Management 326
Cheney, Fall 2012
Individual paper
Tania Wong

The topic “What is a Global Manager” gives me a deeper level of understanding different types of managers in transnational companies, I didn’t realized how much different between all the different types of managers all over the globe. I learned that different types of managers’ responsibilities and duties are a lot more than just what their titles tell you. In order to be an effective manager, one must
#1 Have you ever dream about winning a lottery and then take off traveling the world. Who hasn’t! I have always loved to travel and learn about different cultures. So knowing that the chances for me to win a lottery are pretty low, being able to work overseas and see the world while I work has always been my dream. From the lecture “Gaining Competitive Advantage from Being Global” I learned that in order for a transnational company to be successful, one must develop three different kinds of managers as they expend their company overseas, the three different types of managers include Global Business Managers, Country and Regional Managers and Functional Managers. First you may ask what do you consider as a transnational company, transnational companies are usually operate in more than just one countries, they operates in their head quarter country as well as one or more foreign countries. Transnational combine assets, resources and diverse people in their company all over the world. According to Bartlett and Ghoshal, “transnational companies can build three strategic capabilities; national level responsiveness; national level responsiveness and flexibility; and cross market capacity to leverage learning on a worldwide basis. The reading article “What is a Global Manager” gives me a great outline on what different managers in a transnational do. The global business managers have three important roles, strategist, architect and coordinator.

#2 Knowing your competition and achieved competitive advantage is great advantage to any company. So why do you want to know your competitors? It is because if you know what your competitors are good/ bad at, you can design your products, marketing plans and to be better than theirs. As Dr. Teague stated in class, “If you want to control your fate, you need to have competitive resource” Resource Based Views (RBV) developed by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Jay Barney is a very helpful resource that companies use to determine what their competitive advantages are in their markets and industries.
With Resource Base View strategy, there are three types of resource a company might possess; they are physical resources (tangible), intangible resources and organizational capability. Physical resources refer to something that can been seen and touched such as machinery, material, buildings…etc Intangible resources are something that can’t be touched such as a brand reputation, employee loyalty, unique information that no one else has. And last and not least, organizational capability, it is more of internal skills in companies or firms have such as their work culture, their ability to manage/ train their employee to gain competitive advantage.
In order to know what your competitive advantages are, it is very important to know the 5 tests that RBV uses to test the resources. Inimitable – is the resource hard to copy? Substitutability – Can this unique resource by trumped by a different resource? Durability – how long can this resource last? Appropriability - Who gets to captures the revenue of the resource creates? Competitive superiority – Is our resource more value than our competitor? These are all great questions to ask when it comes to decide the value of a resource.

A Note on Team Process was one of my favorite lectures, I didn’t realize that a group of people working together doesn’t necessary equal to a team. Yes, after all, the final goal is to get the project done on time, but there are so much more than just a couple of