Question:
Discuss about The Changing Business Environment for The Renault.
Answer:
1: Carlos Ghosn, the Chief Executive of Nissan, was able to construct the position on the success of a French corporation in order to transform a characteristically Japanese company. Most interestingly, he encountered as much praises as resistance from Japanese citizens when closing Nissan plants in Japan and making the workers redundant, something normally alien to the collective corporate culture of Japan. At that time, all the Japanese were starting to re-evaluate their conventional ideas. Japan had by this time already experienced a decade of the economic stagnation as well as the falling corporate profitability and there was a growing realization that difficult times required drastic measures. Therefore, it can be stated that not only Nissan, some other Japanese companies as well get into difficulties in 1990s (Lim 2012).
2: The Renault-Nissan Alliance has always thanked to the Alliance, as Renault has significantly got the level and cultural mass of the chief intercontinental carmaker in a globalized and ultra-competitive automotive manufacturing industry. It can be seen that despite the recession in Europe as well as the slowing scale in China, worldwide scale increased to the record level of 8.1 million vehicles in the year 2012. The Renault group sold 2,550,286 units in different parts of the globe and Nisan sold 4,940,133 vehicles and this number symbolizes 10% of all new cars advertised across the globe. However, it is required to mention that in the year 2012, this Alliance was the world’s fourth ranking car maker in terms of sales, behind Toyota, General Motors and Volkswagen. Global reports have stated that in 1999, Brazil, Russia, India and China, i.e. BRIC countries corresponded to only 8% of the worldwide car marketplace. In 2012, these four countries successfully represented 36% of the global vehicle sales. The strategy of this alliance was to set up Renault and Nissan’s manufacture and sales in the BRIC (Gill 2012).
3: Loyn (2014) has stated that cultural dissimilarities must be considered as a major premeditated issue at the time of forming as well as running international strategic associations, particularly for the alliances that are shaped of the members who gave enormous cultural dissimilarities like Renault-Nissan Alliance. However, it can be stated that the Renault-Nissan alliance was one of great examples of cultural mystery and the CEO was highly concerned about this part and this insisted him to take this decision. At Nisan, he gained an interesting amalgamation of French and Anglo-Saxon cultures and thus he tried to keep these two companies separate in spite they had alliance. Senaratne and Gunaratne (2012) have focused on his research paper cultural impact on the intercontinental deliberate alliances through analyzing Renault-Nisan case and has tried to establish that the cultural differences are not obstructions if it can be managed properly (Marsh et al. 2013). On contrast, some have stated that the cultural differences might arrange new opportunities with the help of merging the best of the dissimilar cultures and might come up with new finest practices like Renault-Nisan case.
4: France and Japan being two different countries have a huge distinction in the cultural traits possessed by the citizens of each of the two countries. While the French culture is always focused more on individualism and independence, the Japanese culture has a greater interdependence on the family unit and society. However, both the cultures have a political inclination, and in both the countries discipline and punctuality play an important role (Joseph 2013).
5: Research works have stated that in 1990s, most of the Japanese companies were facing severe issues and standing at that point of time, this Renault-Nisan alliance was one of the interesting facts that that changed the scenario. Most of the Japanese companies started re-evaluating their conventional ideas. At that time, Japan was already going through severe economic stagnation and thus the alliance of Renault-Nisan was one of the successful examples to be followed by many Japanese companies. The alliance of these two companies was one of the successful examples of cultural amalgamation and this inspired many Japanese companies towards re-evaluation of the country’s conventional business practices (Abels 2013).
6: The CEO of Renault and Nisan adopted the Anglo-Saxon approach and this was one of the significant elements of the huge success of Renault-Nisan Alliance. () has stated that Anglo-Saxon approach is a structure of capitalism that is generally connected with the United States, but also characterizes the economies of some counties like Japan, Canada, Australia and Ireland. This representation has traditionally discriminating free market-tendencies and this is exemplified by the less regulated financial and labor marketplaces. Therefore, it can be stated that adoption of this Anglo-Saxon model by the CEO of this company was justified enough. Apart from that, it can be stated that one of the major success factors of this Renault-Nisan alliance was the adoption of this Anglo-Saxon model. However, it can be stated that it generally fluctuates from its counterpart, continent entrepreneurship that is more state-controlled and focused on proper prosperity distribution.
