Dutch language

How to pronounce rule in in Dutch?

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hello and welcome to this
mini lecture for international business
on this open day
my name is alan mueller and i'm a
professor of international management
here at the university of koninga
and i'm also the academic director of
the bachelor program international
business
it's my pleasure to have you here today
virtually
to host you for this venture into
the classroom experience in the
international business program
so just to give you a little bit of an
idea of what
might happen in the classroom
might kick off with a pithy quote like
this may you live in interesting times
why would i say something like that it's
a message that seems to have a
a double connotation on the one hand
interesting is good on the other hand
interesting feels potentially negative
it's often
presented as sort of a curse i would say
in the world international business we
live in very interesting times and this
makes the program
all the more relevant to study
for instance if we take a longer term
perspective we can look back
and we can realize that for the past 30
years or so we've lived with a pretty
constant ideology
understanding of the way the global
business system works
we've talked about this in terms of
globalization so
multinational companies operating
ubiquitously around the world
selling products purchasing inputs and
we've started to take this for granted
but recently the economist magazine
which is actually quite pro
globalization in terms of its
ideological foundations
actually took a critical stance on this
and said maybe
we've gotten this wrong maybe we've put
too much emphasis on the good sides
the upsides of globalization and not
paid enough attention to the downsides
to the risks
so they noticed that companies that
operate internationally don't
necessarily outperform companies that
perform that only do a business
domestically so
this raises the question of what kinds
of challenges what types of issues
are international companies exposed to
that we're not paying sufficient
attention to
so you could think about recent
developments in the form of trade wars
in the form of regional trade blocs
being established instead of
multilateral
global level trade agreements you could
even think about the brexit
it was part of the european union which
was supposed to be a
second uh a second track solution to
international trade and investment
but then you have member states that are
leaving the european union
what does this tell us about the state
of globalization
but that's not even thinking about more
more recent and potentially more urgent
interesting events in the national
business the corona pandemic so this is
a picture that i took at the airport
some time ago
which of course was unthinkable a year
ago that we could be in a situation
where there was no travel
where businesses had to entirely rethink
their foundations
so we live in very interesting times and
if there ever was a time to study
international business i would say this
is it
since we're doing the classroom
experience i might kick off
a class session with some newspaper
articles
some practical examples of the types of
dynamics or issues we'd be talking about
in class
and one of the reasons i like to pull
out newspaper articles is because i like
to tell my students that i hope that by
the end of
the course i'll have changed the way
that they consume information i'll
change the way that they read the
newspaper
that they'll read the newspaper and
they'll see things they recognize from
class and say oh i understand
what's happening there because we talked
about that in class
so might kick off with a story like this
just about a random company not trying
to make anybody
look bad but walmart a us retailer
being fined to the tune of 282 million
dollars to settle claims of corrupt
practices
so this comes about because they paid
consultants in some of the emerging
markets that they operate in
to establish business connections for
them and you could say well in a lot of
markets that's a very normal thing to do
in this case however it's a u.s company
and paying such
consultation fees if you will can
constitute bribery
and u.s companies are subject to the
foreign corrupt practices act
even for their overseas activities so
u.s companies can be fined
because they engage in these behaviors
which might be considered normal in
those contexts
and which companies from other countries
might still be able to do
but in the us it's illegal even if it's
done abroad so
this is an illustration of how the
playing field is not level for companies
because
companies from france or germany are not
subject to the same type of restrictions
that a u.s company would be
another example mcdonald's doing
business in india
so they had a local partner as is quite
common they found a local businessman
with
extensive ties and franchising
experience and food industry experience
and this is how this then works you give
them a license
to sell your products and to run stores
on your behalf
and they of course have to abide by
certain guidelines and restrictions and
do things in a certain way
what happened in this particular case
maybe the local indian partner somehow
violated the terms of the agreement
or wasn't acting in the spirit of the
arrangement or maybe changed the
the the products available in the in the
retail outlets
i don't know but the end of the day
mcdonald's terminated that agreement and
said we don't
want to work with you we're pulling out
but then the local partner says well you
know i attached a lot of value to this
mcdonald's brand
on my on my storefront so i'm just going
