Return to CLS Home Page

Companies

(February 20, 1997)

Because there seems to have been some confusion in the minds of some of you, let me clarify for all that there are three senses in which you have assignments involving companies.

1. The billion-dollar bonanza. This is "your company;" your proposal to Global Telecom, Media and Electronics, Inc., regarding the business you think they should get into in your Asian country.

2. Companies in your country. There are a number of things you have been requested to report about your country. One of those things is a review of the major firms operating in your country.

• (a) In part, this is simply a sub-set of your overall general country description, not unlike the way that someone describing Montana in the old days would have to have said something about Anaconda Copper (or DuPont's domination of Delaware).
• (b) It is also, more specifically, a review of the range of domestic companies operating in the telecom-media-electronics segments of the Information Economy in that country.
• (c) We want to have a sense of the extent to which global conglomerates operating in the Information Economy are active in your country. And, finally,
• (d) you might want to emphasize the companies, both domestic and global, operating in, or close to, the economic sector occupied by your billion-dollar-bonanza.

Note that 1 and 2, above, will become components of your end product, your seminar paper, your memo to GTME, Inc.

And note that, as always, one of our more significant goals is to minimize your frustration and keep the project fun, something you enjoy doing. So if you run into major road blocks on any of the particulars involving 2, just drop an endnote to that effect, explain the problem, and go on. (Of course, this out is to be distinguished from punting on third down due to a failure to plan enough time to do the research.)

3. Global corporation. This is a wholly separate project. This work product is not, as such, contained in your seminar paper. The contributions of each of you become, however, a group work product on which all of you will be able to draw in putting your seminar papers together. We're all dragging somewhat behind schedule on this one, so you probably should give it some fairly prompt attention. Properly done, it should take very little time.

• (a) What you need to do, first, is e-mail me your choice of company from the lists which Sarah Thier pulled together for all of us (and are available on the Web page). You are, of course, free to come up with a different global firm, but the list saves you the time and trouble of doing that. I earlier made the point (Web: Assignments/Assignments for January 23-29 Period; "Seminar Papers"/"Company Selection," January 25, 1997) that you might find it more efficient to select a global firm that you know to be dominant, or at least operating, in your country -- but that was only a suggestion, if it happened to work for you, not a requirement.
• (b) Having done that, all you then need do is -- hopefully -- just (1) refer the rest of us to the Web page of that company (if all the information is there), or (2) machine copy the information for us from some basic business source (e.g., Standard and Poors, Value Line) or major article in a business magazine (e.g., Fortune, Forbes), or (3) re-keystroke it, if necessary, from more than one source.
• (c) What we are looking for are two categories of information about the company:

(1) what is the extent of its global reach? In how many countries, of, say, the 185 members of the U.N., does it have a major presence? And

(2) what is the range of its subsidiaries, partially-owned firms, joint projects?

What we think we will be documenting is that there are today a number of firms that are very much global in their reach, dominant in their industries, merging activities across the board of telecom-media-electronics, and often converging these functions as well.