Introduction
The business capstone course has indeed been evinced to be of great profundity, more so owing to the divulgence it has provided on the areas of collaborative leadership and international leadership. The assiduous discussion of these two concepts based on the Australian Premium Solar (APS) case study has generated an in-depth understanding of the need to adopt a global perspective of key business practices/ undertakings such as marketing. According to Agarwal and Wu (2018), business entities are faced with a wide range of challenges as they seek to fulfill their quest of competing efficaciously in today’s rapidly evolving global business environment. This attribute makes it overly important for firms to adopt global perspectives in their operations bearing in mind the fact that doing this enhances the inordinately crucial recognition that globalization has dual effects on overall performance of different entities (Agarwal & Wu, 2018). The business capstone course has thus inherently turned out to be a major eye opener in terms of highlighting the climacteric global forces that continuously impact and shape business processes and activities.
This paper seeks to build on this background to critically reflect on the business capstone course. The rumination will be guided by the need to develop a more profound understanding of generating a global perspective of international marketing, in addition to reinforcing the general knowledge pertaining to collaborative leadership. The study will commence by providing a brief review of the key learning activities of the business capstone course, before proceeding to narrate major learning contributions and experiences while undertaking the course. The successful accomplishment of this study objective will depend largely on the completion of different independent goals such as the description of the challenges pertaining to this individual experience. Other cardinal minor tasks that will be completed in order to facilitate the achievement of the eclectic study objective include the articulation of the relatively easy aspects of the business capstone project and the analysis of the salient areas of interest that need to be researched further in order to bridge the existing knowledge gaps.
Brief Overview of the Business Capstone Project
The business capstone project covered very many study areas, one of these being an articulation of the most suitable approach of developing global perspective of international marketing. The ensuing discussion in regards to this study facet pointed out that a concrete global perspective of international marketing can only be developed after gaining an in-depth understanding of the internal and external business environment that a firm operates in. This is largely due to the fact that an analysis of a firm’s business environment facilitates the identification of important factors that are pertinent to its operations and existence, and which subsequently must be put into consideration while trying to decipher the best of a company undertaking effective marketing practices at the global arena. There are many strategic analysis tools and/or techniques that can be relied on to fully dissect a firm’s operating environment. Examples of these include PESTEL, the Porter’s Five Forces Model and SWOT analysis. Firms should consider using at least two of these techniques when analyzing their internal and external business environments.
The completion of the project also proved to be of great significance in terms of shedding more light about the collaborative leadership style. The effectiveness of this leadership approach lies in its ability to facilitate the making of better decisions considering all individuals and teams are actively involved during decision making exercises. Active engagement/ involvement of all employees under collaborative leadership also tends to go a long way in enhancing employee commitment, an aspect that further spurs improved individual performances. As per the project, Australia Premium Solar (APS) employs the collaborative leadership approach. Some of the benefits that the company has continued to harness from its use of this leadership style include enhanced clarity and transparency of communication information, fostering the making of more innovative and all inclusive decisions, as well as improved management-employees decisions. The underlying projection is that the collaborative leadership approach will prove handy as far as APS’s plans of going global are concerned, more so taking into account the fact that the style has the capacity to facilitate the making of far much superior international marketing strategies.
International marketing was another key study area whose handling underlined the copious nature of the content of the business capstone project. Rao-Nicholson & Khan (2017) described international marketing as the set of activities that are geared towards fulfilling the diverse needs and preferences of customers from different countries. APS should incorporate successful international marketing practices in its operations bearing in mind the fact that the company is keen on expanding its operations to India. International marketing will particularly create a solid framework of better management of the global supply chain that APS will have to institute after venturing into the Indian market. Most importantly, a well-grounded international marketing approach that has a global perspective will pave for APS to set better prices for its products, with the key guideline being to set prices that are not only appealing to both domestic and global customers but also put the firm in a better position of attaining its profitability objectives.
Lastly, the covering of the business capstone project facilitated the gaining of a better understanding of the key facets of academic research. A qualitative research was conducted in order to ascertain the best way of APS developing a global perspective of international marketing. The research was also geared towards ascertaining the role that the company’s collaborative leadership approach can play in boosting its global expansion plans. The choice of the qualitative research methodology over quantitative research was based on the fact that this study entailed questioning the validity and suitableness of existing theories and hypothesis. Moreover, the choice was also influenced by the fact that the research was secondary in nature considering the study data was collected from journal articles, previous empirical studies and textbooks. Nevertheless, interviews with relevant staffs were also conducted in order to attain a first account, and hence acquire information that can be used to back the accuracy of the secondary data.
Critical Reflection of my Learning Contribution and Experience
David Kolb’s experimental learning theory substantiated the importance of developing critical reflection of any learning experience. As per the theory, learning is a holistic practice that is continuous in nature, and whose outcome is generally assessed based on a wide range of aspects such as experiences and behaviors. The theory is further categorical that having a personal reflection after every learning practices makes it possible for the determination of the new skills, knowledge and experiences gained during this exercise. In addition to this, the reflection facilitates the abstract conceptualization of a learning experience, hence enabling the forging of new ideas as well as the ascertainment of the best way of putting the newly acquired knowledge and skills into practice. Therefore, the critical reflection of the APS business capstone project will assist in putting this learning experience into perspective in terms of the assessment of significant accomplishment, challenges faced during the completion of the course as well as the new set of skills and knowledge gained throughout the course of this learning experience.
- The Easy Parts of the Project
The completion of the APS business capstone project entailed a lot of teamwork in as much as students were required to complete individual tasks and assignments. I have previously been a member of many class teams and therefore, I can confidently assert that I have truly mastered the art of collaborating with other students while working in class groups. My overall strength as far as the issue of teamwork is concerned lies in my individual recognition that diversity should be properly managed considering people have differing opinions and backgrounds. As a result of this, I must admit that I really didn’t break any sweat while working in various teams during this module. As a matter of fact the overall experience of working in groups was very enthralling and I really enjoyed it. I can thus conclude that the teamwork aspect of the business capstone project was indeed one of the easiest parts of this study module.
Review of existing literature was also another part that I found relatively easy while completing this project. Literature review is overly important in any study work owing to the fact that it essentially generates a conceptual framework upon which a given research ought to be based. I have conducted a lot of research in the past while undertaking different modules, an aspect that has enabled me to review different sets of literatures on multiple occasions. Therefore, I didn’t have any problem while reviewing the existing literature pertaining to this project. The situation was to a very large extent aided by the fact that the fields of international marketing and collaborative leadership have continued to receive a lot of attention from scholars all over the work, with this ensuring that there exists plenty of theoretical and empirical researches on these two. The presence of huge literature load to choose from accorded me the privilege of selecting the studies are relatively easy to interpret, hence making my work even easier.