International and Global Management

What is global management?

International and Global Management is concerned with the techniques and practices that are involved in directing and controlling international organizations. Thus, it covers all the issues that arise as a consequence of international and global strategies. In practice, strategy and management at the senior level of a company are inter-related.

Global management refers to the way an organization manages its business internationally, including its sales, marketing, hiring and finance practices.

For example, the US car company Ford Motors has a joint venture in the People’s Republic of China with the Chinese company Chang’An. This requires careful management at a senior level both for the US company and the Chinese company to ensure that the local joint venture continues to run effectively.

International and Global Management can usefully be considered from the perspective of the different functions of the organization: marketing, operations (often called production), human resources, finance and other support activities like research and development and legal issues. From an international perspective, each of these functional areas will have more complex issues than arise in any one country.

international and global management has an additional dimension. Senior managers will need to have discussions at various times with the country within which they are operating and, perhaps on occasions, with other international bodies like the World Bank or the United Nations. Other world institutions act primarily at country level, like the International Monetary Fund which is located in Washington DC, USA. The IMF, as it is usually known, governs international currency and other intergovernmental financial arrangements.

It is important that global managers understand these and many other world institutions because they will have an impact on their decision making – perhaps directly through negotiation and certainly indirectly through...