to leave it there
and then mcdonald's in a situation where
they have to go to court and they have
to fight
to protect their intellectual property
and so there's an information asymmetry
issue
here where the local partner understands
that there are
certain opportunities that exist for
them to take advantage of
their trade partner and at the end of
the day mcdonald's had to buy these
this partner out they had to pay them a
lot of money in order to
get them to stop violating the agreement
so these are some of the kinds of risks
that companies face
when they engage in international
business
so international business is really
about the unique challenges that
companies face
when they operate across borders that
there's a new set
of challenges that make it especially
different and this is what the
program international business is about
because companies buy and they sell and
they source
and they coordinate operations across a
multiple
multiple jurisdictions and
there are things that you think you know
about doing business in those markets
there are things that you think you know
there are things you know that you don't
know
so there's all kinds of ways in which
you can get it wrong
as a business when operating in foreign
markets because you make assumptions
based on the things that you know
but there are often things you don't
even know that you don't know
so another practical example and this is
a real life example and it's not
related to the product this is just a
stock photo it's not related to the
product on the screen
but this is about a real german company
that produces
an additive for laundry detergent
something that you throw in your washing
machine
to make your whites even wider something
like that
now they had success at home good
products
high quality effective and they decided
they want to expand their market
so they look to china china is a big
marketplace
lots of people a lot to close that need
washing so let's see if we can expand
into the chinese market
so how do they do this they find an
online platform very easy these days an
online platform through which they can
try to distribute their product
so they do this they set this up and
they let it run
and initially there's an uptick in
interest so chinese customers
purchasing this laundry additive this
washing detergent additive
but sales drop off pretty quickly and
remain really low for a long time
and they try to figure out why this is
they can't really understand why
the chinese customers are not so
interested in their products and of
course focus groups and things like that
are a little bit different in that
context because you don't always get a
direct answer
if you ask someone what do you think of
the product they might tell you they
think it's amazing
they're still not buying it so why so
they they racked their brains on this
problem for
almost two years until through just sort
of random happenstance they got a
chinese intern
who was a student in germany and he took
on an internship at this company
and of course they pitched the problem
to him they said we don't understand why
this pro
why this product's not taking off so the
chinese student dives into the material
to understand the product better how it
works
at a certain point he comes to the
managers and he says it says here in the
product description
that the chemical the enzyme reaction
only occurs at water temperatures above
30 degrees is that true
yes that's correct say the engineers and
the chinese student says
but you know that the vast majority of
washing machines in china operate on
cold water don't you
something the managers had never thought
about why was their product not selling
because it didn't actually do anything
in the cold water
that is typical of the chinese washing
machine
just to go to show that you can think
about all manner of different issues
that you have to face how to distribute
how to price the product
how to communicate about its attributes
what government regulations you need to
take into account what other barriers
you might need to circumvent
and then still something as simple as
this you could overlook not because
uh you know you should have known it's
just something that you never considered
because in your world washing machines
run on hot water
so how to make sense of this we are an
academic
educational program so it's not just
about practical examples it's about
taking academic research
and theoretical frameworks and trying to
make sense of
of these types of dynamics so
this idea that people do things
differently in different countries
can be looked at in multiple angles but
one of the most important frameworks for
thinking about this in the world of
international business
is the institutional theory so
institutional theory
says that each society is governed by
its own sets of rules
that affect the decisions that we make
that our behavior is guided
by both formal and informal sets of
rules that exist in the country um
and they affect our preferences so
for instance should we drive electric
vehicles or should we continue driving
internal combustion engine vehicles
so the government can enact policies
subsidies or
taxes or things like that to affect the
cost benefit calculation that you have
right and some countries might be more
advanced than others and that's because
they value this
behavior more than others but the reason
for taking out those policies or
enacting those policies is to affect
your decision-making behavior
taking out insurance or not right so in
different countries maybe
higher risk aversion leads to higher
insurance
enactments so the netherlands for
instance is a country with a relatively