7: Success of Renault-Nissan is one of the bright examples of alliances in the history of car manufacturing organizations throughout the globe. Following this alliance, it can be stated that there is no particular surety that every company would gain noticeable success through alliance. Reports on this particular alliance states that this alliance is one of the prominent examples of cultural challenges in the history and this was possible only because of the cultural background of Carlos Ghosn, the CEO of Renault-Nissan. Background of the CEO would never be the same in all other Japanese companies and thus it can be stated that other companies must not adopt Anglo-Saxon approach only because of the success of Renault-Nissan alliance. However, it is required to mention that all the Japanese companies must revise their conventional thoughts in case of business and this would help them to move out of the stagnant situation. CEO of other companies might follow the path of Carlos Ghosn, but they must follow their own strategies based on their situation.
8: Reports have stated that the Renault-Nissan Alliance was created by the French auto major Renault and Japan’s Nissan and it is expecting near about 70% of its vehicles to be constructed on a Common Module Family or CMF by 2020. Therefore, it can be stated that the alliance of Renault-Nissan is one of the prominent examples of East Asian and European amalgamation. Therefore, it can be stated that a sincere thanks to this agreement, as Renault has prepared its future through becoming a pioneer in the sustainability mobility for everyone with a variety of electric vehicles. Renault holds 43.4% of Nissan’s share capital and Nissan 15% of Renault’s. Reports have stated that the cross sharing arrangement makes sure that the two partners have a reciprocal attention in the Alliance. Statistics have stated that in the year 2013, the Renault-Nissan alliance sold 8.3 million vehicles in almost 200 countries and this was correspondent to more than one out of every ten vehicles sold in different parts of the globe.
Case Study: The Changing Use of Internet
1: The popular social networking sites such as Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram help the small organizations grow, by letting them promote and advertise their latest offers and recently launched services to a wider mass of consumers. This helps an organization interact with the consumers, and develop its brand awareness among the new potential consumers. Besides, social web tools such as Web2.0 largely benefit the small organizations in operating business in a smooth and cost-effective manner. The Interactivity of Web 2.0 Technology helps to bring more employees at lower cost, and if it is used effectively, it also encourages their participation in projects and idea sharing process. It enables the organization achieve effective marketing, innovative products and services and greater access to knowledge. In a nutshell, social websites help small organizations adopt effective and yet interesting marketing strategies, draw the attention of greater number of consumers at affordable cost and understand the consumer needs in a better way (Venkatesh, Thong & Xu, 2012).
2: The term Fundamental Innovation implies the discovery and the development of a new product, while Incremental Innovation means the gradual development of an already existent product. Keeping into consideration the difference between these two kinds of innovation, the development of web platform is to be considered as an incremental Innovation. This is because the web platform utilizes the same applications such as word processing and database, which were already being introduced. The web platform is only an innovative product in the sense that it is more personal software, and it is meant for serving the personal needs of the users, unlike the desktop software. The web platform in itself is not highly distinguishable from the desktop software, and the major difference between the two lies in the fact that the former offers a convenient method of gaining access to files and documents, without the need of having the particular software. Scalability, business continuity and collaboration features are some of the innovative features added in the concept of a web platform, and hence its introduction has to be considered as an example of Incremental Innovation (Walter et al. 2012).
3: The web based platforms may not be provide full benefits for some time as the applications would still be involving with the security issues. Moreover, there will always be a constant demand of increasing up the speed of internet connections as well. Thus, the developers are required to decrease the gap between the technology and its users by implementing the innovation process in the web based platforms. The impact of the innovation for the web developing companies on its business would be improvements in the productivity, enhancement in the economic growth and conduction of business in the market as well.
4: There is an increasing level of uncertainty surrounding the concept of cloud computing. There are various kinds of uncertainties associated with cloud computing as far as the issue of security, reliability and the performance of computing and communication are concerned. The major drawback of the cloud computing service is that in case of cloud computing, services as well as resources is constantly being subject to considerable uncertainty during provisioning. As a result, this brings huge challenge to the end-users, resource providers and others. The uncertainty of cloud computing arises because of dynamic elasticity, inaccuracy of application runtimes estimation , the problem of variation of processing times and data transmission.
