A Report for Monash Inc. Growth Strategy

Executive Summary

Since we have been doing well for the past three years, we as Monash Inc. Company plan to expand our business to other parts of the country and Shenzen, China, and Bangalore in India. This growth strategy will be championed by development teams. The importance of communication among the development team members is equal to the communication between the development teams and the headquarters in Melbourne. Therefore, we shall consider the importance of implement and effective communication among the development groups. Without communication, efforts made by the development teams will be ineffective and useless. We also have to embrace cultural diversity among the employees and most importantly in its development team especially as it advances to the international environment.  Multi-cultural communication competence is also critical. Therefore, we have to apply the cultural communication competence model has to be applied in order to ensure that the growth strategy is successful. This model entails four dimensions which include; cultural uncertainty, interpersonal skills dimensions, cultural empathy, and also team effective.

A Report for Monash Inc. Growth Strategy

Introduction

The goal of our company Monash Inc. has been to be profitable and to achieve optimal performance. This company has been performing extremely well in Melbourne Australia. Therefore, the company has remained to be a reputable company in Melbourne for the last three years. From its establishment, Monash Inc. has always looked forward to expanding its business to other parts of the country and possibly to grow to an international level. This is a focused and goal-oriented company that has worked its way up to be a top performing company in Melbourne, Australia. Therefore, to achieve our goals as a company, we intend to grow the business to other parts of the country. We are planning to expand the business to other major cities in Australia. Additionally, the company not only looks at operating at a national level but also at the international level. We are also planning to establish two more development teams in Shenzen, China and also Bangalore in India. These two development teams will be reporting to the headquarter development center in Melbourne, Australia. Given that our company intends to expand to operate at the national and international level, it is important to review our growth strategy. There are three aspects that will determine the effectiveness of our growth strategy that needs to be reviewed. They include; communication, teamwork and cultural diversity. Communication plays an important role in facilitating smooth and effective operations in an organization. Teamwork too is of great importance as it eases work and encourages collaboration which tends to make the company more productive. Cultural diversity in an organization is vital because it comprises of people from various cultural background enabling them to learn from each other which creates a better understanding of one another so as to enhance collaboration. These three aspects are interconnected and are very important to our growth strategy. For a growth strategy to be effective and successful there has to be effective communication between the organizations, efficient teamwork characterized with effective communication and also cultural diversity especially in the international business environment accompanied with effective communication. Therefore, this report will discuss the significance of various communications in teamwork and cultural diversity in the growth strategy, the significance of teamwork and cultural diversity. It will also highlight the new practical challenges that might be encountered when shifting to a new geographically disperse structure and provide recommendations on how to address these challenges to be a successfully diverse organization.

Background information

Monash Inc. is a company located in Melbourne, Australia. The company has a single operation base and has been performing extremely well in the last three years. Currently, the company is on a transformation strategy as it plans to expand its business to other parts of the country and to international levels precisely, Shenzen, China and Bangalore, India. Therefore, in its growth strategy, the organization acknowledges the significance of communication, teamwork and cultural diversity.

Significance of communication in teamwork

The importance of communication among the development team members is equal to the communication between the development teams and the headquarters in Melbourne. Effective communication among team members is critical. First, the team members have to develop trust because it is not automatically acquired. It calls for open communication more than the normal communication they have in their day-to-day life (Winkler, 2018). For communication to be effective, honesty has to be upheld and share all information among them. Team-working is more effective and it is facilitated by communication. Without communication, efforts made by the development teams will be ineffective and useless. In essence, developments teams that communicate tend to complete accomplish their objectives more quickly and use less time than those who fail to communicate. Moreover, they tend to be more accurate and efficient in their work. Exercising effective communication will enable our development team members to develop a good understanding of their roles as well as the roles of others involved in the project (Winkler, 2018). Communication also expounds more on what needs to be done by the team members. Communication among the development team members also helps to avoid conflict. Therefore, appropriate communication means have to be employed for the development teams.

Cultural diversity

The company has to embrace cultural diversity among the employees and most importantly in its development team especially as it advances to the international environment. Global cultural diversity enhances business growth and development worldwide leading to increased demand for the proficient and diverse workforce. It is determined that multicultural development teams are essential and contribute a lot to organizational success (Winkler, 2018). The alleviated dependence on multicultural development teams develops an interest in understanding as well as establishing the communication processes and means of communication that are important and facilitates high performance among the development teams across cultural differences. Research shows that there is a big effect of countrywide culture on cross-cultural communication competence; therefore, this suggests that there is a necessity of training the development team to be more efficient in the culturally competent complex business environment (Aithal & Kumar, 2015). This training is important especial to the development team venturing to China and India whereby they will be operating in different environments with different cultures (Karanges, Johnston, Beatson, & Lings, 2015). Moreover, the national culture of the development team operating in Australia has to be considered since it is also vital in making a determination whether communicative behaviors are viewed as professional, competent, accentuating the main role their national culture, as well as the ethnicity, is playing when it comes to assessing the communication competence.

Cross-cultural communication competence and development team performance

As we venture to expand globally, the company tends to be vulnerable to cross-cultural interactions issues. Actually, to manage cultural diversity, cross-cultural issues, as well as cultural differences, have remained to be the most common challenges faced by cross-cultural development teams (Congden, Matveev, & Desplaces, 2009). Therefore, due to the diverse perceptions of our culturally diverse development team, our managers will be able to interpret and give an instant response in different ways to similar strategic problems or tasks for our development team. This indicates that cross-cultural communication competence is very critical and significant in interpreting and approaching issues in different ways. Therefore, Monash Inc. should ensure that cross-cultural communication competence is available in all levels of the organization and incorporated in the growth strategy so as to be able to thrive efficiently by addressing performance challenges adequately.

