Bicultural Partnership and Treaty of Waitangi Impact on DHL Operations

This research report investigates the impact of bicultural partnerships and the Treaty of Waitangi on DHL, an express logistics company operating in New Zealand. The report analyzes the effect on DHL's global business, considering economic and social factors. It explores the economic system of New Zealand, including its GDP, trade agreements, inflation, and unemployment rates, and how these factors influence DHL's operations. The report also delves into social factors such as population growth, life expectancy, literacy rates, and the impact of multiculturalism on DHL's strategies. It discusses strategies and management techniques, including employee productivity, cultural awareness programs, and cost-minimizing strategies. The report further examines bicultural partnerships in New Zealand, the principles of the Treaty of Waitangi, and the challenges DHL faces in applying these principles. The analysis highlights the importance of adapting to local contexts, managing cultural differences, and aligning business strategies with the values of the Treaty of Waitangi for successful global operations.

Running head: INFLUENCE OF BICULTURAL PARTNERSHIP AND TREATY OF
WAITANGI ON DHL
Influence of Bicultural Partnership and Treaty of Waitangi on DHL
Name of the Student
Name of the University
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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Economic System............................................................................................................................2
Social factors...................................................................................................................................4
Strategies and management techniques...........................................................................................5
Bicultural partnership in New Zealand............................................................................................6
Treaty of Waitangi application challenges......................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
Reference.........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The research report aims to find the impact of bicultural partnership and Treaty of
Waitangi on DHL an express logistics services company. Discussing the impact, the report
analyses the effect on global business of the company. To make the analyses the approach of
secondary research has been considered (Dhlparcel.pl., 2020). Therefore, for analyses website
resources, journals and newspapers available over internet. DHL is an express logistics company
founded in 1969 with its headquarter based in Bonn, Germany. It is a division of German
company Deustche Post DHL. The company is spread over almost all the countries in the world.
It is present in over 220 territories worldwide. It is the largest logistics company in the world and
delivers more than 1.3 billion parcels. It has more than 0.35 million employees in the world. The
company started operation in New Zealand in 1973 and currently it has 250 employees in the
country (Bloomberg.com, 2020). The company provides services in the field of freight
transportation, supply chain solutions, parcel and ecommerce and express services. To integrate
technology in its business the company has partnered with Magneto, Shopify and
WooCommerce. Therefore, the vastness of the company would definitely impacted by the
bicultural partnership present in New Zealand. The report studies the economic factors and social
factors that impacts the global business of DHL.
Economic System
New Zealand is one of the developed countries in the world but size of its economy is
comparatively small. It is evident from its rank in the world as per the GDP value. GDP wise its
rank is 54th in the world (Baxter & Srisaeng, 2018). However, DHL is a multinational company,
it operates in many other countries in the world, and that means the economic changes in global
scenario affect it. DHL operates in various countries like Australia, the United States, South

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Korea, Canada, Japan, European Union and many more. The world economy is dominated by the
service sector and contributes around 63% of the world GDP (Statista, 2020). The economic
growth rate in the last ten years has averaged around 3%, which is not enough for the global
economy, and it indicates that economic growth rate is at the lower side. On the other hand, both
the inflation rate and unemployment rate are showing downward trends and in addition to that,
the existing rate are low and healthy for global economy. The inflation rate is just above 2% and
the unemployment is above 4.5%. Therefore, it can be seen that there is an economic slowing
down in the global aspect even after having balanced inflation and unemployment rate. New
Zealand shares free trade relationship with many countries and as per data, it is evident that it has
signed Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with 10 ASEAN countries. The process for FTA has been
going with various countries and important among them are Russia, India, European Union and
the United Kingdom. Similarly, other countries where DHL operate has trade agreements with
other different countries in the world (Volpin, 2017). The goals of the company are to make its
customers and stakeholders more successful, to pay respect to their associates and perform well
simultaneously, the company always try to improve their customers’ life and contribute in all
possible ways to make the world a better place. The business goal of the company to deliver
everything that can be transported or that is require to be delivered from parcel to happiness that
has some value in a person’s life. Therefore, the goal of the company is to improve lives. DHL is
a logistics company and thus its operation is based on the transport mediums such as airplanes
and trucks. It provides customers the option of parcel pickup from home or the place of
customers wish (Wang & Qu, 2019). The company take care of all the paper works required to
clear the entry and exit of any product especially in the case of customs restriction. The
economic slowdown affects DHL adversely, due to that the revenue of the company is suffered,

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and revenue growth rate of the company has been significantly low. The company is
significantly involved in the innovation in the logistics field since many organizations are
looking toward the logistics part to become more cost efficient and productive (Fu et al., 2018).
The innovations that are done by DHL are Celluveyor an automated technology to convey
packages; DHL Resilience 360 is supply chain risk management software and DHL SmartSensor
which is an important device in the transportation of Life Sciences and Healthcare goods
(Witkowski, 2017).
Social factors
. The global population is increasing day by day and the burden of population is
significant. In some countries, population is low whereas in some it is balanced. Life expectancy
and infant mortality rates are good at around 72.6 years and 49.4 per thousand child births
respectively. Therefore, it from the data it can be inferred that the people of the world are not
good in respect of health and thus it affects the life of the people (Smith, 2017). In African
countries the condition in poor whereas in New Zealand and countries like Australia and the US
has good health conditions. The case is same with the literacy rate. Thus, considering the literacy
rate it is easier for DHL to introduce its innovative business processes with integration of
technology in the developed economics but this cannot happen for developing economies.
Therefore, it indicates that the DHL has to make different strategic plans in order to achieve
success in global perspective. Pricing should be more aggressive in case of poor countries
otherwise it would be difficult for the company to sustain there. (Wilson, McNaughton & Zu,
2017). There is no need of extra employment that would increase the cost burden of the country
and thus it will increase the profit margin of the country. The company has earned more profit
before tax in 2017 than in 2016. Therefore, it is evident that structure of the country is favouring

