What are three (3) evident changes brought about by globalization in a company in your country that you are familiar with?

According to Fernando (2022), globalization can be defined as the spread of products, technology, information, and jobs across national borders and cultures (para. 1) and is concerned with free trade across international economic borders. In many regards, globalization can be seen as inescapable and many companies have to continuously adapt their strategies to remain competitive in a global market and even expand their market reach.

Banks Breweries Ltd., a leading beverage company established in 1961 in Barbados (Brewery.no, n.d.), has undergone some changes due to its relatively recent buy-over by beer giant Ab-Inbev. According to Fortune.com (2021), Anheuser-Busch InBev, or AB InBev, is a multinational drinks conglomerate headquartered in Belgium. Its the worlds largest beer brewer by both volume and revenue, operating more than 600 beer brands in 150 countries (para. 1). Three evident changes brought about by this takeover due to globalization and expansion are adoption of and adherence to a foreign organisational culture, access to a wider range of product offerings and benchmarking performance against best practices established in other territories.

1) Adoption of Foreign Organisational Culture

According to Stefanovska and Tanushevski (2016), organisational culture is a complex set of ideologies, norms of behavior, attitudes, opinions, symbols and core values shared throughout the organization, affecting the way the organization meets its objectives, and certainly helping the regulation and control of employee conduct (p. 2). As a Barbadian company, Banks Breweries would have adopted its own culture based on the local strategies, leadership styles and value systems that helped to shape it. Once Banks Breweries came under the Ab-Inbev umbrella, its formal and informal organisational culture fundamentally changed, evidenced in the organisational artefacts, such as new vision and dashboards, placement of company principles throughout the organisation, instituting a more casual dress code and transitioning to more open office layouts, to name a few.

Small-Clouden (2016) notes a disadvantage that smaller local companies face when a global organisational culture takes over. According to Small-Clouden (2016), in a study conducted on managers in Trinidad and Tobago, it was found that globalizations key disadvantage is the hegemonic state of dominance or power and control exerted by multinational corporations as local businesses implement the policies and plans giving rise to standardization and ultimately promoting a global type culture (p. 116). According to Small-Clouden (2016), this effect of cultural erasure must be attended to as once culture is erased, there is no way back (p. 116).

2) Access to more Products and Services

One of the more easily visible effects that the acquisition of Banks Breweries by Ab-Inbev produced was the introduction of more globally recognized beer brands in the local market. Beer brands Corona and Stella Artois are globally recognized beer brands that are under the wide portfolio of beer beverages owned by Ab-Inbev. With the purchase of the local company, Banks Breweries, Ab-Inbev used the established sales and distribution networks to widen their market reach of these two brands, providing more options to the Barbados market and increasing their market share of the beer market. The introduction of global brands to a new market certainly has its benefits. According to Steenkamp (2019), some of the ways global brands add value to an organisation is customer preference for the brands, organisational, economic and marketing benefits and pooling of innovative R&D transnationally.

3) Benchmarking against Best Practices

A third change brought about by globalization through the acquisition of Banks Breweries by global beverage giant Ab-Inbev was the standardization of key performance indexes, using established best practices fleshed out from other territories to use as benchmarks. In addition to this change of global perspective and approach to targets, which are standardized for more meaningful data comparisons and analyses, Banks Breweries also benefitted from accessing shared knowledge and resources across companies in the group. Additionally, employees at Banks Breweries have greater access to training and learning tools, which can increase employee efficiency and effectiveness.

Please comment on this answer providing additional feedback information to help support the answer. Do you agree or disagree and why