Question One
Challenges
As highlighted in the Real World Case Study, there are various challenges that organizations face while operating in the global environment. These challenges may be classified into cultural, political, and geo-economic.
Cultural
There are a few cultural issues that companies should considers when implementing IT infrastructure of the global domain.
There is a need for IT systems and subsystems to accommodate the cultural preferences.
The user needs vary from one country to another; each market has specific needs (O’Brien & Marakas, 2011)
Political
As revealed in the case study, there are a couple political challenges that firms face in the global environment.
There are various regulations and rules that surround technological transfers across national and regional boundaries.
Tax tariffs and implications may be limiting the procurement procedures
Geo-economic
These involve the geographical effects on the economic realities of operations in the global business domain. They include:
Information issues such as privacy and security
Established approaches to system development
Varied IT business strategies based on the nature of the market, environmental forces and competitive aspects (O’Brien & Marakas, 2011).
Distinct enterprise architectures or organizational structures.
Implications
As discussed in the case, these cultural, political and geo-economic challenges have immense implications for IT leaders. To begin with cultural issues, IT leaders are increasingly required to implement systems which accommodate the cultural practices and norms of the destined markets as well as the market-specific user needs. With the growing demand to be competitive, organizations have been compelled to enter new emerging markets, which, unlike the mature markets have distinct cultural values and practices. The failure to take into consideration these values and market specific needs may result in a total failure in the implementation of the IT systems. As a result of the political challenges, CIOs of global firms are forced to look for alternative IT system implementations; different from those implemented in the mother nations. There are various regulations, tax tariffs which govern transfer of technology; some of which may be restrictive, hence limiting the procurement or implementation of IT systems in foreign markets.
Geo-economic challenges; on the other hand, have immense implications. Various markets have distinct IT business strategies; including how IT is applied, based on the nature of the market, competitiveness and market forces. For instance an effective IT system that has been implemented in the U.S. market to forecast the market trends may not be suitable for an emerging market such as Uganda because of the associated costs and scalability. Organizational structures or enterprise architectures, including the plans for how organizations would develop, deploy, utilize and maintain IT processes and resources vary across different markets. The estimation of the operational expenses relation to the global IT operations is always challenging. Lastly, as organizations diversify into new markets, they may be forced to move its staff outside its security framework or firewalls; hence the need to alter the way it addresses IT security.
Possible actions
With the growing need to support IT implementations in developing markets, CIOs have often been faced with a hard task. In order to accommodate the varying cultural practices and values, CIOs should engage the end-users in the implementation of the IT systems. It is also important to rethink the cultural values and norms. With respect to the political implications, as revealed in the case study, CIOs should engage other players in the market; particularly the CIOs of other firms in the market, so as to develop new IT solutions that are politically and legally viable in the specific market. It is also beneficial to consult HR leads in a specific market while paying close attention to the past political and legal challenges that have been experienced in other business units. Lastly, to overcome the implications resulting from the geo-economic challenges, it is important for CIOs and IT managers to learn and advance something that may be translated back to larger system that has been implemented in the developed markets. This involves enhancing system security in end-user gadgets and the vital information assets of the company; majorly data (Teuteberg & Gomez, 2010).
Question Two
Global organizations are often faced with various ethical challenges including corruption issues, human rights issues, and pollution. At times, organization may be forced to make payments so as to secure business which would not otherwise be obtained. Although such act is illegal under local laws, they may seem customary. Hence in making such payments, a company is encouraging a system of corruption. It is important for organizations to act ethically, including not supporting corruption in any way. Hence when organizations are asked to advance some payment before doing business in a market, they should re-assess the decision to enter such markets (Carroll, & Buchholtz, 2010)
The second challenge involves human rights. Some of the markets that companies want to diversify into may not be respectful of human rights. Often, multination organizations are forced to determine whether their presence supports the abusive regime or serves as a catalyst for reforms on the observance of human rights. Whenever organizations find themselves on the negative scale, there is need to be act ethically, by withdrawing from the market (Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2010). Lastly, pollution is a big ethical issue in most developing markets. Most of them have not enacted legislations to regulate the discharge of waste materials into the environment. It is considerably ethical for an organization to limit its environmental footprint beyond the set standards. That is, the organization should ensure that its operations do not have harmful environmental effects (Ferrell, Fraedrich & Ferrell, 2010).
References
Carroll, A. B., & Buchholtz, A. K. (2010). Business & society: Ethics and stakeholder management. Mason, OH: CL-South-Western Cengage Learning.
Ferrell, O. C., Fraedrich, J., & Ferrell, L. (2010). Business ethics: Ethical decision making and cases : 2009 update. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.
O'Brien, J. A., & Marakas, G. M. (2011). Management information systems. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill/Irwin
Teuteberg, F., & Gomez, J. M. (2010). Corporate environmental management information systems: Advancements and trends. Hershey: Business Science Reference
