NAME & STUDENT NUMBER; Thobile Dlamini 2128661

ASSESSMENT TYPE:  Discussion Assessment 3; Area Collaboration at Nedbank:

cultivating culture
                                                                                     through contextual leadership
 
MODULE NAME: Collaborative Business Strategies
 
MODULE CODE: G9-CBS-17
 

Question
 

Case study 3: Area Collaboration at Nedbank: cultivating culture through contextual

leadership
 
1. Citing practical examples, demonstrate an understanding of the following concepts in
relation to the case
                  study (100):
1. Strategy
2. International business strategy
3. International marketing
4. International marketing entry
N.B: Cite not less than eight sources (textbooks and journal articles. Please note that
www.google.com is not acceptable. Your discussion should be between 1500 and 1800 words.
Your answer should fuse theory and application. 
 
Answer
Introduction
The current challenges associated with modern society require an innovative kind of leadership
that will stimulate unique organizational practices, and also make changes in some practices and
structures in the organization’s context (Scott B., 2017). According to Grin J. 2018, business
leaders depend on processes and activities that will build a collaborative culture within their
organizations and achieve the set goals thus improving their competitive advantage. This paper
seeks to discuss some collaborative concepts such as Strategy, International business strategy,
International marketing, and International marketing entry in relation to the case study where
Douglas Lines, Divisional Executive for Strategic Business Unit for the Nedbank Group, South
Africa had to focus on cultivating a collaborative culture to overcome the silo-mentality that it
had as a new strategy. 
 Strategy
 According to Bhandari A. 2018, a strategy in business is a vital factor that companies use to
strengthen and improve a company. It could be a set of plans, goals, and actions that summarize
how a business has planned to succeed in a marketplace for its product or service. Yuliansyah Y.,
et al 2017 define a strategy as the management’s action plan on how it will run and conduct the
business operations. A strategy is a pillar of a business because the business depends on its
strategy for survival, growth, and continuation, therefore businesses must set good strategies that
will create their competitive advantage. To make a decent business strategy the people, power,
money, any existing barriers, and materials must be aligned with the mission, vision, and goals
of the organization’s initiative. Strategies are important to help a company to control how it
attains its set visions and goals. It affords ways within which the business will move towards
success (Abdulwase R. 2020). A practical example of a good business strategy is building very
strong customer service such as providing an effective call center. Businesses will always have a
challenge in a particular area but customers may overlook that challenge if the customer service
is very good. Pricing can be used as a business strategy, a business can strategically keep its
prices very low to attract customers and sell a very high volume of that product or service. They
can also decide to price their products at a very high price beyond what most customers can
afford. This maintains the uniqueness of the product and thus benefits a large profit margin per
product. Business-to-consumer businesses differentiate their products by stressing that their
products have better features, pricing, style, or technology as a strategy to gain more customers.
It is a business strategy to use every opportunity to improve customer retention than to spend
money on advertisements to get new ones. Strategies and projects are identified which can help
retain the present customers for the business (Jofre, S. 2011).
 According to the case study, Nedbank had a strategy of satisfying its customer demands for
complete banking solutions to satisfy their banking needs. To fulfill this demand Nedbank
introduced a cross-collaboration of using shared cultural values as a strategy to improve its
competitive status. This was also going to align with its goals and objectives of creating an
operating model that structurally and formally re-enforced the collaborative strategy that was
currently existing between retail and business banking across Nedbank. The bank also got into
political change by adapting to South African political changes to expand its ownership's
national and cultural composition. The bank later spent a lot of money on socio-economic
development projects to achieve its corporate social responsibility strategy. Nedbank as a
multinational organization strategically diversified its financial services to cater for private and
commercial banking, retail and business banking, short-term insurance, life assurance, stoke
brokering, asset management, and fiduciary. All these strategies have led to the growth and
sustainability of the bank across the countries of the world.
 
