Yola: Managing Multiple Challenges

1. How should Lingham manage the dual structure with Cape Town and Silicon Valley?

In this case, we have a company which headquarter is based to Silicon Valley and has subsidiary into other countries. Cape Town is one of them, and the office was not structured as others, for the only reason that there was no developed market in South Africa for company to invest. Yola was in his internationalization process beginning. The Problems of organization and human resource management were the major source of frustration in the South African’s subsidiary. The Lacks of communication between headquarter and his subsidiary is the worst thing to do when planning to develop a market. To manage this issue, Lingham should have thought first how to organize the cap town’s office. Even if it was playing a less role value, without organization, the internalization was condemned to failure. A local person with experience to the market, product, leadership and cross culture competences should have been chosen to lead the office. His competences could be helpful for the company to understand how to work with capetonians without giving them a sense of underestimates. It may be also a solution to reduce frustration caused by jet lag, instead of having meeting with entire team, choosing a representative for the team who will know how to give feed back to the rest of the group, and make modification if needed. That organisation would be a solution of headquarters’ orientation strategy to maintain the ethnocentric system because no decision was made in South Africa and the market was not developed yet. It would be easier with that strategy to deal with an organized subsidiary by maintaining a good communication, a centralized decision making and high control over operations.
To strengthen relationships amongst his employees, and to strengthen the sense of belonging to the company for the capetonians, an exchange policy with their colleague in Silicon Valley may be benefit to them