5: Cloud computing can prove to be highly beneficial for any organization, as it largely helps in increasing the productivity of the employees. With the help of cloud computing, an organization can easily outsource its operational IT works to an external organization, thus allowing the organization bid goodbye to any sort of problem associated with the maintenance of IT infrastructure. However, many organizations feel apprehensive about opting for cloud computing service, as it implies giving up considerable amount of control to a third party which becomes responsible for looking after the data of the organization. However, despite the security issue, the main advantage of cloud computing is that it is financially beneficial. Most importantly, cloud computing enables easy collaboration among the employees as the workers of an organization can much easily gain access to important files and documents from wherever they are. Further, cloud computing helps in the easy availability of official data, and makes data storage disaster resistant as well (Venkatesh, Thong & Xu, 2012).
6: It has been estimated that the business use of the web services for the computer based activities and networking is likely to increase in the future. Moreover, there would always be a constant demand of standard web service by the technology users in the market. Thus, implementing the advanced technology in the creation of standard web based applications would enable the web developing companies to establish a dominant position in the market. Moreover, achieving the latest technology would be enabling the developers to improve the economic growth, enhance the productivity, and remain competitive in the market (Venkatesh, Thong & Xu, 2012).
7: As there has been a constant demand of standard web service by the technology users in the market, more and more companies are renovating their web-based services for their customers to satisfy their needs. Microsoft, like many private and open source web service providers has been innovative in offering cloud-computing services for its customers. This technology enables the technology users to store the information online without having to install the infrastructure required for the process. This innovation in technology has been helping the company to gain a dominant position in the market. Moreover, the familiarity of the Office software along with the cloud computing services would be enabling Microsoft to gain competitive advantage over the other web service providers. Thus, Microsoft would be enjoying the competitive advantage over its competitors for quite some time now.
8: Web-based application is a necessity as far as the question of information dissemination is concerned. Web-based applications are being extensively used in order to store, distribute and access knowledge, and thus knowledge sharing and knowledge creation are formed. The web-based application is largely useful because of its discussion forum. This discussion forum enables the sharing of information between the knowledge creator and the knowledge seeker. Most importantly, the web-based application provides a huge amount of information, and much of this and other information is either stored in the web or is accessed via web.
Reference List:
Abels, R. (2013). Alfred the Great: war, kingship and culture in Anglo-Saxon England. Routledge.
Gill, C. (2012). The role of leadership in successful international mergers and acquisitions: Why Renault?Nissan succeeded and DaimlerChrysler?Mitsubishi failed. Human Resource Management, 51(3), 433-456.
Joseph, J. (2013). Resilience in UK and French security strategy: An Anglo-Saxon bias?. Politics, 33(4), 253-264.
Lim, W. M. (2012). The voyage of the Renault-Nissan alliance: A successful venture. Advances In Management.
Loyn, H. R. (2014). Anglo Saxon England and the Norman Conquest. Routledge.
Marsh, H. W., Abduljabbar, A. S., Abu-Hilal, M. M., Morin, A. J., Abdelfattah, F., Leung, K. C., ... & Parker, P. (2013). Factorial, convergent, and discriminant validity of timss math and science motivation measures: A comparison of Arab and Anglo-Saxon countries. Journal of Educational Psychology, 105(1), 108.
Senaratne, S., & Gunaratne, P. S. M. (2012, November). The Anglo-Saxon approach to corporate governance and its applicability to Sri Lanka. InProceedings of International Conference on Business Management (Vol. 5).
Venkatesh, V., Thong, J. Y., & Xu, X. (2012). Consumer acceptance and use of information technology: extending the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology. MIS quarterly, 36(1), 157-178.
Walter, T., Hourizi, R., Moncur, W., & Pitsillides, S. (2012). Does the internet change how we die and mourn? Overview and analysis. OMEGA-Journal of Death and Dying, 64(4), 275-302.
