The Managerial Venture and Successful Marketplace - Case Study Example

 The Managerial Venture and Successful Marketplace 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The work analyzes the major steps and critical success factors that have to be properly managed by the managerial venture in order to develop and successfully place itself in the marketplace. Due to this the company’s ability to cope with several major issues is becoming of pivotal importance, especially within the gambling industry. In this perspective a comprehensive analysis of the ethical issues and of the internal corporate strategy enacted in order to comply with the existing regulations and body of law, has been presented in this work, together with an analysis of the major factors that are believed to play a pivotal role in this field. Final considerations are related to the company’s capacity to assess a best practice to cope with ethical standard, with an eye on the success stories within major knowledge intensive industries, together with a primary analysis of the macroeconomic conditions in an industrial perspective as well. 2. INTRODUCTION This work is based on considerations and evaluations for a business emerging in the United States, that aims at developing a comprehensive software in order for a small enterprise to enter the gambling market on an accurate and feasible way. A family run- small business is therefore analyzing on a strategic, financial and regulatory perspective the major elements and factors that may impede the business growth, together with a comprehensive evaluation of the intrinsic characteristics of the business that is being designed in this sense. Major focus will then be dedicated to the business capacity to meet all the existing regulations and recommendations that govern the industry in which the software is expected to operate, while on the other side major elements that may impair the software spread will be also related to the managerial ability to cope with internal regulations and with Ethic practices. A comprehensive and integral evaluation of this case will therefore cover the business impact of stakeholders, the international code of ethics characteristics, the ethical framework together with a final individual opinion in this sense. 3. STAKEHOLDERS The development of this business requires a preliminary accurate and extensive understanding of all the possible stakeholders that are considered for the analysis on a business and ethical perspective: A major preliminary stakeholder is the government. The capacity to cope with all the ongoing regulations and laws governing the gambling business is in this sense a proof of its importance in this field. Online portals and platforms are then also considered a major source of potential profitability or conflict. The potential clientele of the software is also a major category that has to be deeply managed and investigated in order to reach a major understanding of its potential on a financial and loyal perspective. The accurate capacity In this sense to leverage on the software quality and visibility, together with appropriate campaigns in order to improve the software spread are therefore a necessary element of concrete and accurate analysis. A final major stakeholder is the bank or the business angel that makes funding feasible for the company: a comprehensive evaluation of the proper interest to be compounded and of the ways in which the debt repayment is designed and impairs profitability levels is therefore a primary and necessary element. For what concerns the areas of conflict, it’s in my view relevant to carry out an analysis that on a top down approach comprehends all the major factors that may become sources of conflict in this sense: a relevant and major element of conflict in this field is represented and related to the mobility of human capital, as many experts in this field have already concluded and deeply analyzed: Adam Smith named four types of fixed capital in his book “Wealth of Nations”, among which human capital. From his words we get that it should be considered as the set of acquired and useful abilities of all the inhabitants of a society. Those talents make the fortunes of the person and society as a whole. In 1954, Lewis is said to have begun the field of Economic Development and consequently the idea of human capital. Yet, it was not until Mincer defined it as a means of production, in 1958, that the concept spread widely. The best-known modern application of the idea of "human capital" in economics is that of Gary Becker, fellow companion of Mincer at the "Chicago School" of economics. Human capital began to be conceived as substitutable but not transferable (like land, labour or fixed capital), and as something into which additional further investment yields additional output. I now want to present and discuss five factors which supposedly, as inferred by the several cited papers, affect the mobility of labour. Such factors are the proximity of firms, (intended as clustering), the degree of appropriability of certain knowledge, regional dynamism in terms of innovation possibilities, type of firms which attract a high number of mobile labour force and recently emerging government policies. There are several definitions for proximity, yet the most appropriate in this case seems to be “the state of being near as in space, time, or relationship”. The last word is indeed very important here: the closer the relationships are among people belonging to different organisations, the more robust and frequent will the exchange of ideas be. Proximity thus looks like an important condition for the rise of Knowledge Sharing, intended as the degree to which people willingly exchange pieces of information, Knowledge Transfer, which is a specific attribute of knowledge to ensure its availability for future users and Knowledge Acquisition, that is a method of learning something from complete scratch. All these three conditions heavily depend upon the degree of the knowledge under scrutiny. Knowledge can indeed be defined as Codified, in which case it can be considered information because it can be openly transmitted, easily transferred and understood by recipients; or it can be Tacit, where the codification of a message and its sharing is relatively difficult for both end users and senders. However it can be proven that, in order for