International business environment Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

International business environment - Essay Example As companies expand into greener pastures around the world depending on the specialisation, expertise or even business opportunities available to them, local cultures, local politics and the economies of host countries can become problems which have to be dealt with. This means that there are new issues which must be addressed by managers who can now be called on to create company wide policies as well as region based policies which affect the people working in London as much as they affect employees working in other parts of the globe. This problem is actually at the heart of the globalisation of business and the solution demands the creation new world order for business where we move towards a combination of cultures that represent us as humans. A company wide policy manual can be used as a document which sets up the culture of the company even as an isolated bubble in a place where the outside culture is totally different. However, this must be done carefully because this could also be dangerous as going with policies which are against local cultures can create bitterness and even a loss of the company’s human capital. GE was one such company which experienced these issues when they setup their operations across Eastern Europe and tried to revamp their business in Ukraine, Hungary and Albania. As reported by Welch (2005) GE faced several difficulties in political, cultural and economic terms which made it difficult to export their American brand of competitiveness to Eastern Europe (Welch, 2005). GE is the parent company of eleven technology, services and finance businesses with more than 300,000 employees spread across 160 countries. Even though the company is large, their values and actions, recruitment process and even the methods of rewarding employees remain more or less the same across the board. GE deals with computers, jet engines, power plants, capital services, plastics, illumination equipment,