Our

"Global Swarming"

Web Page

Project leader - Gary Fontaine, Professor, School of Communications, University of Hawaii

Over the last half century multinational enterprises (MNEs) have essentially "swarmed" the globe with regional and local offices in an attempt to benefit from expanded production or market opportunities or to meet international social or health needs. The number of such offices is enormous and rapidly expanding. For example, in 2005 there were over six thousand local and regional offices of global organizations located in Hong Kong alone while large individual MNEs may have country or affiliate offices in over 80 nations with scores of local or branch offices in each (e.g., Sony, Microsoft, BP). I have proposed (Fontaine, 2006) that this phenomenon can usefully be viewed as significantly self-organized swarms searching for optimal solutions to challenges presented by new and rapidly changing organizational ecologies across the globe--ecologies typically characterized by cultural diversity, but also by a broad range of other sociocultural, physical and biological factors. These challenges are associated with finding effective strategies for tasks such as marketing, leadership, communication, staffing, screening and self-selection, training, succession planning, management style, organizational design, community or government relations, and so forth. The swarm intelligence model of optimization suggests that the most effective strategies for these tasks "evolve" over many occurrences (or iterations) as the participants engage in the practice of comparing their own best past strategy for the task with those of their local neighbors. It is essentially a "survival of the fittest" model in which the most effective strategies are perpetuated or enhanced and the less effective ones are not. This is quite different from more traditional "rational" models which typically identify leadership, "best practices," "action plans," and so forth as the bases optimal strategies.

One of the requirements for an "evolutionary" approach such to optimization through swarm intelligence is lot's of iterations. Natural selection must be allowed to "run it's course" such that the more fit solutions emerge. For that reason traditional approaches to research on "swarming" are problematic--the real-time longitudinal designs needed to fully study this evolutionary process would take a lot of real time! More time and resources than most of us have available. That's why much of the research in the area relies on computer simulation. The study of global swarming of MNE's is no exception. Nevertheless, we can look out for bits and pieces of data--tracks along the evolutionary, optimizing trail--that have been collected by others or that we can collect ourselves. We are currently engaged in just that "tracking the trail" of optimization in MNEs largely in the Asia/Pacific region.

Those of us who work in international offices of multinational enterprises (those outside of the country in which our home office is located) are involved in a broad array of tasks. Such tasks could include--but certainly aren't limited to--leadership, organizational design, communication, policy-making, building partnerships/alliances/joint ventures, developing marketing strategies, managing meetings, succession planning, local government/union/community relations, decision-making, rewarding or disciplining, conflict resolution; and so forth). The strategies we select or develop to complete these tasks are typically influenced by a variety of sources.

If you have been involved in the development of organizational strategies over your career, we would appreciate your help!

The following survey should take only a couple minutes of your time. Your responses will be separated from your email address and kept confidential. Only summaries of the data will be used in any subsequent publication of the findings. Your email address will be deleted unless you specifically request that a summary of the findings be emailed to you at the completion of our study. If you have any questions or concerns about your rights as a participant you can email the Institutional Review Board at the University of Hawaii.

We would be appreciative if you would think back over your international career. To what degree did each of the following sources influence your strategies for completing important tasks in your organization?

Our "Global Swarming" Web Survey

Personal Information  Name: Email Address:
Your own past organizational experience?  No Influence Small Influence Modest Influence Important Influence Very Important Influence
People inside your company at your international location?  No Influence Small Influence Modest Influence Important Influence Very Important Influence
People outside your company at your international location?  No Influence Small Influence Modest Influence Important Influence Very Important Influence
People inside your company from other international locations?  No Influence Small Influence Modest Influence Important Influence Very Important Influence
People outside your company from other internationals locations?  No Influence Small Influence Modest Influence Important Influence Very Important Influence
People from your home office?  No Influence Small Influence Modest Influence Important Influence Very Important Influence
Specialists such as consultants, trainers or coaches?  No Influence Small Influence Modest Influence Important Influence Very Important Influence
Media such as books, journals, television, websites, etc.?  No Influence Small Influence Modest Influence Important Influence Very Important Influence
In your own opinion, how successful have your strategies been?  Unsuccessful Mixed Successful Very Successful
Have there been other significant influences on the development of your strategies for completing tasks?
If so, please describe in the text box below.  

 

How many years of international experience have you had?  
       Has that experience been primarily in  
       What region(s) of the world has the most of your international experience been in?  
       What region of the world is your current organization's home office?  
       Scales such as those above often constrain our description of our own unique experiences abroad.
Do you have any comments that would further elaborate how you went about selecting strategies for doing things?
If so, please describe in the text box below.  
       Click "Submit" when you are finished with this survey. Click only once.
If you want to delete all of your answers and start again, click "Reset".  

I have provided some links below for those who might wish to pursue this topic further and certainly any feedback or suggestions would be appreciated. Simply email us at fontaine@hawaii.edu

Thank you for your help. Aloha,

Gary Fontaine, Professor

School of Communications, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822 USA

Phone (808) 956-3335 Email fontaine@hawaii.edu Home Page www2.hawaii.edu/~fontaine/garyspag.html

 

A Sample of Relevant "Global Swarming" References  

Bird, A. (2001). International assignments and careers as repositories of knowledge. In Mendenhall, M. E., Kuhlmann, T. M. & Stahl, G. K. (Eds.), Developing global business leaders: Policies, processes, and innovations. Westport, Connecticut: Quorum Books.

Bonabeau, E. & Meyer, C. (2001). Swarm Intelligence: A Whole New Way to Think About Business. Harvard Business Review, May, 107-114.

Camazine, S, Deneubourg, J. L., Franks, N. R., Sneyd, J., Theraulaz, G. and Bonabeau, E. (2001).Self-Organization in Biological Systems. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 143-145.

Fontaine, G. (2000) Skills for successful international assignments to, from, and within Asia and the Pacific: Implications for preparation, support, and training. In U. C. V. Haley (Ed.), Strategic management in the Asia Pacific: harnessing regional and organization change for competitive advantage.

Fontaine, G. (2003). The “Knowledge Paradox” in Global Management: Local versus Global Assignment Strategies. International Journal of Knowledge, Culture and Change Management, Vol. 3, 659-669.

Fontaine, G. (2005). A Self-Organization Perspective on the Impact of Local verses Global Assignment Strategies and Knowledge Building. International Journal of Diversity in Organisations, Communities and Nations, 5(1), 57-66.

Fontaine, G. (2006). Global Swarming. Proceedings of the Sixth International Conference on Intelligent System Design and Applications (ISDA'06), 1212-1215.

Gupta, A. K. & Govindarajan, V. (2000). Knowledge flows within multinational corporations. Strategic Management Journal, 21, 473-496.

Kennedy, J. & Eberhart, R. C. (2001). Swarm Intelligence. San Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann.

Latane, B., Liu, J. H., Nowak, A., Bonevento, M. & Zheng, L. (1995). Distance matters: Physical space and social impact. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 795-805.

Pollard, D. & Hong, J. F. L. (2001). Cross-cultural Learning Issues in International Joint Ventures. Euro Asia Journal of Management, 22(11/2), 53-78.

Tsang, W.W. K. (1999). Internationalization as a learning process: Singapore MNCs in China. The Academy of Management Executive, 13(1), 91-101.

 

  Please check out my new ebook entitled Presence in Strange Lands.  It deals with the experience of global travel--how it impacts our state of mind, our feelings and our immediate experience of the world around us.