Seagate Technology International

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Introduction

Seagate Technology International is one of the major Multinational Corporations (MNCs) having operations in Singapore. Currently, the technology company’s principal executive offices are situated at Cupertino, California.

The famous technology company, which was first started as Shugart Technology in the year 1978, has been reputed as a global leader in the manufacture and production of hard disk drives and storage solutions.

Ever since its incorporation over three decades ago, Seagate has attained great success in hard disk development, and this makes it a giant player in the transformative technology sector (Bay, Tang and Bennett, 2004).

In Singapore, Seagate Technology premises are situated in the business oriented region of Woodlands. Sectors aligned to electronics, finance and IT are observed to have undergone a very rapid growth in Singapore in the past several years.

According to market experts, business opportunities in those sectors are expected to increase tremendously in the near future, and this offers a stable business potential for Seagate Technology in the country.

However, apart from the promising business opportunities presented by Singapore, Seagate, just like any other firm, is vulnerable to a number of external forces that are likely to influence the achievement of our business goals.

Environmental Factors Affecting the Operations of Seagate Technology in Singapore

Integrated Economic Markets

The practice of economic integration between different groups of countries within a particular geographical region is increasingly gaining momentum in the modern world.

Economic integrations have the benefit of minimising common barriers to the steady flow of products, services, capital, and labor among other production inputs between member countries. The movement from segmented markets to the integrated markets comes with immense benefits to member countries.

For instance, this would tend to affect the volume of trade activities, profits, and consumer prices in a monopoly model. Seagate Technology operations in Singapore markets have greatly benefited from Singapore inter-relationships with the US and other giant economies in the world, such as Japan and China (Contractor and Lorange, 2002).

Global Consumer Preferences

Consumer tastes and preferences for various products are observed to be converging, and this would determine the success and failure of companies within a particular geographical region. Seagate’s products in Singapore continue to face stiff competition, considering the wide range of hard disk manufacturers in the region.

Seagate might be a global market leader in hard disks and other storage products, but they are yet to thrive in Singapore, due to the factor of consumer preferences, whereby different people tend to have varied tastes for products made by different companies.

Management across Cultures

Culture is a highly-sensitive issue that plays a significant role in influencing consumer tastes and preferences on products and services. In this regard, local businesses would tend to respond well to cultural requirements, compared to foreign investors who may not be well-informed of the local cultural needs.

In that case, foreign investors are often forced to adopt new business strategies that would enable them respond accordingly to the local cultural tastes.

Even though Seagate Technology would constantly try to undergo various costly adaptations in order to fit in the cultural demands of Singapore, it may never come out smarter than many local companies in the region.

Globalised Production

Modern firms are increasingly taking charge of their production levels to take full advantage over their rivals in business. Through the establishment of a global production network, corporations hope to benefit a lot by achieving quality standards at low costs.

In this case, Seagate’s nature of globalised production gives us a higher competitive advantage compared to our business rivals in the region.

Major Factors Affecting the Company’s Operations

Economic Conditions

Foreign investors venturing global markets are prone to unpredictable economic changes that may have significant impacts on their performance. These shifts may present in many forms, such as high inflation or fluctuation of currency exchange rates.

However, Singapore enjoys a stable economic performance which is based on strong economic strategies. These strategies have enabled the country to swerve through serious economical and financial turbulences of the past, thus emerging as one of the major economies in the world.

General Business Environment

Trade is a significant activity in Singapore, with both imports and exports accounting for the largest portion of the country’s GDP. Singapore’s ability to attract and retain foreign investments can be realized from various sources.

For example, the country enjoys a massive skilled labor force in almost all sectors of the economy. Other significant sources here include infrastructural wealth and the assuring directive of a corruption-free government. All these have been key attractions of MNCs from developed countries.

Manufacturing and services are the key economical drivers of the country, and for that reason, the government has shown great desire in the promotion of key activities in those areas.

Effective Application of Management Functions

For firms to be able to take full advantage of the vast business opportunities provided by foreign environments, they should first of all consider putting in place factors that tend to vary across regions, and which may be different from the local settings they are used to.

Singapore’s favorable economical conditions have proved to be a major driving force in the success of Seagate Technology International. More importantly, the fact that Seagate Technology specialises in the manufacturing sector is an added advantage to the American Multinational Corporation.

However, there are still many ways by which Seagate Technology can maximise its operations in Singapore.

For effective and efficient performance in the region, Seagate Technology should incorporate the key functions of the management process. These key management functions usually play a crucial role in the overall performance of all businesses.

For effective production to be realised in the corporation, both individual and team players should work towards a particular goal aimed at achieving the intended objectives and nothing else.

The following summary relates through how the management of Seagate Corporation can relate through the four major functions of managerial, for effective business success in Singapore and other international markets.

Planning and Strategising

Planning and strategising aspects are key requirements in the success of businesses. Planning basically involves all the activities taken in considering when designing the objectives of the business in a specific geographical region. In this regard, firms would strategise on how to go about the established plans to achieve their business objectives.

