International Business Analysis: Manulife Financial Case Study Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Manulife Financial's international business operations. It examines the company's organizational structure, highlighting how it supports global activities, and identifies the key factors behind its success in international markets. The report assesses the significant trends and challenges Manulife faces, including political, cultural, economic, technological, and legal aspects. It explores product adaptations made to accommodate cultural differences and analyzes the impact of international trade agreements, such as the CKFTA and CETA, on the company's operations. Furthermore, the report delves into the cultural, social, ethical, and human resource aspects of Manulife, discussing its community investments and human resource strategies. The conclusion summarizes the key findings, emphasizing the importance of adapting to changes in international trade and maintaining a strong focus on social, ethical, and human resource considerations for sustained global success.

Running head: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS: A Case Study of Manulife Financial
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author Note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Overall company structure that helps the organization to operate globally....................................3
The important trends and key challenges faced by the company....................................................5
Product adaptation due to the cultural differences..........................................................................6
Trade Agreements that impact the business operation....................................................................7
Impacts of the changes in trade agreements on the global operation of the organization...............8
Cultural, Social, ethical and human resources aspects of Manulife Insurance Company...............9
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................10
References......................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
An organization operates globally for some specific reasons like business growth,
efficiency, knowledge and competition. An organization acquire globalization in some specific
stages of value chain. The company acquires the globalization either by hosting a center office
and provides services world-wide or they open various centers in various places worldwide. The
globalization also provide many opportunities to the business which helps the organization to
attain a competitive advantage over their competitors but it is hard to handle the organization
which operates globally. They require high quality staff with immense quality in handling
projects for the organization. They require many business handling tools which assist them to
acquire a handle all the business operations effectively and efficiently. The chosen organization
for this report is the Manulife Financial. The organization operates globally and provides their
services to many countries. The report focuses on the global operation of Manulife Financial.
The report describes the total organizational structure that assist the global operation of the
business, trade agreements associated with the organization, ethical, economic, cultural and
social aspect of the organization.

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Overall company structure that helps the organization to operate globally
The Manulife financial is a multinational organization and provides insurance world-
wide. The organization structure of the Manulife plays an important role in the global operation
of the company. The main motive of such type of organizational structure is to increase the
company’s overseas activity (Kuivalainen et al., 2013). It helps to integrate all the operations of
the business across the world. The structure of the organization removes some conflict issues like
 Handling method implemented by the parent sector to the subsidiaries.
 Impact of autonomy in decision making process of the organization
 Decisions taken by the parent sector over the subsidiaries.
The current organizational structure of Manulife focuses on key operational activities of the
organization. The organization follows the international division structure scheme. The different
departments of the organization is assigned with some business operations and some definite
number of staffs are allocated in each departments of the organization like operation sector
aimed to develop the production or operational activities of the Manulife and similar to this the
finance, human resource and marketing departments handle their own responsibilities (Tong et
al., 2013).

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Figure 1: organizational structure of Manulife Financial
(Source: Manulife Financial Corporation 2017 Public Accountability Statement, 2019)
The strengths of the Manulife Insurance which helps the organization for global operation
are as follows:
 It is the largest life insurance organization in the world with respect to the market
capitalization.
 It comprises of many reputed brand associations and a world-wide sponsor of the
summer Olympics.
 Positive brand image as well as positive market reputation
 The decentralized process of operations.

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The important trends and key challenges faced by the company
Political
 Political importance and stability of the Life insurance sector in Canada.
 Bureaucracy and the resistance offered by the Canadian government.
 Intellectual property protection (Fang, Lerner & Wu, 2017)
 Taxation
 Wage legislation
Cultural
 Demographics as well as skill level of the citizen
 Class structure, power structure and hierarchy of the society (Hunter, 2017).
 Leisure
Economical
 The type of economic system used for the business operation
 Exchange rates as well as stability of the Canadian currency.
 Business cycle stage
 Interest and inflation rates
Ethical
 Business travel ethics
 Bad leadership
 Technological security and privacy concerns

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Technological
 The recent technological developments employed by their competitors
 Technological impact on issuing the insurance world-wide
 Role of the technological diffusion
Legal
 The anti-trust law of Life Insurance sector
 Copyrights and the intellectual property law
 Employment law (Mazaroff & Horn, 2018)
Product adaptation due to the cultural differences
The cultural difference is not an important part of the business development. The main
mission of Manulife Insurance organization is to focus on its core business operation. The
cultural differences modified the business process of the organization like:
 Introduction of new schemes of their clients. The Clients always search for their benefit
and thus the company should met their demand by offering them good schemes where
they can claim for insurance and the organization can easily issue the insurance to the
clients (Matusewicz et al., 2015).
 Technological developments: As the Manulife Insurance is a multinational organization,
it deals with many transactions daily and thus the transaction method or process of the
organization should be fast and efficient. The technological development in the
organization will assist the business to perform their business operation in an easy way.
The technological development also ensures that the service provided to the clients will

