Business Introduce Letter

Business Introduce Letter

Thianthong Wawongmun

368 2 ND AVE 

San Francisco, CA 94118

August 23,2012

Dr. Sylvia Y. Schoemaker Rippel 

Lincoln University

401 15th ST

Oakland, 94712  

Dear Dr. Sylvia:

My name is Thianthong Wawongmun. I am 29 years old. I was born in Thailand (02/06/83). I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Business English Program from Chiang Rai Rajabhat University on October 2005. Since then I have studied English continuously in the order to prepare myself to future education at American Academy Of English (AAE) in San Francisco.  After completion of the English Program at AAE, I continue my education for Master Degree in Business Administration (MBA) at Lincoln University. I am confident that this university well known in the business field with high teaching Quality. This is my reason that I decide to study here. Moreover, education in the United State is more advanced in technology when compare to some other developing Country. This high qualified teaching and researched in business of Lincoln University has inspired me to study in the MBA program.

I have been here for 6 years I enrolled for admission to International Business (MBA) because I want to work as the marketing researcher and teaching in management field. In particular, I like the fact that MBA program has a lot of competitive performances; for example, it is business concern and the manner in which changes in technology affect an organization’s structure, long-term business strategy, product development, manufacturing, supply chains, distribution network, information needs and standard systems.  After graduation, I plan to be a teacher in my country. For this semester, I take the International Financial course, The Business Strategy and Decision Making. I am really exciting about what will be teaching in Communication in Leadership and Negotiation.  I hope it will help me to improve my knowledge in order to enhance my future goal. It is essential for me to have a strong grounding in Economics, Supply Chain Management, and issues connected with Information Technology, as well as gain a General Management perspective.  I believe that this would be valuable in helping me achieve these objectives. I hope that, this subject would increase not only my quantitative channels but also conceptual skills in Analyzing business issues and would open up new avenues in my business researching skills. It is the fact that researching is a very important tool for all businesses and marketers. I fell so worry about my writing that it’s still not good enough.  I have dreams and goals for the future that I am determined to make happen. 

While preparing this essay, it helps me to think more about my future goal and myself. Moreover thinking about what will be thought in this BA370 courses and all the time limitation on each assignments that you give to us, which I am a bit worry about them. However all the assignments will direct me and force me to have well plans for all those works, more systematically and keep myself up-to-date in order to finish them. By all those activities will help increase my abilities and knowledge to help me succeed to the future. 

Sincerely,

Thianthong Wawongmun

Student I.D. 6719

N12: Best Practices in Negotiation

N12: Best Practices in Negotiation d

Negotiation is an important part of everyday life and the opportunities to negotiate surround us. For the last chapter, we are discussing 10 ‘best practices’ for negotiators who wish to continue to improve their negotiation skills.

1. Be prepared. Negotiators need to plan and be prepared properly for their negotiations to get the ability to analyze the other party’s more effectively and efficiently as well as to understand the nuances of the concession-making process, and to achieve their negotiation goals. Negotiators have to understand their goal and interest before negotiating and be ready to understand the other party’s communication in order to find an agreement that meets the needs of both parties.

2. Diagnose the fundamental structure of the negotiation. Negotiators should make a conscious decision about whether they are facing a fundamentally distributive negotiation, an integrative negotiation, or a blend of the two, and choose their strategies and tactics that lead to successful negotiation outcomes.

3. Identify and work the BATNA. BATNA is the best alternative to a negotiated agreement. It is very important because it is an option that likely will be chosen should an agreement not be reached. Negotiators need to be vigilant about their BATNA.

4. Be willing to walk away. The goal of most negotiations is achieving a values outcome, not reaching an agreement per se. Strong negotiators remember this and are willing to walk away from a negotiation when no agreement is better than a poor agreement.

5. Master the key paradoxes of Negotiation. Excellent negotiators should understand that negotiation composes of a set of paradoxes -- seemingly contradictory elements that actually occur together. Negotiators need to handle these paradoxes by striving for balance in these situations.

