Management and Lego Media Int Essay

MATSUSHITA ELECTRIC 1. Describe the organizational culture at Matsushita Electric Company (MEC). In what ways has it historically been innovative? Give examples (at least two). 2. a) Describe MEC’s journey into internationalization. b) Where would you classify them now in terms of their phase of int’l development? c) And how would you classify their managerial mindset (parochial? Ethnocentric? Geocentric?)? Give historical examples (& contrast w/r/t the company’s tenets of globalization) to support your answers (to each of a,b,c above). 3. As of the late 1990’s (post KM’s death), how well has corporate management succeeded in propagating KM’s approach to innovation beyond the Japanese culture? Give specific examples of successes and/or challenges. Q4. What is needed to improve cross-cultural management within MEC? CASE TWO LEGO What are LEGO’s values and corporate identity? How did these develop over time (prior to LEGO Media Int’l)? How did Lego’s organizational structures & policies permit int’l alignment AND explicitly reflect the company’s belief in equifinality? How did LEGO actively reduce barriers to communication? Give examples of some of their internal communication practices & indicate which communication barriers these practices helped to reduce. Describe the organizational culture @ UK Lego (Lego media Int’l). What is the evidence that it, too, believed in equifinality? When you compare it to the corporate LEGO identity, would you say that this (UK Lego culture) is an example of Corporate (Danish) LEGO’s cultural dominance? Cultural avoidance? Cultural accommodation? Cultural Compromise? Or Cultural Synergy? Explain why it represents the form of c/c conflict resolution that you’ve said it does. CSE THREE NOVO NORDISK What problems/challenges did NN face prior to facilitation? Describe how the facilitating team was created (nature of its diversity/homogeneity, and how people were selected into it). Was this consistent with the â€Å"best practices† for creation of multicultural teams? Explain. What was/were the objective(s) of the facilitation endeavour? Was it a routine or innovative task? Describe the process by which the NN facilitation team managed cultural differences _(BETWEEN THE MEMBERS OF THE TEAM AND THE UNIT/PROCESS GROUP THEY WERE FACILITATING)_ . Give specific examples to illustrate their methods of differentiation, integration, and their use of external feedback. What’s the evidence that the facilitation team succeeded? Explain in terms of both task outcomes (alignment to corporate goals) & social outcomes (emergent states of mutual trust, collective identity, and confidence in the facilitating team’s ability to achieve its task). Can C/C Management via the NN style of facilitation be a way of accomplishing alignment in other (non-Danish) MNCs? Why/why not? CASE FOUR SULZER INFRA What problems was Sulzer Infra facing prior to creating its new vision? Were these well-structured or ill-structured problems (Explain)? How did it come to recognize these as problems? What was the new Vision about? & What challenge did it present? How did the Vision/Strategy 2002 program & Sulzer Infra Academy set about trying to meet those objectives? Specifically, (a) who was involved ? (b) what were the 4 major elements of knowledge acquisition that were intended? And (c) What was the main focus of each of the 3 days? What was the intended function of the arts component of the program? What were the intended functions of the†P-teams† & the â€Å"Know-How ring†? In what ways were they meant to cooperate? Throughout the program, what helped to bridge c/c differences and which c/c issues remained a challenge? From the perspectives of the UK & Dutch offices, to what extent were knowledge management objectives (e.g., dissemination & utilization goals) achieved by the program? Based on these views, how could Sulzer Infra have improved their program? CASE FIVE PURIFYING AN IMAGE What responsibilities do organizations have to customers who rely on a line of products, one of which has exhibited a fatal, but potentially solvable, defect? Did Baxter accept responsibility for the deaths too quickly? How personally responsible is a CEO for a localized product-liability issue? Was Baxter ethically obligated to close Romney Plant? Could Baxter have ethically attempted to shift blame for the dialyzer defects to 3M or to the organization that owned the Romney Plant a few months before the crisis? What ethical responsibility did Baxter owe to the employees at the Romney Plant that it closed in the wake of the Dialyzer crisis?