Risks in International Business Operations

Contents
Question 1..................................................................................................................................2
Question 2..................................................................................................................................2
Question 3..................................................................................................................................2
Question 4..................................................................................................................................3
Group Project paper:..................................................................................................................3
Infrastructure..........................................................................................................................3
Sourcing.................................................................................................................................4
Taxes and tariffs.....................................................................................................................4
Security..................................................................................................................................4
References..................................................................................................................................6
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Question 1
In the international expansion of Coca-Cola, the company were surprised to understand that
the logistics operations on the national level were vastly different and the times and costs
varied greatly along with the countries based on the transport infrastructure and availability
of logistics partners. Thus, while in America the company has an established supply network
they had to adapt to the new system through periodic contracts in the international market.
This led to their operation being divided based on countries and region where the president at
their regional level was given certain capabilities to manage the operations based on local
factors. Thus, the company could not use a centralised system in their international expansion
but had to use a region based hierarchy that enables them to adjust local operations based on
the local factors (Kraus, 2018). The company has since gained experience in a different
market but still retains their same strategy for the various national markets which have their
own operational policies that meet with the local business environment.
Question 2
For a project distributed over a vast area and multiple locations, there might be some
advantage in decentralised WBS entry but this only complicates the process of consolidating
the individual entries into a single WBS. However, in many cases, the system can be
implemented successfully if the entries use a computerised system and develop real-time
reporting indicators that update the WBS instantaneously to all locations after the latest entry.
This system is currently used by many companies which minimises the possibility of
confusion from the different location-based entries in the implication of the entries for the
entire project (Harrison & Lock, 2017). This is based on the availability of the latest
information for all the teams scattered through different locations which enable faster
decision making and implementation of mitigating measures based on the impact of the
possible action by a single team at one location. Therefore, the system can be seen as
applicable under certain condition only.
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