First Impressions

Your project requires a problem statement. You have to:

· Explain the assignment.

· Explain your approach.

· Predict your expectations.

· Indentify critical factors.

How do you do this? Take a quick look at your research material. Practice translating basic data into information that would serve your company’s interests.

Suggest a Stance: Manufacture? Market? Do both? Do neither? This stance can help you write a tentative problem statement and guide your research. Expect your stance to fluctuate as you proceed!

Get it in writing: What do you think your group’s recommendation will be for your project, and why?

The Big Picture

Your project should have graphs, tables, charts, or maps. These visual aids help put across some of your key ideas simply and directly.

Graphs: show trends, movements, distributions, and cycles. They provide readers a means for comparisons.

Tables: show large amounts of specific, related data in a brief space. They provide readers with rows, columns, and groups, so readers can compare the data.

Charts: show how various components of an organization are related to one another. They provide readers an overview of an organization, or a “flow” of steps/stages.

Maps: show specific geographic features (roads, mountains, rivers). They provide readers with information about population, housing, manufacturing centers.

A Few Words about Color: Use it.

The thoughtful design of graphs, tables, charts, and maps can give your reader a “visual outline” of your most important points.

Get it in writing: What is one kind of visual aid you think your group should use, and what key idea will this visual aid convey?

Sources

Your project must draw from three kinds of sources: the Internet, periodicals, and reference books. Strengths of one source can balance weaknesses of another.

Internet: offers easy access for tech-users, but websites are often gimicky and unreliable. Check this URL for help: <http://owl.english.purdue.edu/files/131.html>, and go to <http://www.niu.edu/english/wac/resourfr.html> for additional advice on writing.

Periodicals: offer more carefully checked data & info and are current.

Reference Books: offer the most reliable data & info, but may be less current.

Get it in writing: What is one source your group has found, and what’s its bias?

External Environmental Factors

Your project will analyze external factors existing in the target country. You have at least four categories of external factors that characterize the business environment of the country: economic, technological, political-legal, socio-cultural.

Economic factors: indicate how well the country can accommodate and support a foreign business venture. What will key players think your company & product can do for the country’s economic stability?

Technological factors: indicate the level and structures of development in the country. How will key players think your company can boost or exploit its resources?

Political-legal factors: indicate to what extent the country is able (and willing) to provide security for a foreign business venture. How will key players constrain or promote your company’s plans—and what will motivate them to do so?

Socio-cultural factors: indicate how the country will react to the presence of American values, customs, and practices. How readily will key players accept not only your company and its product, but what you represent—and how readily will the rest of the country’s population accept you?

Your project requires you to think outside of the American mindset and to find the sources that can help you to do so.

Get it in writing: What are two important external environmental factors that you already know, and how do you think they will affect your final recommendation?

Internal Organizational Factors

Your project requires you to make general assumptions about your company and the industry in which you operate. It also gives you freedom to speculate about technological status, trade name status, economies of scale, scanning capability, price/value ratio, background of key management, etc.

Comparability: What profiles of similar American companies can you find, to determine what your company’s specific strengths and weaknesses would most likely be?

Uniqueness: What internal factors can you imagine that would suggest the feasibility of your company’s expansion into the target country?

Ethnocentricity: How readily could your company adapt its product and operations to a market in the target country?

Get it in writing: What do you think one strength and one weakness of your own company and its product might be—and why?

Synthesis and Reader Awareness

Your project challenges the members of your group to think critically about its recommendation. You must consider all options: Manufacture? Market? Both? Neither? What pros and cons exist for each option?

Your project also requires careful revision for content and format. Consider what help each of the following readers might give you in getting your project in shape:

1. The writing center (see masthead),

2. A student who has previously done well in UBUS 311,

3. A group peers in this class,

4. One of your business professors,

5. A qualified friend or acquaintance,

6. An Online Writing Lab (OWL) that will accept your group’s essay.

Try: <http://cal.bemidji.msus.edu/WRC/WRChome.html>, <http://www.Agricola.umn.edu/owc/>, <http://www.missouri.edu/~lcwww/wlhome.html>, or <http://owl.wsu.edu/>.

Get it in writing: What’s your recommendation for the “Argentine project”—and why? Explain who you think you will seek as a reader of your own project.