Review on Harvard Business Review "Have You Restructured for Global Success?"
Introduction
The following text is a review on the Harvard Business Review Have you restructured for global success? By Kumar, N. and P. Puranam, published in 2011. The article focuses on the importance of structural changes that occur or have to be implemented, when multinational companies enter emerging markets, such as China and India, in order to operate successfully and exploit these markets to their full potential.
The authors name several examples of what challenges companies faced and how they restructured to adapt to markets in developing countries. Also, reasons for why existing structures are too deficient to exploit location-specific advantages and gaps between multinational companies' ambitions and achievements. Moreover they introduce structures such as the the so-called T-shaped structure as one model that companies can adopt. At the end the authors state that structural change is necessary, companies must make trade-offs, appropriate to the economic environment and competitive context to create a global competitive advantage.
Main body
The authors Kumar and Puranam express the purpose of the article in the title “Have you restructured for global success?” and a subtitle “It takes more than localizing your customer-facing business to win in emerging markets.” Together they indicate the content of the article, rephrased it may look like the following sentence: In order to be successful in emerging markets it takes more than localizing the customer-facing business, but also restructuring and upgrading the existing business structure.
In the conclusion the authors state, “no organizational design is perfect or permanent”. In the article they discuss this statement and support it with arguments and give conclusions such as the following:
Before entering emerging markets, multinational companies first have to focus on finding the right structure or what the authors call restructure, in order to successfully adapt to the business
The following text is a review on the Harvard Business Review Have you restructured for global success? By Kumar, N. and P. Puranam, published in 2011. The article focuses on the importance of structural changes that occur or have to be implemented, when multinational companies enter emerging markets, such as China and India, in order to operate successfully and exploit these markets to their full potential.
The authors name several examples of what challenges companies faced and how they restructured to adapt to markets in developing countries. Also, reasons for why existing structures are too deficient to exploit location-specific advantages and gaps between multinational companies' ambitions and achievements. Moreover they introduce structures such as the the so-called T-shaped structure as one model that companies can adopt. At the end the authors state that structural change is necessary, companies must make trade-offs, appropriate to the economic environment and competitive context to create a global competitive advantage.
Main body
The authors Kumar and Puranam express the purpose of the article in the title “Have you restructured for global success?” and a subtitle “It takes more than localizing your customer-facing business to win in emerging markets.” Together they indicate the content of the article, rephrased it may look like the following sentence: In order to be successful in emerging markets it takes more than localizing the customer-facing business, but also restructuring and upgrading the existing business structure.
In the conclusion the authors state, “no organizational design is perfect or permanent”. In the article they discuss this statement and support it with arguments and give conclusions such as the following:
Before entering emerging markets, multinational companies first have to focus on finding the right structure or what the authors call restructure, in order to successfully adapt to the business