In Prichard’s article in this week’s materials, he quotes Robert Salomon, a professor of international management. Salomon says: “The problem is that managers systematically overestimate the benefits of globalization and underestimate its costs.” With this comment in mind, think about your company and the overseas country you chose to research in this course.

Imagine that your company’s executive team has decided to expand to the target country that you researched, whether you recommended this course of action or not. Then respond to the prompts below:

• Remind your peers what company and product, and which overseas country you chosen
• Will your company’s existing business model work in the overseas target country? Why or why not?
• What are the major differences between the culture of your home country and your overseas target country?
• Why might it take longer to establish your business in the overseas target country than your managers expect?
• What advice would you give to the project lead on how to prepare for expansion into this overseas market?

PART A PLEASE RESPOND TO CLASSMATE DISCUSSION WHETHER YOU AGREE OR NOT & A DETAILED WHY:

• Remind your peers what company and product, and which overseas country you chosen.

Hello everyone, the company I selected is Strategic Education Inc. the product is higher education partnership with private the organization, so we can help them develop their employees with the utilization of our online education platform for Bachelor’s, Master degrees and Certifications. The country I chose was Mexico, and I been researching how fruitful, it would be for us to run our business inside of Mexico.

• Will your company’s existing business model work in the overseas target country? Why or why Not?

Right now, it might not be the best time since the economic growth of Mexico has been heavily affected by the pandemic. Also, since we or the curriculum is in English; our market might be reduced to a tiny population since most of the larger corporations have cut on their expenses because the pandemic.

• What are the significant differences between the culture of your home country and your overseas target country?

The significant difference between my home country (United States) and Mexico is going to be languages, business benefits, and employee’s development, also the business work environment Mexico is way more relaxed than the United States (Stoumen, 1) and their tuition benefits are minimal by the organization to almost nonexistent. The advantage that we have with Mexico is their understanding of the International market and views, they understand the importance of international relationship and market (Gardner, 2)

• Why might take longer to establish your business in the overseas target country than your managers expect?

It might take longer because we might need to re-establish trust with the organizations down in Mexico to spend money on employee’s development. We have an advantage that during the pandemic, organizations are in need to have their employees learn new skills to be ready for new technology and ways of thinking for the future. Businesses have changed, and it is going to evolve even more after the pandemic.

Also, they have a different way of managing their employees and we might have to adapt to Mexico’s ways, and that might affect negatively the way we do business by the fact that employees benefit in Mexico are handled differently then in the United States.

• What advice would you give to the project lead on how to prepare for expansion into this overseas market?

One of the first advice would be to find the best way o partner with Institutions down in Mexico to help translates the curriculum to Spanish so we have a wider net to cast and help as many people that speak Spanish as we can. Also, create a team that is bilingual for such an assignment by the fact that many people that will be asking about programs might not be 100% fluent in English. Last advice would be to partner with businesses in the The United States already has a business down in Mexico to help us bridge the gap to businesses down in Mexico.

It will not be easy, but Mexico was a country with economic growth for almost five years and they are the 11^th largest economy in the World (Overview, 3). The pandemic has negatively affected Mexico very badly as a result, we will have to wait until past the pandemic to start looking into extending our services to that country unless we already have partners that have business there and are interested in us to work with them in Mexico.

PART B PLEASE RESPOND TO CLASSMATE DISCUSSION WHETHER YOU AGREE OR NOT & A DETAILED WHY: Remind your peers what company and product, and which overseas country you chosen

The company I chose is Adams Engineering Solutions (www.adamsengsols.com), and the services we provide are a myriad of cybersecurity services such as penetration testing and network assessments. The country we chose for globalization is Germany.

• Will your company’s existing business model work in the overseas target country? Why or why not? Yes, I believe our existing business model will work in Germany. The U.S. and Germany have a very long-standing relationship that dates back almost 50 years. The U.S. is one of Germany’s closest allies outside of the European Union. The U.S. currently has 41 military installations in Germany, making it a great place to offer our services (Wikipedia, 1).

• What are the major differences between the culture of your home country and your overseas target country? I’m not sure there are any significant differences. My personal experience working in Germany is that many Germans speak English, so language wouldn’t be much of a barrier. Due to there being 41 military installations in Germany, there are roughly 36,000 troops in Germany, and that doesn’t include U.S. contractors and their families (Gibbons-Neff, 2). The current political differences that the U.S. and Germany are experiencing could pose an issue, but not likely. Even if the U.S. cuts the number of troops, there will still be a U.S. presence and jobs needing to be filled by U.S. contractors. According to Skip, globalization is expected to slow over the next few years due to economic and political risks all over the world (Prichard, 3).

• Why might it take longer to establish your business in the overseas target country than your managers expect? It may take longer to establish our business in the overseas market as we are still establishing ourselves in the U.S. market. We also have to take into consideration the current political climate between the U.S. and Germany. We have to our advantage that there are a lot of U.S. companies currently doing business in Germany. Due to the current relationship that the U.S. has with Germany, many U.S. technology companies are working on contracts in Germany supporting the 41 U.S. bases in Germany, providing jobs to German citizens.

• What advice would you give to the project lead on how to prepare for expansion into this overseas market? My advice to the project lead would be to research the companies that are currently doing business in Germany. The U.S. has had a long-standing relationship with Germany, and therefore there aren’t many barriers besides the current political climate. The U.S. is currently looking to cut American troops in Germany from roughly 36,000 to about 24,000 to keep with President Trump’s “America First” approach and his deep-seated drive to bring home U.S. forces from wars started after the September 11, 2001, attacks (Gibbons-Neff, 2). The President appears to be punishing Germany for not meeting their commitment of two percent of its GDP on defense. These actions shouldn’t affect things immediately as it will take years and billions of dollars to make such a move happen. We are in an election year, so we must wait to see the results of this year’s election and how things will pan out in Germany. I am confident that we can expand into the German market without any issues. The U.S. will always have a presence in Germany.