 International Business Strategy
An International strategy is formulated and implemented by multinational organizations which
have a focus on the economic imperative. Bhandari A. 2018 says that the strategy has to be based
on differentiation, segmentation, and cost leadership. The formulation of International strategies
is a very difficult process because it has to consider how it will be implemented and coordinated
in the different areas where it will be located worldwide. Once all that has been fully considered
the strategy is a great opportunity for getting advantages that are not available for national
organizations such as multifunctional flexibility, global efficiencies, and a worldwide learning
process. A successful international strategy calls for proper coordination which will be according
to the organizations’ objectives. Multinational organizations which have fully benefited from
these advantages are KPMG, Ernst & Young, Price Water Coopers, Nokia, Renault, and many
more. (Tien N. 2019).  
    
According to Bhandari A. 2018, when products are generic and their sale cannot be based on
brand or name or when products cannot be customized to fit the needs of a particular country an
international strategy that will be constant for all countries are used and this is called the
economic imperative strategy.  The European PC market is a good example of this, besides the
known companies in the PC market such as Apple and Compaq, many other companies have
emerged and captured the market therefore PC products are now sold on an economic imperative
strategy.
 
According to the case study, Nedbank considered an opportunity to expand to the African
countries as an international strategy for the business. It became a Pan-African banking network
and formed an alliance with the Ecobank to invade the West and Central African countries. It
was also a strategic goal for Nedbank that improved its deposit to landing ratio by growing its
retail and business banking share. Nedbank grew into a huge multi-national bank and made
structural business divisions that focused on specific banking services that made it necessary for
collaboration between the banking sectors.
 
International Marketing
International marketing is the way business activities are conducted to profitably direct the flow
of goods and services from a company to consumers in many countries. It is the process of
finding the needs and requirements of overseas customers and developing means to satisfy them.
Examples of multinational corporations (MNC) engaged in international marketing are Coca-
Cola, Apple, Colgate, Airbnb, Red bull amongst many others. Coca-Cola is a very well-known
example of a company with a powerful international marketing strategy. The branding of the
bottles makes the product unique and easily identified all over the world.  Apple’s customer
service protocol was made to fit the specific perception of each market to meet all their customer
needs specifically. The design of the Apple brand is standardized to make their products to be
easily identifiable. Both these strategies have worked very well to market Apple to the whole
world (Samiee S. 2019). Nedbank pursued a growth strategy in the South African market trail to
increase their middle-market business share and their retail customers to meet the requirements
of the Basel III and other regulatory frameworks on bank adequacy and make more cash
reserves. As a foresight to the bank’s next level of excellence, Douglas Lines the leader of the
bank had the dream to also expand their collaboration to Africa.  
 
  
 International Marketing Entry
 
According to Watson G. 2018, Multinational corporations exchange their products with
customers in other countries. To make profits, these businesses need to have a good and
sustainable position in the foreign exchange market. To enter the global market a business can
use some of the following strategies; Joint Venture Agreements  where a contract is made
between two or more businesses to do a specific economic activity to make profits. The
businesses share their expenses, revenues, and control for the activity. Joint venturing is a less
risky way of entering the global market because it decreases the different economic and cultural
barriers of countries which normally makes it difficult to achieve specific goals of a
business. Joint Venture Agreements  just like in a joint venture, in a strategic international
alliance two or more businesses come together in a business relationship to achieve a common
objective. This relationship provides an opportunity for businesses to develop into different
markets worldwide. It decreases their business weaknesses and thus increases their competitive
strengths. A business can also enter the international market by exporting, this is selling
products directly or indirectly to other countries to achieve a good economy of scale. In indirect
exporting the business will sell its products to a local country distributor, the distributor will then
deliver the product to other countries. In the direct exporting strategy the business sells its
products in other countries using shipping companies. 
 
Digital technology is also widely used as a strategy for international marketing, and it has had a
very big influence when used to conduct business transactions for international markets. Since
the 1990’s through the use of digital communications technologies businesses can quickly
identify market opportunities that can be used for effective marketing. A huge dramatic increase
in the globalization of media and culture has caused businesses to ignore the use of local
relational infrastructures and directly use foreign markets using digital strategies such as the
internet (Watson G. 2018). Nedbank ventured into the use of new technology such as Rapid App
and Mobile banking, and into some main channels such as Nedbank@Work, Nedbank contact
center, and Nedbank share scheme Administration as a way of entering into the International
markets.
 
  
 
References
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