University Report: Management and Globalization in the Modern World

This report provides an analysis of management and globalization, exploring the perspectives of Pankaj Ghemawat on the extent of globalization and the challenges faced by companies in a globalized world. The report examines Toyota's corporate culture, highlighting its innovative approach and the challenges related to standardization, innovation, and risk-taking, including the recall of vehicles and the impact on its organizational structure. The analysis also covers the concept of continuous improvement within Toyota and how it can lead to both successes and failures. The report concludes that globalization has taken place but only superficially, and it emphasizes the importance of adapting to a changing global landscape. References to academic sources support the analysis.

Running head: MANAGEMENT AND GLOBALIZATION
Management and Globalization
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

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Table of Contents
Week2..............................................................................................................................................3
Executive Summary.........................................................................................................................3
Activity2..........................................................................................................................................3
Pankaj Ghemawat............................................................................................................................3
Week3..............................................................................................................................................4
Activity 4.........................................................................................................................................4
Toyota’s corporate culture...............................................................................................................4
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

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Week2
Executive Summary
Globalization is taking place at every level, companies, countries and also individuals (Friedman
2014). However the question that arises is whether the globalization is really taking place or not.
Toyota has a very strong corporate culture which enables it to become one of the most successful
companies in the market but because of its standardization it often faces many challenges
(Alvesson and Sveningsson 2015).
Activity2
Pankaj Ghemawat
Pankaj Ghemawat is of the opinion that the world is not flat. He is of the opinion
that globalization has taken place but only superficially. It has not been able to make any
significant marks in reality. In this lecture he is mainly dealing with the idea that though
technology has developed a lot in the present day scenario but the influence of the advancing
technology as not been able to create an all round globalization effect. Ghemawat is mainly
dealing four different aspects. The first is telephone. Based on his research Ghemawat is of the
opinion that the total percentage is only about 6%, the second parameter is that of immigration,
the percentage of which is a mere 3%, the third is that of the direct foreign investments with an
overall percentage of 10% and the fourth is the foreign GDP which is about a little less than
20%. It is evident from this ratio that the Global development is not as is expected or is claimed
by the professors and the researchers. It is often too much overrated (Friedman 2014). Facebook
is claimed to be one of the important platforms of Globalization (Alexander et al 2017).
However the results of Ghemawat research say that a very little percentage of the friends that we

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make over the face book are located in different countries. Most of the friendships that are made
by people over the face book are usually located within the same countries. Hence the
transactions in the form of cultural interactions or even trade and commercial relations are hardly
made on a cross border basis. Globalization is a burning issue. Globalization is believed to have
taken place at a random over a vast area. However people all across the nations believe that
globalization is very useful for them as it helps in abolishing all the boundaries between
countries and people irrespective of their backgrounds. However people are often mislead by
many scholars who say that globalization has taken place successfully and is expanding at a
rapid rate day by day. People must remember that Globalization has taken place but only
superficially. This is evident from the fact that people still feel hesitant towards interacting with
people from distant lands right at the first go. This is evident from the facebook statistics.
Though facebook is one of the main components of globalization but people are still very
hesitant in interacting with one another.
Week3
Activity 4
Toyota’s corporate culture
There are some problems that Toyota has faced in spreading the corporate culture.
Firstly, in the field of innovation, Toyota is very innovative as it promotes innovation at every
level however it has also called for a huge risk by recalling about 8million vehicles worldwide to
solve the issue of unintended acceleration (Thomas 2015). Toyota makes sure that it does not
become too aggressive. It does not believe in any rat race but it always aims at achieving higher
rates than others. It order to maintain the corporate culture in a proper way, Toyota also had to
recall 8 million vehicles which indeed was a very strong challenge. However efforts are being

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made, to regain the lost stability of the company. One of the most important components of
Toyota’s corporate culture is innovation and risk taking (Hogan and Coote 2014). Throughout its
long history, Toyota has been successful in bringing out several kinds of motor vehicles. Toyota
has undertaken several risks in order to produce such a large variety of innovative motor
vehicles. In order to become a pioneer in the field of motor vehicle manufacturing, it had to
undertake a large number of risks. However over the years, Toyota has been facing many
problems. Perhaps some portion of this problems and issues is because of the organizational
culture of Toyota. Toyota has faced a major challenge in the year 2009. The crisis was a huge
error caused by the workers in their work. The workers were not able to work efficiently and as a
result of which the production standards of Toyota declined a lot (Schwartz 2013). This is
perhaps because of monotony. In order to deliver proper structure, Toyota created a huge
pressure on the employees and they had to work for long hours. Not only this but also the
workers had to work on the same project again and again which made them bored of their work.
Because of the large scale standardization of work, the production process gets repeated and the
workers lost their concentration and also suffer from boredom. There is a huge lack of innovation
or any newness in the production process. This made the workers lose their interest and commit
several mistakes in their production (Thomas 2015). This naturally reduced the quality of
production and the overall reputation of the company suffered a lot.
Toyota also follows the policy of continuous improvement which can also be responsible
for the crisis. In order to implement continuous improvement they try out many new ideas but
these ideas may not be properly explored (McSweeney 2013). They might be in a hurry and use
that idea but the outcome may not be as expected. It is due to this reason that their products
turned out faulty and had to be called back.

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Conclusion
Thus it can be concluded that globalization has taken place but only superficially. The
elements of globalization have not yet been induced within all the individuals.
Toyota carries on its practice of risk bearing, innovation and continuous improvement.
Though Toyota faces several challenges because of its continuous improvement process, it still
retains its risk bearing method as well.

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References
Alexander, R., Murray, D. and Thompson, N., 2017, October. Cross-Cultural web usability
model. In International Conference on Web Information Systems Engineering (pp. 75-89).
Springer, Cham.
Alvesson, M. and Sveningsson, S., 2015. Changing organizational culture: Cultural change
work in progress. Routledge.
Friedman, T.L., 2014. The world is fast. The New York Times, 5.
Hogan, S.J. and Coote, L.V., 2014. Organizational culture, innovation, and performance: A test
of Schein's model. Journal of Business Research, 67(8), pp.1609-1621.
McSweeney, B., 2013. Fashion founded on a flaw: the ecological mono-deterministic fallacy of
Hofstede, GLOBE, and followers. International Marketing Review, 30(5), pp.483-504.
Schwartz, M.S., 2013. Developing and sustaining an ethical corporate culture: The core
elements. Business Horizons, 56(1), pp.39-50.
Thomas, M., 2015. Fixing positive change: Creating an efficient corporate culture with a piece of
string, a hammer and a bell. Strategic Direction, 31(2), pp.1-3.