Within a multicultural business environment, acquiring information from a development team member needs a high rate of cross-cultural communication competence. This is because high competence in cross-cultural communication is determined to have a direct and positive impact on the decisive approaches and problem-solving capacity of both the team leaders of both development teams (Congden et al., 2009). Essentially, various research has determined various trait that make up cross-cultural competence, they encompass; communication skills, interpersonal relationship skills as well as personal traits such as curiosity. It is important to note that cross-cultural communication competence entails knowledge about the culture and language of the environment that the business operates in and also sentimental and behavioral skills like charisma, empathy, the capacity of managing anxiety and uncertainty, and also human warmth.

Essentially, cultural communication competence model has to be applied in order to ensure that the growth strategy is successful. This model entails four dimensions which include; cultural uncertainty, interpersonal skills dimensions, cultural empathy, and also team effective. For the interpersonal skills dimension, it involves the development team members acknowledging the differences in the way people from different cultures communicate and interact; they also have to demonstrate their flexibility to resolve conflicts, and also communicate with ease with foreign people (Congden et al., 2009).. The team effectiveness dimension entails crucial skills like the capacity of the development teams to have a good understanding and vividly communicate their respective team goals, duties, and norms amongst themselves and to flexibly work together. The cultural uncertainty dimension signifies the capacity of the multicultural development team members to demonstrate patience in intercultural situations, tolerance of ambiguity, as well as uncertainty, is critical because of cultural differences (Abbas, 2018). It also reflects the team members’ ability to flexibly work together in a multi-cultural development team. Lastly, the cultural empathy dimension is reflecting on cultural empathetic team members with the ability to behave in a manner that they tend to understand the world from the perspective of other cultures. They also need to have the spirit of curiosity or inquiry regarding other cultures as well as the communication patterns among those cultures. They also have to appreciate various working styles and also the capacity to perceive the manner things are handled in other cultures.

Conclusion

To sum it all, it is beyond that communication, teamwork and cultural diversity plays an important part in ensuring a successful business expansion. For optimal results, effective communication, as well as cultural, should be integrated into our development team. Multi-culturalism has to be significantly applied to our expansion department. However, as we expand our business both locally and internationally, we are likely to encounter some practical challenges;

Language and cultural barriers

As well plan to expand our business to Shenzen, China, and Bangalore in India, we are likely to experience language and cultural barriers. Monash Inc. Company is an Australia based company and when it sends its development team to China and India, they will meet different cultures and languages in these countries which they are not familiar with. The development team speak and understand only English while in China Chinese is their national language and in India, they speak the Indian language. Communication with the people in these countries will be quite difficult due to the language barrier between our development team. Cultures in China and India differ from another and also differ from that of Australia. Therefore, cultural conflict may occur.

Local competition

The company is likely to face high competition from the local firms. As a matter of fact, there are other local and also some international companies operating in these countries, therefore, it is certain that we will face high competition since these companies have been operating in these environments and are probable to have gained more customer and brand loyalty that it will be hard to overcome. Literally, customers tend to prefer purchasing products and obtaining services from companies they tend to be familiar with. Therefore, being a new company in these two countries, we are likely to face a challenge in attracting a lot of customers due to competition from other already existing companies.

Tax code and tax compliance issues

As we expand both locally and internationally, we may encounter tax code and tax compliance issues in Australia and the respective countries we are moving to. Dealing with taxes, and international trade tariffs can be a big obstacle to our expansion strategy. It can be challenging to understand the trading standards and regulations and failure to comply with the regulations of the countries we expand to these two countries can stop our expansion plan and cost us more due to fines.

Supply chain risks

Since we are planning to expand our business to an international level, we will definitely be more dedicated to importing, shipping and logistics. We will be managing supply chain across national boundaries which are very challenging. This type of supply chain is exposed to a lot of risks due to the wider geographical distance. Our products might be damaged or delayed as they are being shipped leading to losses. These are the risks likely to be experienced when trading internationally that demands a better understanding of how things operate so that to avoid such risks.

Recommendation

We can address these challenges in the following ways:

• To address the issues of language and cultural barriers in international expansion, a multi-cultural development team has to be established. The development team going to China has to have some Chinese team members who understand and can speak Chinese fluently. Also, the development team that is to be sent to India needs to have Indian team members who understand and speak the Indian language fluently. Actually, the development teams have to comprise of Australians and foreign language speakers from the respective countries that the company targets to expand to. Those people understanding the language of the countries to be expanded to will help in the interpretation of the local languages of these countries. This will help in ensuring effective communication.
• To avoid the overwhelming competition from the local firms, it is important that our firm focus in finding the right business partner to form a partnership that will help it to build relationships with other local businesses and as well assist our company to build its brand and customer loyalty. Partnering with a local firm will help in attracting more customers and narrow the gap between our company and the rival local firms.  Due to the local knowledge and experience that such firms have accrued many benefits. Working closing with these firms can assist us by delivering our products to their customers thus making a smooth transmission to efficiently trade with our target country easily.
• To overcome tax code and tax compliance issues, we have to do due diligence as well as consider sorting out tax, legal consultation and also finance. Dealing with tax regulations in foreign countries is difficult, therefore it is important to take time and a well-stipulated approach to educate and create awareness on all employees to know all the applicable laws and regulations so that they can comply to it. Moreover, before starting a business in these countries, we have to study the business environment including its tax and legal requirements. This will help in avoiding falling on the wrong side of the law.
• Supply chain risks can be addressed by developing a proper strategy, a dynamic business plan and also a budget. We do not have to rush to expand our business to international levels before planning. Therefore, we have to conduct due diligence and create a solid plan and it will enable avoid supply chain risks. A plan is important in avoiding loss of products.