Each student will post on Blackboard one News Write-Up (10 pts each) related to an
International Management topic and will be presenting to the class. News
write up must be submitted on Blackboard, regardless of the presentation schedule。 A News Write-Up is a short (around 600 words) description
of a current event (no more than 6 months old). It should contain the following:
● Very brief description of the event (150 to 200 words)
● Its connection to a specific topic of International Management (250 to 300 words) –
Make sure that in this section you use the textbook to connect the article to the
concepts of the course, with proper in-text citation. （Use Horizontal expansion）
● How can others benefit and/or learn from it (200 to 250 words)
● Provide the source of the article and/or its Internet line
Each of the above sections must be shown as a bolded title with the text below it.
Example of a News Write-Up:
“Walmart in Costa Rica Begins Construction of Mega Distribution Centre” – Inside
Costa Rica
Description of Event
In an article published in Inside|Business’ Costa Rica edition news was broken that
Walmart has begun construction of an almost 50,000 square meters (just over 12 acres)
distribution center that will not only be Walmart’s largest in the region, but the largest
building of its kind in the region. Located in Coyol, Alajuela, this new facility will supply
not only regional Walmarts, but other stores that Walmart owns in Costa Rica, such as
Masxmenos, Maxi Pali, and Pali. Walmart’s strategy when entering the Costa Rican
market ended with them buying out many of the local retailers that were already
established in the country. This large distribution center will allow the company to
increase availability of items by centralizing the suppliers under one roof that is
conveniently close to the businesses that need it. The distribution center is slated to end
up costing Walmart sixty-eight million US dollars and will employ over two hundred
direct employees over the next five years. Walmart expects the new facility to begin
operating in the first half of the year 2013.
Connection to International Business
This action that Walmart is taking in Costa Rica is an example of horizontal expansion.
Horizontal expansion takes place when a multinational company takes its business
practice and duplicates it overseas to supplement overseas operations, without affecting
operations in the home country. This new distribution center in Costa Rica is not intended
to replace any of the distribution centers in the United
States, so this does not fall into the category of vertical expansion. Businesses use
horizontal expansion in order to improve their operations in that separate market, instead of using the foreign operations to help supplement their domestic market operations. This
is the strategy being employed by Walmart. We can see that in action because they have
an entirely separate division, Walmart Mexico & Central America that handles all the
business in that region. This regional style of managing the company is known as
geographic area structure, which is defined in Global Business as a way of organizing a
multinational company based on different geographic areas, most appropriate to engage
in a localization strategy.
Each student will present the components of his/her news write-up (listed above in the news write-up description) to the class.
Please Write 600 words news write-up and one 4-5page PPT and a 7 minutes lecture notes（presentation reading note）