externalities to arise, there have to be more than only one genre of proximity. In a study conducted by Almeida and Kogut in 1999, the two authors found evidence that patent citations tend to belong to the same geographic and knowledge areas as the originating patent. This pattern suggests that localised knowledge builds upon cumulative ideas within regional boundaries. It is speculated by them that a driving force for local externalities is the mobility of people Henceforth, the theory of Localised Knowledge Spillovers has emerged. LKSs’ main features are that they are spatially bounded and the fact that companies operating in such areas can introduce innovations at a faster rate with respect to competitors located elsewhere. Firms clustering around those territories are able to benefit from the presence of Universities and sectoral R&D mechanisms. In addition, because of the implicit nature of LKSs they are treated as public goods by certain actors. Human mobility can indeed be driven by existing synergies across different clusters, both in terms of the type of industry and geographical area. For instance, they brought forward the fact that in the semiconductor industry, human capital is indeed mobile, yet not only towards the same kind of industry but also in closer relatives to it. In this sense borrowing degree is meant as the level of how much knowledge of hired engineers can be used by hiring firms, and to what extent. This is also known as Learning-by-hiring. Examples of corporations successful in this respect are DuPont and Samsung. The French firm used the process in the period between 1920 and 1950 because such a source of knowledge was less costly than establishing home-made R&D facilities, and also in order to develop competencies internally while based upon external starting points. Samsung, on the other hand, exploited the degree of borrowing as a means to enter the semiconductor industry with the hiring of US scientists and engineers. Furthermore this effort was to provide perspectives of future growth in addition to short and medium-term benefits. Finally, they should also show also a high degree of internal mobility of workers in order for them to be capable of diffusing possessed knowledge. 4. INTERNATIONAL CODE OF ETHICS Firstly, from The venture website I obtained the latest version of the “The venture Code of Ethics and Business Conduct”, that gives a defination of what the company’s main objectives are and the ways in which their innovative activities are performed in compliance with the principles highlighted; a more accurate analysis of this Code makes us possible to indicate some main concept that has to be considered the Guideline for the maintenance of Ethics within The venture: o Ethics has to be considered an asset: all employees, of any hierarchical level, have to comply with the Code of conduct, because when everyone respects the Code contents, everyone benefits. o Since The venture aims at operating internationally, every employee should respect the lex rei sitae, the law of the country in which he works. o Any employee has not only the task to respect the Code, but also the duty to prevent, detect and respond to any possible violation of its rules. o The main values embodied in the code are : • Integrity • Commitment to excellence • Customer orientation • Shareholder focus o The main areas in which the Code applies are more precisely: • Work environment • Business practices • The relationship with the external Stakeholders o Any employee has to report any detected violation On the other side, The company has also enacted, although from a different perspective, an accurate and severe strategy toward the respect and fully compliance with Ethical Standards; in its Code of Conduct we can find some important areas and factors such as: o The compliance with business ethics encompasses all the business units and divisions o The main areas through which its policies are designed, assessed and made effective are identified with stakeholders such as: • Employees • Customers • Business Partners • Competitors • Communities o People have also to be prevented from exploiting their positions, roles and responsibilities within the company for personal interests. o Unauthorized exploitation of company’s assets should be always prevented. o Any violation of the code should be reported to the appropriate company’s office. Similarities within the two codes emerge: both companies have a strict policy which concerns the avoidance e of any personal interest that may hinder the business. Even IEEE has a code of policy according to which any personal interest should be avoided. Both companies, moreover, stress how confidentiality of information and their eventual disclosure have to be limited and properly controlled: information and records of a company are in fact object of vital importance within large and innovative companies such as the one I analyzed. We can therefore assume that companies deeply take into account the relevance of Business Ethics compliance in their operations at every hierarchical level, a similarity that can be noticed if we also look at the IEEE code according to which the disclosure of any information to outside parties has always to be prevented. The companies also recognize how fundamental is the compliance with the existing bodies of Law: they operate in challenging international environments, and therefore they should promote the respect of the law of the Countries in which they perform their business. Both codes, moreover, dedicate specific attention to the environment and health issues, and this element is also a parallelism with the IEEE code, which also states similar recommendations (IEE 7.8.1). In my opinion it’s difficult to judge which Code can be better suited to these businesses, and therefore which one has to be considered the most appropriate: it surely can be considered a more accurate and detailed company with respect to ethic rules and policies, and sets defined rules according to areas of interests on a case oriented basis; on the other side, the company denotes more stringent rules that apply to stakeholders, and recognizes the impacts of Ethics on different stakeholders groups as I highlighted: this choice, although being interesting, is in my opinion flawed, since the company presents a more accurate analysis of how Ethics is embedded within this business