EBC 1001 Group 02

Minutes Meeting 5:
Tuesday the 17th of September 2019

Discussion Leader: Victor, Hadrien

Secretary: Eleonora

Redo the Summary Checklist PBL skills before Friday, 20th of September!

Post-Discussion:

LG1 Organizational Culture

- Set of values that is shared by a group of people
- Way of behaving in a certain environment

LG2 Different levels of culture and business

- Artefacts and symbols (logos, architecture)
- Espoused values (standards, values)
- Basic underlying assumptions (Beliefs and values)

LG3 What is the PESTEL-analysis

- Tool for analyzing the environment in a new country
- PESTEL (= Political, Environmental, Social, Technological, Economical, Legal)
- Political: political (in)stability, tax policy
- Economical: wages, costs, state of economy
- Social: Demographic change, ethnic diversity, change in consumer habits
- Environmental: Sustainability increase opportunity, Risks (Draughts,…)
- Legal: surrounding laws (employment law,…), Stable environment?
- Technological: Transfer system

LG4 Porters five forces model

- Tool for analyzing competition of a business
- Competitive rivalry: customer loyalty, number of competitors, quality differences
- Threat of new entry: time, costs, economies of scale, barriers
- Threat of substitution: substitute performance, cost of changing
- Buyer power: number of customers, size of each order
- Supplier Power: number of supplier, size of supplier

LG5 pros and cons

Pro cons
Different perspectives (thinking out of the Communication problem
box) Language barriers
Understanding and respect for cultural Difficulties and complications when doing
differences Training people (= higher costs)
More and new ideas because of the Too many different opinions -> hard to
diversity compromise
 Fragmental cultural perception (-too many
cultures, managers can’t agree with the
employee)

LG6 Influence on management practices

- Affects the way managers work
- Company’s perception
- Communication of people can be bad (language, culture barriers)
o Decrease productivity
- Difficult to manage when trying to satisfy every employee
o Management practices

LG7 Theory of Hofstede and Whitney

- US depends on shareholders (have to get their interest)
- EU hybrid (companies get the contribution of the state, focus is on mid and long
term)
- Japan interdependent relations (close financial links, focus on long term)
- Manager can try to understand the different kinds of markets and need to
understand them before entering the foreign market
- Long-term/short-term
- Masculinity/femininity
- Power distance
- Individualism/collectivism
- Theory is widely recognized

-  manager can prepare himself and the company using these theories

-  more insight in starting to understand

- Limits: for some countries there is no data, data in this theory is quite narrow

https://www.hofstede-insights.com/product/compare-countries/
 compare two countries
Pre-Discussion:

Step 1: Clarification of terms

- Euregio  Crossborder region/Euro-Region (Transnational cooperation)
- Vroom and Yetton model  leadership theory

Step 2: Problem Statement

Brainstorming
- Decision making and different style of decision making
- Difficulties of making a decision as a manager
- No style is better than the other, depends on the situation
- what are good styles of decisions?
- What styles are appropriate?
- Different opinions about it
- What do we have to take into consideration when making management decisions?
- Condition influencing decisions (Laws, regulations, cultures…)
-
Problem Statement:
How do we make decisions?

Step 4: Systematic inventory

Spontaneous Well-thought
- opportunities - Knowledge (models)
- urgent problems - Importance degree of decisions
- “out of the box”  intuition
- daily small decisions

Step 5: Learning goal

LG1 What is decision-making?
LG2 What is the process in decision-making?
LG3 What are the conditions influencing the decision-making?
LG4 What different styles are there?
LG5 What is the Vroom and Yetton model for decision-making? And how can it help to make
decisions?
LG6 What types of different decision-making models are there and what are their
limitations?
LG7 What is Mintzbergs view on decision-making
LG8 What are the difficulties in decision-making?
For Meeting 6, Thursday 19th September
Read chapter 7 to prepare post discussion
Do Study Task 8