The international orientation of companies

How to cope with culture shock

Seminar paper from the year 2008 in the subject Communications - Intercultural Communication, grade: 1,0, European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder), course: Intercultural Management & Multicultural Societies , 15 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: In times of progressing globalisation companies are continuing to orientate themselves more and more internationally. Mergers and acquisitions are for instance a possibility to expand their competencies through the co-operation with appropriate partners respectively to take-over another company, in this way ones position in the global competition will be further im-proved. That is why the number of mergers and acquisitions were permanently rising within the last few years. After a slow-down in 2001, the investment in other firms has started again from 2004 so that by 2006 the number of deals rose to almost 39.000. This evolution of world-wide merger and acquisition deals within the last years is represented in the following figure: [...] Referring to the M&A NOTE of the European Commission, the average value of cross-border deals especially has been consistently higher compared to domestic deals. This can be explained by the fact that about 80% of these activities are concentrated in the EU, the USA and Asia (2007, p.2 et sqq.). That means that in times of incremental internationalisation, trade is in particular taking place between these economic, well-developed areas - as a result multicultural strategic alliances are assumed in order to strengthen their position in global competition. According to a report by the German news agency dpa-AFX, a new record in world-wide transactions was reached in 2007. Compared to the previous year a plus of 1/5th has been realised (Finanznachrichten.de, 20th December 2007).