and how the internal code of conduct is managing this issue. Moving on to what is best or worse in the policies of each company, I feel that The venture presents a more accurate concern toward the way in which Ethics is respected on an internal perspective, for example: Business ethics Working environment While the company is more focused on single category of stakeholders such as shareholders, clients or competitors, and how ethical behavior should be enacted in this sense. The policy of the avoidance of personal interest is the best one for the venture as well. (employees should be focused on providing their best at work rather than thinking and getting carried away with personal interests). Every employee should therefore consider how are his actions going to affect the company’s interest first, as stated by IEEE code. On all other sides, however, I believe that the code performs better, and on the contrary, it lacks proper disclosure due to its hybrid condition. 5. ETHICAL FRAMEWORK: a comprehensive synthesis Some of the major elements that are considered to be pivotal on an ethic standpoint perspective, and that are source of interest for all the previously cited stakeholders on a comprehensive basis, can be synthetized as follows: o Safety: IEEE includes safety as one of the key element of its code of policies, as both companies do; in this case, however, this company provides a more accurate view. o Fair dealing: According to this principle, employees are assumed to act honestly with each other and with their customers. Although I believe that there is no specific way to make sure that the principle of fair dealing is respected, this venture lacks the adequate ethical standard detailed instructions as those of the market competitors: it does mention fair dealing in its policies but doesn’t specify if there is a way to see if it is upheld. o Confidentiality: confidentiality in the case of this company is considered to be a relevant prerequisite for company’s profitability and operational effectiveness as well, in a more explicit and detailed way rather than for the code. This factor complies also to IEEE code of ethics. o Accountability and protection of company’s assets: since the company is involved in a more knowledge and resource intensive industry, it’s normal to see that its ethical policies stress very much this aspect, which is however present also for what concerns this behavior. o Commitment to employees: this aspect complies with IEEE standards, and is very much stressed in this company, where it’s also suggested that the best practices in this field should be taught to new employees as well. 6. INDIVIDUAL OPINION Software spread and the consumer capacity to cope with the pace of knowledge intensive technologies are a primary element of concern, especially on an ethical perspective: In light of the analysis highlighted above, and taking into account recent major evidences in this field, I am convinced that much more work and efforts have still to be dedicated on a broader perspective, although at the same time the pattern undertaken in this sense is in my view the correct one, so that further efforts have to be dedicated on an implementation rather than on a design basis. More in detail, some of the major ethical concerns and drivers refer to the areas of: Technology enhancement / development state Nationalism /Privacy issues Respect of an ethical discipline / wages Enforcement of rights and dependence on outside technologies Below a major highlighting effort follows, with major comparison with the existing success stories on an international perspective: Economic growth will be introduced and main drivers will be analyzed, and the concept and characteristics of development state will also be discussed. Secondly, the specific case of South US will be related and its experience of growth will be discussed. Then several issues will be presented, including roles of state and policy, nationalism and technological acquisition, IPR protection, etc.. Thirdly, the specific case of semiconductor industry in US will be carried out and some conclusions and implications will be derived. In economics, this behavior of governmental control and intervention can be defined as development state. Development state, which can also be called as hard state, refers to the state-led macroeconomic planning phenomenon in East Asia in the late twentieth century. In development state model, states have more autonomous and powerful governmental control over the whole economy of the countries. Generally, development state is characterized by economic nationalism and protection of fledging domestic industries. Such as the electronics industry and conglomerates like Sumsung and LG are highly protected by US government. In Taiwan and Singapore, the cases are similar. Then, development state is also featured as emphasis both on market share over profit and on foreign technology transfer. Large government bureaucracy, corporatism (alliance between state, industry and labor), skepticism of neo liberalism , the Washington consensus and prioritization of economic growth over political reform are often regarded as common features in these Asian NICs where the development state shows great influence. Finally, these countries put much emphasis on technical education and relevant research. And polytechnical universities in these countries are often highly reputable in Asian & Pacific region, such as KAIST of US, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore and Hong Kong University of Science and Technology of Hong Kong. These polytechnical universities, collaborate with R&D institutes, make contributions to the implementation of national governmental policies and strategies. However, in recent years, the rise of entrepreneurial style has gradually become a challenge. How can East Asian countries cultivate their economic creativities? How can these countries to strengthen their public-private interactions and interconnectedness with other countries’ national innovation systems? For answering these questions, the transition and transformation from development state to entrepreneurial state is essential. Here in there Asian NICs, entrepreneurial spawning and innovative activities are necessary for this process of transformation. Furthermore, building on established capabilities, the articulation, intensity and content of