6. Remember the intangibles. Negotiators need to remember that intangible factors influence their own behavior. Strong emotions and values are the root of many intangibles, so surfacing intangibles may result in the discussion of various fears and anxieties. Therefore, negotiators need to be aware of how both tangible and intangibles factors influence negotiation, and they weigh both factors when evaluating a negotiation outcome.

7. Actively Manage coalitions. Negotiators should recognize three types of coalitions and their potential effects. Strong negotiators assess the presence and strength of coalitions and work to capture the strength of the coalition for their benefit.

8. Savor and protect your reputation.  Negotiators should start negotiation with a positive reputation and should be vigilant in protecting their reputations. Moreover, negotiators should enhance their reputation by acting in a consistency and fair manner. Strong negotiators always seek feedback from others about the way they are perceived and use that information to strengthen their credibility and trustworthiness in the marketplace.

9. Remember that rationality and fairness are relative. Negotiators need to be aware that people tend to view the world in a self-serving manner and define the “rational” thing to do or a “fair” outcome or process in a way that benefit themselves. To manage these perceptions proactively, negotiators need to question their own perceptions of fairness, find external benchmarks and examples that suggest fair outcomes. Lastly, negotiators should illuminate definitions of fairness held by the other party and engage in a dialogue to reach consensus on which standards of fairness apply in a given situation.

10. Continue to learn from your experience. The best negotiators continue to learn from the experience. There are many different variables and factors, which make each negotiation different. These differences and learning enhance the ability to negotiate and make negotiators remain sharp. Negotiators should take a moment to analyze each negotiation after it has concludes to review what happened and what they learned. Negotiators should realize their own strengths and weaknesses and develop a plan to work on weaknesses and become better negotiators in the future. 

 Question 

 1. What should Develop Ideas That Benefit Both Sides?

There are no matter what is standard, many companies are willing to negotiate packages that address their new employees' distinct needs. Still, even though everything is negotiable, your employer is more likely to agree to your ideas if they benefit the company as well. So anticipate this reality, and provide the advantages for your new bosses when you share your ideas.

For example, my client made sure to tell her new company, "I will be able to work longer hours and be more productive from the start if I can get a few important matters settled quickly."

Another client had an employer that, while willing to provide extra assistance for her relocation, did not want to set a precedent of deviating from its written policy.

2. What are the best management practices in workplace?

Create a good working environment. This is one of the most important practices a manager should be familiar with. This can be achieved thru constant communication. A good manager should be able to communicate with all his employees, and as well, he should encourage communication between the other members of the team he leads. That way everybody will feel much more at ease with each other, and in this way a more relaxed working environment can be achieved. This doesn’t mean that a manager shouldn’t put pressure on his or her employees, when he or she feels appropriate, but, the working environment, as a whole, should be a relaxed one.    

A manager should be friendly with the people he manages but never a friend, because that can get in the way of the work. A manager should know how to impose respect. But most of all a manager should know when to trust his gut instincts or when to just follow the rules. 

3. What negotiation best practices have you learned?

We have to pay attention to the transition from the negotiating table to execution the deal is not done when it’s signed. Use what you learned at the table to propel you and your team right to successful execution. A fast lap in a relay race is useless if you drop the baton instead of handing it off smoothly. If there needs to be hand-off to others who have to take what was negotiated and act on it, don’t leave it to chance. Make sure the hand-off happens, that both sides are involved, and that it covers not only the words but also the intent of the agreement.

Doing these things is hard. It runs counter to a lot of incentives that have been built into the jobs of some negotiators. It flies in the face of many things our culture teaches us about deal making. It requires some different skills, and it may cost you some deals that you might have closed if you had disregarded this advice. But if you have something worth negotiating, and if implementation matters, then doing deals any other way is just plain irresponsible and foolish.

Some negotiators measure success by the number of commitments they can extract from their counterparts. But commitments they can’t deliver on are hardly worth the paper they are written on. Relying on enforcing penalties in the contract later doesn’t get you a successful event when you need it.