high risk aversion and therefore people
tend to overinsure
you never know what the value of
insurance is until the very end right if
you take out health insurance you only
know
at the end when you die what the actual
costs
associated with that insurance were and
how much your actual health care
expenditures were
and therefore whether it was a good idea
but of course all kinds of things both
culturally and
government regulation-wise try to
influence our behavior
something also similar waiting at a red
light or not
so in some countries it's quite normal
there's a red light you look left you
look right there's no cars coming you
just cross the street
but there are plenty of countries where
that's frowned upon and the other people
waiting at the light will let you know
and so all these things affect the costs
and benefits associated with certain
behaviors so in that
particular situation you might want to
cross the street but you feel
the social disapproval around you and
that disincentivizes you from doing
so so which behaviors are valued
which norms and laws enforce them differ
from country to country
of course institutional theory then
assumes that we are rational actors that
we think about these costs and benefits
and we let them
influence our decision making in this
way and it says that we are assumes that
we want to
seek out rewards and avoid punishments
so we want to avoid social disapproval
we want to avoid fines
um so this this
incentive structure idea is designed to
create transparency and predictability
it should
uh reduce this kind of uncertainty
because we
agree on certain behaviors how they
should be done and therefore
we make predictable situations such as
the red light right red light versus
green light we all have a shared
understanding of what that means if mine
is green i get to go yours is red you
stop
right so we agree on these sets of rules
and that keeps traffic flowing
relatively smoothly and that reduces
transaction costs
so for businesses institutions are about
clarity they're about creating
predictability and reducing uncertainty
so for instance you know if you create a
contract with a business partner
there are certain stipulations in there
that dictate
how that agreement is supposed to go
down and if someone violates the
agreement you know you can take them to
court and you can sue for damages and
that type of thing
so there are rules in place to keep the
transaction costs low
now one thing that's important about
institutions is that they're supported
by both formal and informal mechanisms
and i'll explain what that means
by using example of sociological
experiments from back in the day
when some sociologists trying to
understand human behavior and why people
do the things they do
put some chimpanzees in a cage
and in that cage they had a ladder at
the top of the ladder they put some
bananas
now if you put a ladder with bananas in
a cage with chimps and the chimps are
going to try to go up the ladder and get
the
bananas because they want to eat them
the scientists know this so they have a
hose at the ready
so every time a chimp tries to go up the
ladder and grab the bananas
the scientists spray the whole crowd
with cold water now chimps don't like
this
so they might try it a couple of
iterations but after a couple of tries
right the hose has disincentivized the
bananas for them and so they just leave
them alone
so the next stage of the experiment is
to take one of those original chimps out
of the cage
and introduce a new chimp a new chimp
who has not yet experienced the hose
so what happens is this new chimp
surveys a situation observes the ladder
observes the bananas and makes a break
for it
what happens is the other chimps pull
him off the ladder
and they give him a good sound beating
before he can get to the bananas
because they know what happens next the
new chimp doesn't understand but the
other four chimps they know what happens
next
so what do the scientists do they take
another one of the original chimps out
of the cage and they put another new
chimp in
so new chimp again surveys the situation
sees the bananas at the top of the
ladder makes a break for it
the other four chimps in the cage pull
him off the ladder and start beating him
up too
and what's interesting about this is
that the other new chimp the one who
just got beat up
participates in this beating now you
have to imagine that this
chimp the first nugent has no idea why
he's beating up this other new chimp
except that that's what's happening in
this cage that's what everyone is doing
there's a disciplinary action taking
place that says stay away from those
bananas on the ladder
so the scientists continue this
experiment they keep cycling out the
original chimps to experience the hose
and now there are only chimps in the
cage who have never seen the hose
but at the end of the experiment none of
the chimps tries to touch the
bananas at the top of the ladder they
just leave it alone
so this experiment is designed to
illustrate that there are different
mechanisms that guide our behavior
we're not chimps but we're pretty close
right so these three different pillars
of institutions
that were identified one being what we
call the regulative
or formal institutional pillar and in
our world this means that certain
certain behaviors are are written down
codified in law
as being desirable undesirable there are
explicit sanctions associated with it
in this particular experiment we'll be
talking about the hose
so you're obligated to do that it's the
law and there are explicit punishments
associated with violating that behavior
but there's also a normative component