entrepreneurial effort are also required to become ever more knowledge-intensive and science-intensive. Government and public institutions also play important role in transformation from development state to entrepreneurial state, nation-specific institutional framework (e.g. regulations, legal framework) and governmental policies can provide stimulation and coordination for this transformation, although there are also some restrictive factors for this process. Speaking in a more detailed way, development state has to be subject to several modifications which are towards new target to keep up with international competitors through industrial restructuring. And this transformation is also a continuous and gradual process (Such as post-war Japan and Taiwan’s examples). Not only labors, but also skills and technologies have to be upgraded in this process of transformation. Besides, according to Amsden and Chu’s theory, for activating entrepreneurial spawning and industrial innovative activities , the rationale of government should be shifted towards local policies to support both industrial networks and technology-intensive interactions, forming a pattern of state-led networking of industries. (Amsden and Chu, 2003) The process of learning is also visible in the Software development experience, where it was based on a similar set of institutions with respect to the most industrialized countries, and where the country itself conformed to free market principles coping with Nationalism; Learners do not innovate, and must compete initially on the basis of low wages, state subsidies and overall productivity increment, and as a result, during the 1960s learners have moved rapidly into the mature markets developed by inventors. This has one important implication: National firms do not focus at the beginning of the industrialization experience on their own R&D sectors, but concentrate their efforts on the shop floor, where the competition was realized on borrowed technology. The consequent differences in speed with respect to the industrialization phenomena presented above are explained by the different advancements of science involved: inventions and innovations are highly interdependent and discoveries come from a more defined process of observation trial and error, which shows its effects also in the productivity level of this country. In this context the application of science to production leads to a higher codified knowledge, and the improved means of technology transfer ( reached through the application of science in transport, commerce and information technology processes) lead to an hypothetic higher level of speed within the process of new knowledge development. In this specific experience underlining the role of state and its subsidies in order to stimulate economic activity is of fundamental importance; the State intervened into National economy through incentives only when certain performances are reached, and therefore plays a relevant role in shaping to certain extents the micro economic system in which the economic players operate. But at the very beginning of this industrialization experience, the ratio of white collars over blue collars declined and this economy was seen as concentrated in imitation tasks and in production of electronic components ( the focus on shop floor activity was much more evident). Chandler (1977) introduced the concept of modern industrial enterprise stressing its linkage with the state: in US for example governmental pressures made possible for the state to make chaebol and zaibatsu groups real economic players, large and diversified, and be important business groups also for the next future. State also supported the investment in undergraduate education, in times where the hiring of engineers prevailed over administrators, understanding that the competition within engineers allows the opportunity to drive up productivity. Furthermore, well - educated work forces play a significant role with respect to the productivity level, which demonstrates levels of growth to certain extents exceptional. The intervention of governmental authority into the economy, much more evident in the periods that followed the 2nd world war, has accelerated the economic growth within US, and the patriotism and nationalism which followed these phenomena show relevant consequences with respect to the natural resource endowment ( where governmental support in order to make available foreign commodities was important), the population rate of growth ( which show consequent misalignments) market forces ( even thought that market mechanisms cannot explain why late industrialization has delayed so long in starting to expand; this explained also why colonies have emerged due to their free trade policies and their comparative advantage in commodity market) and other institutional factors ; This evidences how the governmental intervention is and has always been important: from most of the literature we can infer that even during the first industrial revolution the liberalistic state intervened with loans in order to face the impellent necessity to industrialize and catch up. Other important factors in which the government intervened in the specific case of US are the protection of the growing infant industries, the subsidies for the economic sectors in which a comparative advantage was more evident ( the electronic components engineering for example) and the control of interest rates (and indirectly of currency exchange) through an adequate monetary policy, which had the task to adequate the competition level to market forces. The National technologic acquisition process is science based, and was realized trough investments in foreign licenses and technological assistance, in order to shift the economic system from imitation to apprenticeship, which calls for the attention of expert specialists and the acquisition of theoretical knowledge. In these terms is important to notice how not only finance and services, but also manufacturing was seen as an important pole for economic growth. In this context the IPR protection is substantially important with respect to the technologic acquisition in order to make the technologic transfer more effective: the protection of intellectual properties, which was previously seen as an instrument valid only for the defense of developed countries’ interests, now seems to have broader