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be an error free service. The whole business process of Manulife become efficient and
easier (Abolhosseini & Heshmati, 2014).
 Customer friendly: The insurance plan or scheme should be in such way that it can be
easily afforded by the common people of Canada. The Staffs should clearly state all the
norms and conditions of the plan to the clients. This also increases the customer retention
as well as involvement factor for the organization.
Trade Agreements that impact the business operation
There are various trade agreements. The most impactful agreement that can influence the
Manulife Insurance is the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) which comprises of CKFTA (Canada-
Korea Free Trade Agreement) and CETA (Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement)
(Aggarwal, 2013). This agreement was established in the Seoul on 11th March 2014. It was
established by the two prime minister of the countries namely Stephen Harper and Park Geun-
hye who are the prime minister of Canada and South Korea respectively. According to the
contract Canada will exclude all the import tariffs within the 2 years of the ratification of trade
deal. The insurance claimed by the people of South Korea gains an advantage by claiming the
insurance from the Canada with free of cost (Schott, Jung & Cimino-Isaacs, 2015). These type of
agreements play an important role in global business operation of Manulife Insurance. The trade
agreements are made for both the organization and their clients. The global business operation is
highly impacted by these trade agreements like FTA, GTO, NAFTA, EU, GATT and WTO. FTA
provides the free trade areas to the respective countries. These free areas are selected by the most
favored nation (MFN) principle (Hoekman & Mavroidis, 2017). The advantages gained by
Manulife financial by these agreements are as follows:
 Ensure Economic development

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 Make the Business climate dynamic
 Decrease the spending of Government
 Foreign Direct Investment (Blonigen & Piger, 2014)
 Expertise
 Technology transfer
They have some disadvantages too for Manulife organization like:
 Increased the job opportunities
 Theft of the intellectual property
 Poor Working Conditions
Impacts of the changes in trade agreements on the global operation of the
organization
The trade agreements impacts a lot on investment and trade globally. They shape the
business operation of Manulife Insurance among its subsidiaries. The officials of the Manulife
insurance should be aware of the changes that is done in trade agreements such that the business
can operate legally and efficiently (Picciotto & Mayne, 2016). This regular analysis process of
the trade agreements help the business to develop in a rapid way. The areas are created while the
two nations develop the preferential trade liberalization policy. The customs surpasses the free
trade liberalization policy (Rugman & Verbeke, 2017). Many free trade agreements gain the
success before the decrease of the trade barriers among the parties of agreement. The main
factors that should be kept in mind of the Manulife organization is that they should be focused on
the updates and changes made in any type of trade agreements. The agreements is their higher
priority as they provide success to the organization like develop the domestic confidence, access

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the latest technology, increases the number of both jobs and wages too and also assist in
developing the working environment. The organization is headquartered in Canada, Toronto and
Ontario. The headquarters promote the various business process to its subsidiaries and also allow
them to operate effectively. The business holds some methods and criteria for business operation.
The subsidiaries extract the business methods from the headquarters and implement in their
respective sectors.
Cultural, Social, ethical and human resources aspects of Manulife Insurance
Company
Natural languages are spoken in the company which helps to interact with the clients and
all the stakeholders. The main focus of the community investments is to extend the royal
business which will drive to the social change for the company. The organization also assists the
citizen of the country by training the people with some specific skills and knowledge such that
they can gain success in this competitive economic condition of Canada. The organizations also
help the poor people to complete their higher education such that they overcome the financial
literacy of their family (Klapper, Lusardi & Van Oudheusden, 2015). The emphasis of the
organization is to provide new wellness and health programs that assist them to develop their
business and also helps in developing the personal life of the people. There are some products of
the organization namely Manulife Move, Manulife Vitality and John Hancock Vitality which
helps the policy holders to stay with the organization. They help in developing the customer
retention factor for the organization (Al-Tit, 2015). They also decrease the claims of the clients
and also allow the business to operate in an efficient way. The organization also encourage the
people to live active and eat healthy food for their survival. The community investment of the
company is evaluated by the model of London Benchmarking Group (LBG) (Adámek, 2016).

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The modern business of Manulife Insurance should employ the Triple bottom line approach
which pays heed to the community, people and business profit. The organization should establish
an innovative vision to change the prime function from the Profit Maximization to the
Shareholder Wealth maximization Management (Banerjee, 2015). The human resource
Management concludes that the human resource is an asset of Manulife Insurance. Evolution of
new concept with respect to the human resources can help to develop the business of the
Manulife Insurance Company. The discipline of the human resources management is maintained
in the Manulife Insurance by maintain a good behaviour with the employees of the organization
(Cascio, 2015). This positive attitude is maintained with all the stakeholders of the company in
all the sectors of the organization.
Millions of people are attached with this organization to support the health as well as
financial condition of their family. The organization prepare plans in such a way that they suits
the customers to lead healthier lives, save for the retirement and manage their wealth. The
method of business operation helps to stimulate the economic development and also help to
generate value for the stake holders of the Manulife Insurance. In Canada, it was reported that
out of 4 adults one of them are beneficiated with the services of the Manulife Insurance
Company (Manulife Financial Corporation 2017 Public Accountability Statement, 2019).
Conclusion
Therefore, from the above report it can be concluded that the international business
operation plays an important role for every multinational company and the methods of business
process impacts a lot to the core business hosting country. The report discussed all the possible
impacts of the trade agreement on the Manulife Insurance Company. The changes in these trade
agreements should be immediately analyzed by the organization such that they can implement

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new methods to adjust their business operation. The social, ethical, economic and human
resources aspect of the Company is also discussed and is observed that they also help the
business to achieve the success in this competitive Canadian market.