Nice to meet you!

Hey everyone, we are the group Globetrotter!

Globetrotter means someone who travels widely around the world. We want to use the name to show our interests and enthusiasm to explore the world. The logo has the same meaning with our group name. At the background of globalization, our footprints could reach any place on the world map. Particularly, in the business world, we hope we could use the professional knowledge learnt in this class in the future career and contribute to the world’s economy.

Globetrotter comprises of five members, one Hong Kong girl and four mainland China girls. Following is a more detailed introduction of each individual:

• Ko Wing Ka (Ka): My name is Ko Wing Ka. You can call me Ka. I am a year 3 student from BBAIBJ. One of my individual identities is that I am a loner. I love and enjoy to be alone. It does not mean that I do not like to cooperate or communicate with others, it just means that I need my space to think alone sometimes. Another identity is that I am friendly. My appearance may make me a cool girl that others cannot make friend with; but, actually, I am friendly to those I know.

• Liao Yu (Samantha): My name is Samantha Liao and I am from management department. As I describe in my blog name, I am an outgoing person that I like making friends with people from all around the world. My hobby is reading different kinds of books especially consequence books. Besides, I’d like to study different cultures. I think knowing and comparing different cultures are fun and interesting.

• Chen Xi (Adeline): My name is Adeline. I am year 3 student majoring in International Business (Japan studies). I am positive, and I like interesting things and jokes. My identity is another thing that I am a "dog lover". I like pets and I have kept a dog in my home. I treat her as one of my family member. Every time when I returned home and brought presents to my parents, I also brought one for her. I hope one day, I can get a house with a garden so that my pets can have a large enough place to play.

• Hu Mengsha (Kelly): My name is Kelly, a girl from mainland China. I have been Hong Kong for 3 years and I am a marketing student in CityU. I am a person who is flexible and positive. I like making friends from different cultures. Gardening and farming are two of my special hobbies and I have been a volunteer in an organic farm for two months last summer.

• Liang Yuanyuan (Doris): My name is Doris Liang, and I’m from marketing department. I’m an outgoing person though sometimes I may be a little bit shy to strangers. This is my last semester in CityU, I’m so honoured and glad to meet new friends in this class. I’m keen on travelling, and recently I’m playing rock climbing which is cool and interesting. I hope that we can be not only classmates but also friends.

The goals...

Through this course, we want to equip ourselves with the ability to identify the key concepts in international management and strategic cultural aspects of international business organizations. We shall practise team working and team presentation.

Since we may deal with clients and colleagues from different cultual backgrouds in our furture career, we want to understand the key bareers that may influence effective communication and management, and find out the way to resolve it.

Furthermore, as the world is getting flatter, even in our daily life, we may have dealing with various people, to better express ourselves, we’d better know more about other culture as well as the effectve communication way.

Our interested topics...

After having a brief understanding of the course outline, there are two topics that interest our group most, which are “Business ethics” and “Inter-cultural communication and conflict resolution”. These two topics are practical and provide more insights in our learning, working areas and daily life.

As we all know, corruption in China is becoming a more and more serious problem that arouses our alert. Corruption in China has also brought a lot of other social problems, such as poison food and poor quality building construction. Through this course, we'd like to know more about the cause and cost of corruption in China and what can Chinese government do to resolve the problem. In addition, since we are all final year students and probably we will work with people from diversified cultural backgrounds, we should equip ourselves with skills that communicate ourselves effectively and help to resolve intercultural conflicts.

Additional topics...

Besides, we want to know more about the cultural influences that brought by globalization. Since globalization has already changed the way we live, but it is controversial whether it is good or not. Through this course, we want to have a deep understanding of the pros and cons of globalization from the cultural aspect.

The myth...

Which brand would you choose if you want to buy a Smartphone? Probably

would be Samsung or Apple.

Which bank would you choose if you want to save money? Probably would be HSBC.

Which fast food shop would you go if you want to have a quick lunch? Probably would be McDonald’s.

All of the brands have one common characteristic – they are all multinational company (MNC). MNCs are surrounding all of us; thus, a myth said:

"MNCs are getting bigger and companies become fewer."

Is that true?

Definitely not!

1) MNCs actually create more inches for markets to develop new businesses.

Take one of the MNCs, McDonald’s, as an example. In India, McDonald's use all local materials to do business; for example, cheese are sourced from Dynamix Dairies, Baramati, Maharashtra; fresh Buns from Mrs. Bector Foods, Phillaur, Punjab & Khopoli, Maharashtra; sauce from Mrs. Bector Foods, Phillaur, Punjab, Chicken Patties, Vegetable Patties, and Veg. McDonald’s even taught the local farmer to plant potatoes. These create larger inches for Indian market, developing more different and new food-related business in India.

2)  Concentration in certain big industries is decreasing.

In some year there was an issue in Harvard Business Review, two professors report on their detailed study of mergers and concentration. Although in a global marketplace, big companies have to merge with other big companies, as globalization is becoming a big trend, the facts become that:

• The oil industry is actually far less concentrated today than it was 60 years ago, with many more equal-sized competitors in the field now.
• GM, Ford and Toyota control less of the world’s car market today.
• The shares of worldwide sales in computer hardware and software in top high-tech companies are dramatically declining in these few decades.

 As a result, while mergers happens every day, as concentration in certain big industries is decreasing, multinationals cannot control majority of markets; and small companies are showing their potentials in this fierce competition environment. Small companies survive to live and gradually become bigger and stronger.

3) Globalization and freer trade make market access easier for everyone -- not only large MNCs, but also small businesses

Globalization brings new technologies, creative ideas and access to foreign market to the smaller businesses.

For example, because of globalization, Internet has been introduced to China and online shopping become increasingly popular. This trend brings great opportunities for people to start their own small businesses, without large expenses on physical rentals, storage, and etc. “Taobao” is the largest B2C online shopping platform in China, and now it has about 2 million online shops and over 10 million registered members. These small businesses catch the trend of globalization, fully take advantage of the new technology introduced in and therefore gain their own success.