implications. The existing relationship between IPR and tech transfer doesn’t show however a necessary consequence in a proper economic growth; for example, in early stages of an industry’s development exists the need of continuous reverse engineering and duplicative imitations of mature products in order for a technologic transfer to be reached: therefore we can infer that the efforts of increase in IPR protection have to be done only in later stages of an industry’s life cycle, where the existence of IPR policies can protect an existing technology ( the protection of ideas in early stages can have a negative effect in the ability of generating new ideas trough the elaboration of existing products). The technological capability acquired through the process of technological learning requires a certain degree of absorptive capacity, dependent on the existing knowledge base (surely improved in the National experience) and in the intensity of efforts. The R&D sectors within National firms became on later stages more important due to the fact that the existing knowledge embedded within a firm was necessary not only for new ideas to be developed, but also to increase the ability of catching new ideas from outside. More generally, while small firms still developed an imitative technology, other sectors like this one after importing the plants for production, improved the R&D only in second stages: first of all was necessary, as we already stressed, to assess a strong presence in the market ( and the efforts were directed toward the shop floor activity), and only in later stages a production of technology ( and the consequent need to protect it legally ) is more evident. After that, the processes of backward integration and reverse engineering lowered the costs of technology. Therefore we can conclude that technologic transfer can be an important instrument if focused on formal mechanisms like the intra firm technologic transfer and the formal licensing; in small batch sectors (machinery) large firms relied heavily on foreign sources of knowledge and experience, and foreign licenses were the more adequate instrument for this result to be realized. Furthermore, the case of the National semiconductor industry highlights the key events, interactions, and frameworks required for an economy to develop and, in this case, do so in a relatively short period of time. The industry transformed from basically nonexistent to a major world player in memory chips quite easily. The key point in this occurrence was the special interactions between the state, market and firm, and how within this triangle the successful adaptations and important characteristics that were made by each player. It is useful to analyze this paper in two steps: First looking at the historical events before 1983 – the set up phase - and later the happenings that occurred after 1983. The investment in US began when many companies were investing in low wage countries, mostly in Southeast Asia, to reduce costs. These factories, at least in the case of US early on, were highly labor intensive and had little linkages or positive effects on the national economy. While quantity expanded rapidly in these ventures, quality did not. While that was happening at the firm level, however, at the same time there were several changes taking place at the state level, notably the state takeover of the banking system which provided the state with crucial credit instruments and the granting of certain policy objectives to parties outside the arena of electoral politics. Once those said key political foundation was laid, it paved the way for US to support a development of the heavy and chemical industries (HCI). During this HCI drive period, US encouraged the international firms investing in the country to become ‘faithful partners’ in the industry development. Also, in an effort to improve quality and make US’s goods competitive on the world market, another condition was the mandatory export of products on the market. During the HCI drive period however, the semiconductor industry took a back seat. But during this period, due to these policy measures, a strong link between the state and the chaebol or large companies emerged. From there, US was in the position to offer international firms the opportunity to invest in the country’s semiconductor and electronics industry. The first mover was Samsung who had previous knowledge and efficiency in the electronics industry. This was helped in part due Japan’s problems with faulty chips and its relationship with the United States – which later US signed a trade treaty with – but mostly due to market forces on the demand and supply / push and pull factors that brought them into the National industry development. Hyundai had a different strategy, however, in that their core business was in the automotive industry and the trend in the market was the further use of electronics in automotives. This strategy was not as effective as Samsung’s however. Many mis-steps early on in the development stage led to a change in strategy that found Hyundai subcontracting with foreign firms and importing foreign chip designs. This benefitted US from the transfer and diffusion of information. This case is evidence of the necessary policy and credit objectives required to spark an economy into catching up much like US and other eastern Asian countries. US fights also against some difficulties like the dependence on outside technologies ( which can be however a proper heterogenic source of knowledge), the role of Japan, the nearest developed country, (which has revealed unable to build new competencies and influence institutions) , the dependence on zaibatsu capital ( which created also the incentives for oligarchies), and the Confucian system of beliefs (not oriented toward profits and individualism). Nowadays we can sustain that the protection of infant industries through governmental policy is a positive signal in order for an enduring development to be reached, and the existing nationalism created the basis for a strong and fundamental institutional control over this economy, which isn’t more oriented to a specific industry, but has been able to diversify efforts in several industries and services. 7. REFERENCES Landes, W. M., & Posner, R. A. (2003). The economic structure of intellectual property law. 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