How to Build an Effective Global Business

The most effective tool is bringing together and taking care of cross-border teams comprising of different nationalities although many organisational mechanisms exist for assimilation of geographically dispersed operations. The resulting diversity can yield significant synergies superior to that of any individual in the group. However, the successful management of a global business firm throws open several challenges that tend to aggravate the more common problems faced by all teams. This has been pointed out in Building an Effective Global Business Team by authors Vijay Govindarajan, Director of the Center for Global Leadership at Dartmouth College's Tuck School, and Anil K. Gupta, a professor of Strategy and Global E-business at the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business.
When global business teams fail, mostly it is due to a lack of trust among team members. Hence, processes need to be set up that emphasise the cultivation of faith. Also factors responsible include hindrances to communication caused by geographical, cultural and language differences.
To diminish the cutting effects of these cross-cultural hindrances, executives are advised to carefully construct a cross-border team's composition and process, with each aspect equally emphasised. The authors elaborate on how these work holistically to increase the probability that global business teams will become high-performing sources of invaluable.
I have taught the subject Business Policy and Strategy and Management Control Systems in MBA and followed the text book authored by Robert Anthony and Vijay Govindarajan. This happens to be the only book covering the course curriculum of Management Control Systems and I would highly recommend this to readers of this subject. While teaching this subject I had the opportunity of getting in touch with Mr. Govindarajan. Interested readers may have a look at his profile which will tell you all what he has achieved since doing his C.A. and teaching at IIM, Ahmedabad years back. He has a couple of blogs which are quite interesting and is very useful reading.