“Australian businesses must also demonstrate leadership to engage Asia in an educated and appropriate manner” has been the theme of my submission (click to download) to the initiative of the Australian government to seek input to its white paper on Australia in the Asia Century. Additional submissions can be viewed by following . . . → Read More: White Paper on Australia in the Asian Century
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Effective development of leadership and employees within a multinational enterprise starts at the top and then flows throughout the organization. This presentation (click on link to download) at the CEO Insurance Summit in Asia on Turning Up the Dial on Leadership and People Management provided a holistic perspective around this issue. The key messages could be distilled down to: Respect bounded rationality Perhaps if some of these areas were more effectively addressed, Western MNCs would become more successful in building sustainable operations . . . → Read More: Turning Up the Dial on MNC Leadership and People Management Canada and Australia have a similar colonial heritage, a resources based economy, and a few large dominate banks which demonstrated strong stability and financial prudence before and during the global financial crisis. The distance from the Sydney/Melbourne business centres to Singapore are roughly similar to the distance between Vancouver and Tokyo so the regular contention that Australia is more connected to Asia need not be as strong as Canadians like to make it out to be. It is more a provincial mindset as Canadian politicians and business executives view the Pacific Ocean as a barrier rather than a gateway, while over the past decade Australia has made Asia a stronger strategic priority. The oligopoly that banks enjoy in both Canada and Australia has resulted in them being slow to develop a competitively relevant presence in Asia. However, is ANZ Bank now putting Canadian Banks to shame? While none of the Canadian banks have any member of its corporate management team with substantive working experience across Asia, ANZ Bank has 6 of its 12 executives with deep Asian experience. Only 3 of ANZ’s 12 corporate executives have work experience confined only to Australia/New Zealand. No wonder, media stories about ANZ Bank in Asia, which appear almost every day, have become mundane news, while stories about Canadian banks in Asia . . . → Read More: Is ANZ Bank Now Putting Canadian Banks to Shame? http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip564297 Gordon Perchthold, together with Peter Harder of Canada China Business Council, and Philip Smith, Deputy Head, Global Investment Banking for Scotia Capital discusses on Business News Network ways in which Canada needs to engage with Asia in order to catch up and be competitive with initiatives already underway by Australia, United States, and other Western countries . . . → Read More: Canada Doing Business in China The challenge in considering the pursuit of a PhD is that academic institutions require a very narrow focus. Given my years of experience working with dozens of multinationals across 20 countries (since 1998, predominately in Asia), there were a wide range of topics about MNE management practices that I could address including: - optimal configuration of Asia regional organization structures I decided to start at the top, with the board of directors and corporate management teams, with research into the “Relationship between Embedded Asia Experience within Top Management Teams of Western MNEs, and Performance in Asia.” Attached is a first draft of a research proposal for my PhD application submission. Of course, it is written in ‘academic’ English rather than business English with lots of citations. It provides a good background of academic . . . → Read More: Relationship between Embedded Asia Experience within Top Management Teams of Western MNEs, and Performance in Asia During the past couple of months, I have made presentations at a number of Asia regional conferences as well as to corporate management teams in Asia and North America about the challenges of building and managing sustainable MNC operations across Asia (the banking and insurance were used to illustrate some concepts). This presentations draws from almost 30 years of experience consulting to over 50 multinationals across 20 countries supplemented with academic research. Attached is an extract of some of the slides used to facilitate the broader discussion. Comments welcomed. Download… Building & Managing Sustainable Multinational Operations . . . → Read More: Presentation on Building & Managing Sustainable MNC Operations in Asia This video clip (http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip464441 ) is an interview of Gordon Perchthold on Canada’s Business News Network where he discusses the low level of engagement that Canada has with Asia relative to other Western nations. Australia, at three quarters the population and geographic size of Canada, as well as being a resources based economy on the rim of Asia, illustrates how far Canada is falling behind. For example, Australia’s services exports to Asia alone ($50 billion out of total exports to Asia of over $180 billion) exceed all of Canada’s merchandise, resources and services exports. Unless Canadian multinationals and SMEs diversify their excessive dependence on the U.S., Canada risks missing out on the high growth opportunities in Asia, impairing its long-term economic prosperity. However, engagement is dependent upon change across three key constituencies: (1) the Canadian government developing and executing a strategy to engage Asia; (2) Canadian corporations diversifying the mix of geographic experiences within its board of directors and corporate management teams to include experiences in Asia; (3) the Canadian populace becoming more educated as to the importance of Asia to Canada’s economic future so that the Pacific Ocean is view less as a barrier and more of a gateway . . . → Read More: Canada’s Opportunity Lost? Canada is in the midst of a national election campaign and the low presence of Canadian businesses in Asia has barely registered with the Conservative, Liberal, and NDP political parties. Perhaps, as the Asia Pacific Foundation discovered through its recent survey on Canadian attitudes toward Asia, it is due to only 26 percent of Canadians believing that Canada is actually part of the Asia Pacific region. To promote discussion on Canada’s economic relevance in Asia, the Ivey Alumni Association in Hong Kong hosted an Ivey Debate on the motion “Canada has Missed the Boat in Asia.” A lively discussion among the Asia Pacific Chairman of Colliers, the Asia Pacific Director of Research in Motion, the Executive Director of The Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong, and the Partner of consulting firm, The RFP Company (me) took place amongst Ivey Alumni in Hong Kong on April 7th. Watch the video-taped proceedings where Canada’s lost decade in China, Canada’s missing Prime Ministers in Asia, and Canada’s bridge to nowhere, among other . . . → Read More: Canada has Missed the Boat in Asia As a Canadian, I have become disheartened over the years at the lack of competitive relevance of Canadian multinationals in Asia. The Economist Intelligence Unit ranks Vancouver, Toronto, and Calgary as the first, fourth and fifth most liveable cities in the world. The Edelman 2011 Global Trust Barometer ranks Canada as the second most trusted country for companies to be headquartered within. So why is it that Canadian corporations, firstly, have not been more active in Asia, and secondly, when the odd Canadian multinational does achieve some success in Asia, they fail to take it to the next level and sustain their competitive relevance in the region? This topic was discussed in an article written for the Ivey Business Journal of the Richard Ivey School of Business entitled “Will Canada’s Business Leaders Discover Asia in Time“. The article illustrates the impact from the failure of a corporation to develop a . . . → Read More: Will Canada’s Business Leaders Discover Asia in Time?
The article provides an expansive survey of the definitions and previous research on the concept ‘global mindset’. The concept of global mindset is generally broken down into two constructs: cultural and strategic. The cultural construct refers to an individual’s external orientation – not to judge differences in cultures, but to instead maintain a cosmopolitan openness and willingness to explore and learn from alternative systems of meaning held by others. . . . → Read More: Article Review: Do You Have a Global Mindset? |
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For some managers, operating internationally appears to come naturally. For others, their inability to work across cultures and borders makes them a fish out of water. For corporations to be successful internationally, particularly outside their home region (like Western MNCs in Asia) it is critical that the corporate executives, the managers they employ abroad, and the international support resources in home office, develop and demonstrate a global mindset. But what exactly is a global mindset. This is the question addressed in the academic article entitled “What we talk about when we talk about ‘global mindset’: Managerial cognition in multinational corporations” by Orly Levy, Schon Beechler, Sully Taylor, and Nakiye Boyacigiller published in the Journal of International Business Studies.
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