Term Paper on "Expanding an American Company Into a New Country"

r />Good educational background is a definitory characteristic of this society, with Indian universities known on a worldwide basis (BITS, TIFR, AIIMS); however there are difficulties with the primary educational system where due to poverty reason, children can not attend school. The state department that monitors the performances of the educational system in this country has to induce a literacy level of close to maximum (100%). This is very important, both from the social and the economic point-of-view. The current reality of the world demands qualified labor force. The literacy is useful for each individual as they can be better informed, can enjoy the opportunities, have more development possibilities. Although India had a quite restrictive foreign investment policy in respect to business and foreign investors, it strongly encourages the investment in the educational system.

The Geography of India is quite diverse, having various forms of relief - plates (Indian plate), sea opening (Arabian sea), desert (Deccan Plateau), and also the famous Himalayan mountains. From ancient times, agriculture represented one of the most important occupations for Indian people. Among India's neighbors we could mention Pakistan and Afghanistan in the North-Western part of the county, China, Bhutan and Nepal in the Northern side, Myamar and Bangladesh in the East. From the administrative point-of-view, India is divided in 28 states and 7 federally administrated union territories. The division criterions for these states are the cultural and linguistic elements, rather than the geographical aspects.

At the level of 2002, the Indian infrastructure (road, transportation, telecommunication) was in a disastrous state. This was the direct consequence of the Government monopoly in the public infrastructure work, where corruption, bureaucracy and economic interests mattered more than the national welfare. It is well-known the crucial role played by infrastructure in the game of economic and social development. The disagreement of the population and the negative results of the state policy in respect to infrastructure has led to the market liberalization process, and private companies received important infrastructure work proceedings. In order to compare the results since the market liberalization, a simple example is worth mentioning - in January 2007, in India were about 2.10 million broadband lines.

The positive results obtained by the intervention of private companies (both national and international) in national road infrastructure had encouraged the investors willing to contribute to the development of the telecommunication system - telephone, Internet at a national level.

The financial infrastructure is composed by different specialized institutions like the Central Bank (RBI) who is the authority responsible with the money supply supervising the entire financial system, the Bombay Stock Exchange and the National Stock exchange, as well as various commercial banks with services addressed both to natural and juridical persons. Besides the financial network above mentioned, the Government favors the strategy to encourage foreign investments by creating Special economic zones and software parks with tax incentives and a large pool of qualified individuals.

II. Socio-cultural environment

Ethnical diversity is present in India, where the influences from various states are present (Europeans-due to the fact that India was a British province, but also Persian influences). More than 114 dialects are spoken in this country, but the most used languages are the Indo-Aryan (74% from the entire population) and Dravidian (used by 24% of the Indian people).

The official language of the country was selected the Hindi in Devanagari script. This is a new change in the Indian policy, as around the year 1967, the Constitution recognised no less than 14 official languages. This decision had the role to crystallize the problem of the official language. In order to ease up even more the bureaucracy and the document processing issue, English was accepted as the second language. This resulted in a facilitation of trade activities, enhancing the commercial flow and the industrial and investment development in this Asian country.

Hofstede is social scientist that studied the cultural dimensions of international business. He tried to discover common features of individual from the same country so as to set up various stereotypes. This thing has two sides - on one side, it may beneficial for international manages that perform commercial activities in third countries. These cultural stereotypes help international managers to better understand the culture with whom they interact, to understand different gestures and actions. On the other side, negative stereotypes can be created, so common features are summarized into a national category - for example, that Romanians are lazy, the sole interest of Americans is money. Individualism and collectivism are two opposite issues that are embraced by the Indian society, in the sense that due to the ethnical disparities, various societies have different attitudes. This is the case with individualism where in some societies the individual has to act on its own behalf, while in other societies the group is more important than the individual. The collectivist side of the society is very important from the commercial point-of-view, since the decision making is different according to the society the individual lives in. The decision making process for an ordinary citizen includes the buying behaviour and decision, issue that is crucial for the multinational marketers. The short-term perspective is one of the main characteristic of the Indian society, who to a large extent, even nowadays faces severe poverty. This social aspect is translated in everyday actions, perspectives and attitudes. Retailers could take advantage of this general perspective of the society, if the attitude would be backed by strong purchasing power within the Indian society.

III. Regional economic integration

Up to the level of year 1991, when India gained its independence, the country had a restricted international trade policy, one of the main important goals of the national administration was to protect the domestic economy against the foreign intruders. Among the classical measures that inhibited free trade are the import tariffs (expressed in percentage or absolute terms), export taxes (so as to direct the domestic production to the internal market, not the international one) as well as quantitative restrictions like (quotas, quality requirements). The main and traditional products submitted to exports are tea, jute and cotton manufactures - creating a proper trade name for these types of Indian products. Also the flow of international investments was limited by the government, investors willing to invest in India would have to possess the approval of the authorities, observing their strict requirements. These restrictions on Foreign Direct Investments had the objectives to limit the intrusion of international investors, so as not to loose control on the country. Due to its natural resources, and especially to its immense population, which could represent a huge possible market, India is considered a strategic state, both for investors and retailers, as well for government and local administrations.

India is a founding member of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, since 1947 as well as to the successor organisation - the World Trade Organisation. India's involvement in the decision making within this forum was quite important, highlighting its position on topics related to labour and environment protection. Since the liberalisation in 1991, India adopted a strategy of free trade, opening up its economy to foreign investors. The potential of the country is enormous, due to its proximity to the fastest growing economy (China), potential market (over 1 billion inhabitants) as well as strong comparative advantage (cheap, and fairly educated working force).The objectives of India's participating in international organisations promoting free trade is the… READ MORE