Managing Business Communications, Knowledge and Information

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Major Decisions to be taken

As the global market offers significant opportunities, it requires a whole new strategy and for that several decisions need to be made by the management of the company. The decisions to be made by Sterling Construction will include strategic decisions such as which region provides most opportunities for them, which specific country should they enter first, how they are going to position their brand, what should be their target market, how they can capitalise their present core competencies while expanding globally, technologies to be applied and so on.

Decisions as Finance Manager

While as a Finance manager for new project of expanding business into a new region, I need to take tactical decisions related to investment and financing such as how much capital is required for this geographical diversification, how to raise that capital, selecting financial partners, allocation of capital for each department, intervals of investment, what assets to buys, service price to be set in order to meet ROI, make or buy decision, cost structure and so on. All these decisions come under unstructured form of decisions where the decision takes a lot of time and brain-storming (Schmidt & Wilhel, 1999, pp 3-10).

Answer-1.2

Gathering Information and Knowledge

After identifying the decisions that have to be made in order to expand geographically, the second step is to gather information and knowledge related with it. So before starting on the process of actually making a decision, all relevant information needs to be collected. Information consists of facts and figures available to us through various sources whereas, knowledge is actually about using or contextualizing that information to perform a specific task (Schlogl, 2005, pp. 235).

Assessing Information for Global Growth

For effective decision-making regarding the new venture, we should first of all need to have proper idea about the political, economical, social and technological aspects of the company. Economy is a very important perspective as a strong growing economy ensures lucrative business environment. Apart from that, the technological aspects of that region also needs to be acknowledged as you must have a proper idea whether you need to take technology with you. Most importantly, I need to assess the industry knowledge in that respective country (Khan, 2002, pp. 7-13).

As a Finance Manager

I need to look the present trends in the construction industry there as how much does that sector contributes to the GDP of the country, at what pace it is growing, present businesses in that industry. Also about their size, the costumers they are facilitating, their core competencies, their pricing strategy, sales revenue and their market share. This information is usually crucial for Sterling Construction, as this information would provide it with the general roadmap for the company in order to survive in the country. The information and knowledge has to be up to date here, as we can imagine that business world is changing rapidly and a single day could make a huge difference. Similarly I’ll also have to assess my own company’s financial position. Information related to how much cash is available right now for investment, what is the level of retained earnings, current liability level and other related financial information that is required before diversifying into new market.

Answer-1.3

Internal and External Sources

As we have discussed the information and knowledge needed for effective decision making as a finance manager of the company, now we would analyze sources of that information. The information required can be retrieved from internal sources as well as external sources. For me as a Finance manager, the internal sources of information are going to be annual reports, official meetings, company documents, financial data, sales information, purchasing information, manufacturing information or anything required for analyzing in order to make effective decision. Similarly external sources would include information provided by the government, Trade groupings, data bases and researches, commercially available information, newspaper, business magazines, media, internet or competitor’s financial data. The collection of relevant information is based on the quality of internal versus external sources, the cost associated with it, the reliability of information and the processes that are in place in the organisation for gathering the information.

Formal and Informal Sources

The internal and external sources can further be broken down into formal and informal sources. The formal sources would include structured data presented by officials of the organisation such as financial reports, statements and available data within Sterling Construction. Whereas, informal data would include word of mouth, rumours, meeting with outside suppliers or even attending a business conference in a specific country. At tactical level, like Finance Manager itself, I’ll be emphasizing more on internal data as in a large organisation like Sterling Construction; the external data is analyzed by the strategic level decision makers of the company which might include CFO of the company. But if I’ve been assigned special authority for the new project, then I’ll have the right to assess knowledge and information through both the sources in order to make effective and efficient decisions (David et. al, 1994, pp. 111-115).

Answer-2.1

Stakeholders

Corporate stakeholder is an individual or a group who can affect as well as been affected by the company’s decisions. Similarly, without the support of stakeholders, the company wouldn’t be able to achieve its goals and it would cease to exist (Clegg & Bailey, 2008, pp. n.d).

Stakeholders for Sterling Corporation

For this particular decision making process, the stakeholders for Sterling Construction can be characterised into two categories: Primary and Secondary. Primary stakeholders include shareholders or investors, banks, directors, employees, costumers (which would include private, local and federal costumers) and suppliers. These are the people that are going to be affected directly by the global growth decision. Whereas, the secondary stakeholders would include the general public of the country, community