N11: International and Cross-Cultural Negotiation

N11: International and Cross-Cultural Negotiation

These days, many companies are not doing business only in the US, but internationally and globally. People travel more frequently to contact with suppliers, partner, or consumers in different country. For many organizations, international negotiation has become usual. Therefore, to succeed in doing international business, it is very important that negotiators understand what they should do when faced with negotiating with someone from another culture.

First of all, there are two contexts that influence on international negotiation: the environmental and immediate context. The environmental context includes political and legal systems, international Economics, foreign governments and Bureaucracies, instability in a country, ideology, culture, and external stakeholders. The immediate context includes relative bargaining power, levels of conflict, and relationship between negotiators, desired outcomes, and immediate stakeholders. These factors are very good devices for guiding our thinking about international negotiation. Negotiators need to understand that these factors influence the negotiation process and can change over time. Therefore, international negotiation needs to be prepared and planned by monitoring the environmental and immediate contexts.

Besides above, culture is one of main factors that influence negotiation process. There are 10 different ways that culture can influence negotiations as following:

-       The way each culture defines negotiation

-       Culture influences the way negotiators perceive an opportunity as distributive versus integrative

-       The criteria used to select that will participate in a negotiation is different across cultures.

-       Cultures differ in the degree to which protocol, or the formality of the relations between the two negotiating parties, is important.

-       Cultures influence how people communicate, both verbally and nonverbally.

-       Cultures largely determine what time means and how it affects negotiations.

-       Cultures vary in the extent to which they are willing to take risks.

-       Groups versus Individuals.

-       Nature of agreements

-       Culture appears to influence the extent to which negotiators display emotions.

Lastly, this chapter concludes that negotiators need to be prepared and advised to be aware of the effects of cultural differences on negotiation and to take them into account when they negotiate. The best way to manage cross-cultural negotiations is to be sensitive to the cultural norms of the other negotiator and to modify one’s strategy to be consistent with behaviors that occur in that culture. 

Question

1. How Do We Explain International Negotiation Outcomes?

International negotiations can be much more complicated

A.   Simple arguments cannot explain conflicting international negotiation outcomes

B.    The challenge is to:

C.    Understand the multiple influences of several factors on the negotiation process

D.   Update this understanding regularly as circumstances change

2. How are international negotiations different?

Two overall contexts have an influence on international negotiations:

·       Environmental context: Includes environmental forces that neither negotiator controls that influence the negotiation

·             Immediate context: Includes factors over which negotiators appear to have some control

Factors that make international negotiations more challenging than domestic negotiations include:

·             Political and legal pluralism

·             International economics

·             Foreign governments and bureaucracies

·             Instability

·             Ideology

·             Culture

·             External stakeholders

3. What is Hofstede’s Model?

Hofstede’s Model of Cultural Dimensions:

Individualism/collectivism: The extent to which the society is organized around individuals or the group

Ø  Individualism/collectivism orientation influences a broad range of negotiation processes, outcomes, and preferences

Ø  Individualistic societies may be more likely to swap negotiators, using whatever short-term criteria seem appropriate

Ø  Collectivistic societies focus on relationships and will stay with the same negotiator for years

Ø  Power distance: “The extent to which the less powerful members of organizations and institutions (like the family) accept and expect that power is distributed unequally”

Ø  Cultures with stronger power distance will be more likely to have decision-making concentrated at the top of the culture.

Ø  Career success/quality of life: cultures differ in the extent to which they hold values that promote career success or quality of life.

Ø  Cultures promoting career success are characterized by the acquisition of money and things, and not caring for others.

Ø  Cultures promoting quality of life are characterized by concern for relationships and nurturing.

Ø  Uncertainty avoidance: “Indicates to what extent a culture programs its members to feel either uncomfortable or comfortable in unstructured situations”

Ø  Negotiators from high uncertainty avoidance cultures are less comfortable with ambiguous situations--want more certainty on details, etc.

These days, many companies are not doing business only