oxford Economics, 2012). The shops of the company are often easy to spot, because they are in a closed area with lots of monitoring.

The company is in Africa against many problems. Not only must it offer many bribes (also called the African way of doing business), for an establishment in a country, but also to the company itself build buildings and roads to build. Furthermore, the internal African import tariffs often very high (average 30 to 60% of the value of a product), although there are many, often overlapping, free trade zones (Oxford Economics, 2012). The company is criticized by some for its low wages. In Malawi, a strike for better wages (at $ 4 per week) answered an ad in the newspaper with the demand for new workers, which stopped the strike.

Brazil Brazil is a country recognized with the name of Federative Republic of Brazil, which is the largest kingdom in South America. It is regarded as the 5th largest country in the world both by the population of over 192 million people and by geographical area. On the east, it is bounded by the Atlantic Ocean with a coastline of 7,491 kilometres. On the north borders it has countries like Guyana, Venezuela, and Suriname and on the north-west it is bounded by Columbia. It is a country which is bordered by all the countries of South America except Chile and Ecuador.

The economy of Brazil is the 6th largest in the supposed Gross Domestic Product and the 7th biggest in purchasing power in the world since 2011. It is among the best developing economies of the world. It is also a member country of several organizations like United Nations, Latin Union, CPLP, G20, Union of South American Nations, Organization of American States, and comes under the countries of BRIC. Brazil is considered as a land to diverse natural resources, wild-life, protected habitat, and the natural environments (Country Watch, 2012).

Brazilian industry consists of 6% Agriculture, 25% manufacturing and 68% services. The long term credit ratings of the country are also stable. In the last decade more efforts were diverted towards securing a sustainable macroeconomic environment. Increased sustainability has lead to robust growth till 2010 which was 7.6%. However, recent economic conditions across the globe have deteriorated the growth. Brazil is expected to take-off in terms of growth at the rate of 5% in 2013. In the long term it is expected that Brazil will not be able to pace up with growth rate of 2013 and the average growth rate will hover around 3.

9% from 2012 to 2013. The ongoing world economic crisis including Euro zone crisis has led to depreciation of Brazilian Real. This depreciation of currency has helped in boosting the exports of the locals due to cheap prices in international markets (Country Watch, 2012). Discussion Relations between Brazil and South Africa have traditionally been close. Brazil has provided military assistance to South Africa in the form of training and logistics of war. The relations between these countries increased as a result of the new South-South foreign policy of