to guiding our behavior so we don't only
react in certain ways because the police
are watching us and there are other
mechanisms that guide our behavior
and one of them is social approval we
want the people around us to accept us
they want we want them to think that our
behavior is appropriate for the
situation
so if i don't behave in accordance with
group code then they won't accept me and
i want to be accepted
so this is where the the social
correction of being beat up by the other
chimps coming comes into play
they're letting you know what the
desired behavior is
and then the last one is is the
cognitive pillar
which is just sort of the internalized
deeper seated mechanisms
that guide our behavior that we no
longer really even think about so by the
end of the experiment if you were to ask
the chimps if they could speak
what's the deal with the bananas they
wouldn't even really have an answer they
would say well we just did that's
that's just not what we do around here
we don't eat those bananas
you know we just leave them up there and
if you ask them why they wouldn't really
know
so different mechanisms that guide our
behavior there's how you behave when you
think the police are watching there's
how you behave when other people
are watching and that's how you behave
just when when no one is watching
because that's
how you were brought up to be so
three pillars of institutions help us
understand
why different ways of doing things in
different countries uh create
challenges for international businesses
so there were things happening in the
chinese market in the chinese context
that the german managers didn't even
think to ask about
because why would you that's just not
the way things are done
so we could talk about this particular
case all the way through the program
which of course we don't but if we did
in the course introduction to
international business which is a first
year course
you might talk about things like entry
modes
how do you get your product into the
chinese market
do you export directly do you set up
local production
in the chinese environment do you find a
local distributor to work on your behalf
so having a local distributor is fine
because that person or that party better
understands the local
circumstances on the other hand you lose
some control
you have to share some of the profits so
there are costs and benefits
with each option we might talk
about marketing related issues such as
what's the proper price point
do you have to adapt the product to the
particular context well in this case
definitely
right the enzyme is only kicking above
30 degrees so
you would have to do something different
to your product to make it successful
in cross-cultural management second-year
course you might talk about the role of
culture
in interactions and managing
relationships between companies so if
you're a manager from
germany what types of things you have to
be aware of if you're interacting with
managers from china
and then last but not least
international financial management in
year three
you might be thinking about exchange
rate risk so
you're selling into a chinese market in
local currency and you denominate your
own profits in euros
so what kind of exchange rate volatility
exists in that relationship
and what type of financial instruments
can you use to hedge against that type
of risk
for instance you can go to a bank and
you can take out a loan
or you can also go to a bank and you can
sign a forward a forward contract which
basically says that you will
lock in an exchange rate at a certain
time in the future
to reduce that volatility because
normally when you sell into a market you
don't get paid by the distributor for
three months maybe six months sometimes
even longer
because the distributors don't have cash
on hand to pay you they need to earn the
revenues from the sales before they can
pay you back
so if it's going to take six months
before you get paid you have no idea
what the exchange rate is going to be
then you can go to a bank and you can
lock in an exchange rate today
for a time at six months into the future
so the point being that in international
business there's a liability associated
with being an outsider
we call this the liability of
foreignness that being a foreign entrant
into a market
means you come at an inherent
disadvantage because there are things
that the local parties know
that you don't know and there are costs
involved
in trying to acquire that knowledge
figuring out how things work
so if you think about the new chimp in
the cage he had to take a beating
to understand what the rule in that cage
was so that was the cost that that
new entrant incurred that was his
liability of foreignness
so if you're an outsider coming in and
you face this inherent disadvantage then
the study of international business is
very much about understanding the nature
of those
disadvantages but also thinking about
strategies and opportunities
that you can avail yourself of to to
circumvent those risks
so how do you overcome the liability of
foreignness
when engaged in international business
and that's really what the study is
about
and if you'd like to know more then i of
course encourage you to apply
and join our program and for now thanks
for your attention
all the best

hello and welcome to this

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rule in::verb | Spocien Dictionary

rule in

verb

include or exclude by determining judicially or in agreement with rules

Type	Words
Synonyms	rule out
Type of	decree, rule

How to pronounce rule in in Dutch?

rule in::verb | Spocien Dictionary

abandonment

Related words

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