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(A) Difficulties in seeking global expansion
Language barriers may cause a problem of translation.
Cultural attitudes towards factors such as time and productivity e.g. keeping appointments.
Lack of education and technical skills in the workforce: The developing countries still have inexperienced workers with very little opportunity of handling modern machinery.
Scarcity of or different standards for raw materials, parts, equipment and other facilities - it may not be possible for a multinational to get the raw materials locally.
Hostile and unstable political climate. Frequent changes in government authority and policies causes an unpredictable environment to multinational firms.
Fluctuations in the international economy e.g. inflations and currency devaluations.
Unfamiliar legal systems - sometimes laws differ in areas such as taxation and Human Resource practices.
Differences in accounting systems.
Custom duties and other tariffs make international operations more difficult.
(B) Skills that a manager needs to overcome these difficulties.
Skills are what separate good managers from others. For effective management, the primary skills are technical, interpersonal, conceptual and diagnostic.
a) Technical skills
These are skills needed to perform specialized tasks and are especially important for first line managers. They enable one to use the tools, procedures or techniques of a specialized field.
b) Interpersonal skills (Human)
These are the skills needed to work with, motivate and understand individuals or groups.
The better a manager’s human skills are, the more effective he is likely to be.
c) Conceptual skills
These relate to a manager’s mental ability to coordinate and integrate all the organizations interests and activities i.e. be able to think in the abstract, to see relationships between forces that others cannot see and to take a global perspective of the organization and its environment.
d) Diagnostic skills
The skills used to define and understand situations and events, they are mainly directed at problem solving. Managers should be able to distinguish a problem from a symptom.
CONCLUSION
Although all skills are essential for effective management, their relative importance depends on the level of each manager.
Technical skills are more important at lower levels of management, human skills are probably most important at the supervisory level while conceptual and diagnostic skills are most important at the top management level where the managers are involved in broad issues concerning the whole organization.
Kavungya answered the question on April 27, 2021 at 05:40
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