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business of DHL. Thus, there will be profit but change in revenue will be not that significant.
The country is inhabited by people different societal and cultural backgrounds which is why
people in different places in the country differently. This is problem for the company as it has to
handle different customers differently. People from different cultural background speak in
different language which is a challenge for the company to communicate freely with the
customers and thus company customer relationship problem that leads to violation of company
goal of customer satisfaction.
Strategies and management techniques
For a developed country like New Zealand, steady state capital stock is reached and thus
the growth rate remained at low (Beare, Caldwell & Millikan, 2018). The main problem of the
country is that the unemployment rate has downward trend and the rate is already at around
natural rate of unemployment 4.5%. Thus the unemployment rate follows the same trend as in
the case of world. Therefore, it may have impact on DHL and it may have disguised
unemployment in the organization. High employment rate and low productivity shows that there
can be possibility of existence of unproductive labour. Thus, the company should scrutinize the
employee productivity of the company. On the other hand, the social factors have more impact
on the company than economic factors. Apart from this issue, multiculturalism is another
problem that poses both internal and external threat to the operations of the business (Maré,
2018). Therefore, the management of DHL take policy that would mitigate the problem of
internal conflicts among the employees due to cultural problems. The management should
organize training and awareness programmes such that the employees become more skilled as
most of the population are not educated enough. The cost minimizing strategy will improve the
competitiveness of the company. There are other strategies that the company can use and those

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are promotion in the untapped regions providing discounts at different slabs that is price
discrimination, introduction of new services like food delivery and in addition to these DHL
Language skill development and cultural awareness programme should be conducted by DHL to
improve the communication skill both internally and externally and the relationship between
employees and with customers. Hence, management of the organization has a key role to play in
order to improve the organizational structure such that it can globally meet its goals. It should
include monthly group activities in which all have to participate work together. It can be a fund
activity so that it boost morale of the employees and thereby the productivity.
Bicultural partnership in New Zealand
Bicultural partnership is present in the countries where multiculturalism exists. In New
Zealand, there are people from different cultures stay together in the country (Reeves, 2018).
Every culture has some advantages and biculturalism partnership allows to share those benefits
among different cultures. Treaty of Waitangi was the first such agreement on bicultural
partnership between Maori and British Crown which started in 1840. The objective of the treaty
was implementation of partnership, protection and participation. The concept of extended family
was popular in Maori culture and whanau, hapu and iwi are the political units in Maori culture.
The partnership as per Treaty of Waitangi is sharing of knowledge and using the same for
enterprise development. In Maori culture they believe in the three principles and those implies
equal treatment for all. The bicultural partnership would impact the DHL effectively as the
concept of the Maori entrepreneurship is to put emphasis on social and cultural values. In
addition to that, Maori business focuses on health, education and media and believes that these
basic practices would benefit the growth of a business. New Zealand has included Treaty of
Waintangi as an act (Orange, 2017). Therefore, the planning and process of DHL would be

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impacted by this bicultural partnership as it operates in New Zealand and with induced effect
influences the global business operations as the principles of Treaty of Waitangi has been proved
to be beneficial to grow business. Therefore, to deal with the issue the company should have
different operations team for different countries such that they can act in accordance with the
country policies. However, DHL should treat employees of different country, religion and caste
and creed equally and provide aid to all in bad times involve all in the development of the
company such that no one feels neglected.
Treaty of Waitangi application challenges
The Auckland airport needs expand its premises and for that, it chose the area of
Ihumatao which is inhabited by the Maori unit of iwi. The Maori appealed to the government to
intervene and as a result, the Jacinda Arden, the Prime Minister of New Zealand halted the
construction in the area of Ihumatao (Harvey, 2019). Under Treaty of Waitangi the government
greed to protect the lands given to the iwi unit of the Maori and no destruction of land is allowed
in this case. However, the airport needs an expansion and that would increase the capacity of the
airport by manifolds such that it increases job opportunities in the country. Therefore, in this case
creating job opportunity is more important than protecting lands of Maori. However, it is
important to maintain good relationship with the iwi and convince them such that they
understand the future growth prospect. Similarly, in case of DHL there are scenarios in the
global business aspect where the business strategies conflict with the interest of the employees
but the company has to take expansionary decision for sake of the future development.
Conclusion
The discussion on the DHL operation in New Zealand and the impact of bicultural
partnership and Treaty of Waitangi on the company leads to the conclusion that the company

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have been impacted both positively and negatively while operating in New Zealand and in other
countries in the world. The country is a developed country which is a good factor for the
company but the slowing economic condition along with downward trend of unemployment rate
and inflation rate is matter of concern. The low rate of unemployment and inflation rate is good
for an economy but the value is below normal rate which might take the economy into economic
slowdown in future. In addition to the impact of economic system of the world, the social factor
has significant impact on DHL as the age of the population of the country is growing and thus
amount skilled workforce will decrease and market will contract too. Thus, the company need to
take strategies and management techniques to maintain the balance of the business. Considering,
the bicultural partnership model and Treaty of Waitangi the company should incorporate the
factors of treaty in the business model otherwise the goal of the company may get violated and
thereby the global operation of the company get impacted.

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