Health and safety: the importance of a safe working environment for maintaining staff morale

• 1. offer peace of mind to staff members and therefore motivate staff to enhance a firm’s productivity, as a result, many leading firms (Intel, GE) identify workplace safety as one of their main goals

• 2. reduce the occurrence of workplace accidents, which are usually a source of staff dissatisfaction and low trust in the mgt. taking safety measures can enhance staff loyalty and in turn morale.

International Business: the importance of a global presence for a company

• 1. give access to local market knowledge, which can help avoid some very expensive mistakes on account of cultural conflicts. Eg Matsushita firm changed ‘national’ to ‘Panasonic’

• 2. a global presence can spread the risk of doing business. As the saying goes: don’t put all your eggs in one basket. If a company enters to more than one market, it can survive a downturn in any one of those markets.

• 3. if a company becomes global, the size of the company means it can realize economies of scale, (advertising, distribution, shipping) it can also move its production from country to country and take advantage of the best conditions at any given time.