Examples


There are two basic example companies used throughout the book—Sambac Energy and Whitmore Bank. In addition, you will see Titan Broadcasting. Titan is a joint venture to implement satellite broadcasting in a region.

Sambac Energy

Sambac Energy was started after World War II as a joint venture between two other large energy firms, Alpha Energy and Beta Energy. These names are picked for simplicity. The examples in the book are combinations of real world companies and situations and do not represent a specific company that exists.

Alpha Energy has a culture that encourages entrepreneurship. Managers are sent out in the field to think for themselves. Beta Energy is very different. Its culture requires decisions to be fed back to headquarters for review. Why and how did two such companies get together? Because of an opportunity to exploit oil and natural gas in developing nations. So there are these two cultures and the culture of the specific country that they operate in. We will be considering various projects that they undertook and their outcomes. Some succeeded and some did not.

One thing to get out of this example is to understand that for years they were not sensitive to culture and they did not, in general, gather lessons learned from their experiences. This led to many project problems and some substantial failures.

Whitmore Bank

Whitmore Bank is a major international bank that wanted to expand credit card operations into a region of five countries. Whitmore had a presence in these countries in international and some consumer banking, but had not rolled out credit cards in the region. They had extensive credit card experience in their home country and other nations.

Credit card operations are more complex than you might initially think. You have to consider the culture of the country in marketing and selling the credit card product. There are already many banks offering credit cards so that there is intense competition. So why should Whitmore want to expand its credit card operation? First, it makes money. Second, many customers wanted to have credit cards with the bank.

When you receive an application for a credit card, you have to evaluate the application and make a decision on whether to issue the card. In some developed countries there are automated scoring systems and credit bureaus. In the countries in the region only one had such capabilities. This raises the level of complexity.

After the credit card has been issued, then there is customer service. Payments, collections on delinquent accounts, overlimits, charging off cards, cancellation, fraud, and maintenance of the cardholder information also come into play. Cultural factors impact some of these.




International Project Management
International Project Management: Leadership in Complex Environments
ISBN: 0470578823
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2003
Pages: 154

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