Seagate Technology International can maximise the opportunities of planning and strategising in mapping their business goals within the selected region. In this line, the objectives of individuals and teams should be coordinated carefully for effective production.

Considering the many environmental factors surrounding the operation of the company in Singapore, there is need for appropriate planning and strategising by the management, and this may involve aspects such as constant assessment and analysis of the company’s performance in the region.

Such assessments can be conducted by the use of credible assessment methodologies, such as the SWOT analysis.

Organising

This function would involve effective planning and coordination of all the company’s operational units and resources, in order for them to achieve the desired goals and objectives in business.

In this sense, Seagate’s management team would have to identify and specify how the firm’s input resources needs to be arranged and coordinated for effective productivity.

To achieve this objective, the firm would have to consider administering effective management strategies in all its units. This entire process may include significant interventions that entail good definition of tasks, resource allocation, task delegation, clarification of procedures, and determination of procedures among other processes.

Leading

According to Luis and Balkin (2011), this function entails the practice of encouraging and motivating workers to bring out their best performances in productivity. It is the responsibility of the management of any organisation to exercise effective leadership skills on fellow employees, for excellent performance and productivity.

This is where the concept of leadership shadows comes in business management. Good leaders should always lead by example and try to enforce positive business mentality upon their subordinates.

It is also the responsibility of leaders to guide the other employees below delegation through a sound focus of accountability in business performance.

In this sense, the management of Seagate Technology would not only have to communicate its organisational goals to its workers, but it would also have to employ all the strategies in the book to make those goals achievable to all its employees.

Some of the ways through which this objective can be achieved would include; effective communication among the organizational units, creation of favorable working conditions, and good leadership examples.

The company’s managerial team would need to come up with leadership strategies that would encourage better working conditions for people of diverse cultural backgrounds.

Controlling

The only way by which Seagate Technology International can achieve its business objectives in Singapore is by taking full control of their operations and performance in the region. Key business operations always need to be controlled in a systematic manner, so as to remain in the right track.

By assessing its overall performance and trying to compare it with the set business objectives, the technology company can come up with all the necessary amendments that would be needed to make a successful venture in the selected market (Ritter, Wilkinson and Johnston, 2004).

Through effective assessment, the company can successfully come up with enough feedback to enable them identify potential problems and therefore taking the necessary corrective measures in addressing them.

The practice of control is crucial for success of firms in the modern competitive business environment, since it can be applied to correct significant discrepancies in business.

General Conclusions of the analysis and the company

MNCs and SMEs are important players in the contemporary business world. Both MNCs and SMEs come with immense benefits, and are certain to guarantee for a wider disparity of income distribution to the regions where they are employed.

Singapore is one of the many countries whose vibrant economic growth can be associated with the impact of both local and foreign MNCs and SMEs. Ever since she gained her independence from the British way back in 1959, Singapore has excelled economically.

Currently, the emerging East Asian economy enjoys a wide range of direct foreign investment in Multinational Corporations and Small and Medium-sized Enterprises that have roots in giant global economies.

Through globalised production of its products, Seagate Technological International has featured well in many regions globally, including the developing markets of Singapore (Tang, Cheong and Goh, 2007).

This success can be attributed to the company’s focused business ambition which is based on various external and environmental factors as discussed in this report.

However, there is enough evidence that the manufacturing company can do even better, if it considered making some changes about the way it conducts business in Singapore and other regions.

General Recommendations in the Context of Management

Based on this broad analysis of the external factors affecting the operations of Seagate Technologies International in Singapore, it is obviously clear that the company already enjoys a fair business position in the region.

There is more than enough evidence that the technology company can excel in the East Asian country, considering the favorable market conditions offered by the region. Most of the highlighted external factors in this report would have a positive impact to Seagate Technology, and this gives the corporation a higher competitive advantage compared to its rivals in the industry.

It leaves no doubt that, the technology company has a great business potential in the East Asian region where computer technology is observed to be taking a turn to the pinnacle, owing to the incessant impacts of globalisation.

However, realization of this dream largely depends on how the company’s steering board plans to execute its duties and responsibilities.

In that sense, the managers should try to perform their managerial roles in an effective manner, and this can be achieved through constant application of the four management functions outlined in this report, in all levels of production within the firm.

References

Bay, B., Tang, N., & Bennett, D. (2004). An empirical study of the imperatives for a supply chain implementation project in Seagate Technology International. Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, 9(4), 331-340.

Contractor, F. & Lorange, P. (2002). Cooperative strategies in international business: joint ventures and technology partnerships between firms. United Kingdom: Emerald Group Publishing.

Luis, R. & Balkin, D. (2011). Management: International Version. New York: Pearson Publishers.

Ritter, T.,Wilkinson, I., & Johnston, W. (2004). Managing in complex business networks. Industrial Marketing Management, 33(3), 175-183.

Tang, L., Cheong, W., & Goh, J. (2007). Reliability assessment for particle-induced failures in multi-generation hard disk drives. Microsystem technologies, 13(8), 891-894.

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