As a quick reference guide, GLOBAL BUSINESS keeps its promise to "help every business professional understand how all these components fit together to create a truly global business."
Here's a well conceived and crafted collection of "lessons learned" by a savvy team of collaborators.
Among their "308 Tips" are timely tricks and traps to avoid when navigating the global business maze!
* Their profiles of effective international distributors and agents provide useful best practice benchmarks for setting realistic expectations. These tips were the highlights of three (3) sections on "Market Entry Strategies"
* Tip 288 focuses on the human factors blocking ongoing inter-cultural information exchanges. I was happy to find author Charles Handy's paradoxes cited in their coverage of managing "The Knowledge Explosion."
Handy's THE AGE OF PARADOX Synopsis: In an age of ... rapid change, one of the most brilliant and engaging thinkers of our day extends a guiding hand in the search for order . . . the author of THE AGE OF UNREASON proposes bold ideas for navigating through this brave new world . . . GLOBAL BUSINESS delivers a practical decision support framework to help its reader's rescue more order from the grasp of chaos!
* The book's back cover business management blurb on how to recognize scams and frauds also grabbed my attention! As a pioneer in Electronic Commerce information protection, I found their concise tips 109 and 110 with its "Red Flags" were right on target!
Handy's THE AGE OF PARADOX Synopsis: In an age of ... rapid change, one of the most brilliant and engaging thinkers of our day extends a guiding hand in the search for order . . . the author of THE AGE OF UNREASON proposes bold ideas for navigating through this brave new world . . .
* GLOBAL BUSINESS delivers a practical decision support framework to help its reader's rescue more order from the grasp of chaos!
As a desktop reference, Global Business is well organized. The reader can quickly find a topic of interest through the table of contents or through the well-conceptualized index. Once the topic is located, the reader finds a detailed, checklist-style set of tips. If you want to know how to pack goods for export, go to page 86; how to establish pricing policies go to page 77; how to create a NAFTA product go to page 53. The reader is encouraged to access the book at any point based on his or her particular interest or need.
Global Business is more than a desktop reference, however. Taken as a whole, the book is a great overall introduction to understanding the problem of expanding a business into worldwide markets. Though practical in its organization and style, it is comprehensive in its content and is equally as useful for the practitioner and the student of international business.
Global markets now offer wonderful opportunities for small and mid-sized firms. Unfortunately, these firms do not always have the expertise and know how to accomplish the complicated task of expanding into these markets. Global Business is particularly well suited for individuals in these companies endeavoring to take their companies global.
Koslow and Scarlett have provided a most useful guide to the new millennium of global business.
John Vinton, Ph.D. College of Management Metropolitan State University Minneapolis, Minnesota August 15, 1999