4/Company

Билет № 1

1.1 Industries and activities

Business is the activity of producing, buying and selling goods and services. Companies are involved in many activities, e.g. buying, selling, marketing and production, in a range of different industries, such as information technology, telecommunication, film, and car manufacture. Many well-known companies are multinationals, these are companies which operate in a number of countries.

1.2 Company structure

Larger companies often raise money by selling shares in the business. The people who buy the shares become shareholders. A company is owned by the shareholders who elect a Board of Directors at a general meeting. The Board is responsible for the general policy of the company, formulating plans to achieve objectives. To some extent the company's success and the morale of its workers is dependent on the leadership of the Board of Directors.

The Board chooses a Chairman, who may chair meetings of the Board and deliver the annual report. To ensure that the Board has knowledge of the company's operations when reaching its decisions there must be executive directors, usually the managing director and the managers of the most important departments.

The Managing Director, or Chief Executive Officer, sees how the decisions of the Board of Directors are carried out. Moreover, he plays a key role in coordinating the work and views of the departmental managers.

Under the managing director, there is a horizontal organization of department heads (also called Senior managers or company officers or Executive stuff): Production Manager, Marketing Manager, Sales Manager, Chief Accountant, Personal Manager. Usual departments of a typical company are: Marketing; Public Relations; Information technology or IT; Personnel or Human Resources; Finance; Production; Research and Development, or R and D

Middle management

1.3 The company I would like to work for

As an employee, I would like to work for a company, which highly appreciates resourceful, initiative persons, giving freedom to prospective ideas and providing stable conditions to its stuff as well. I see the “Siemens AG” being such a company. It is a large multinational engineering corporation in Europe having four main business sectors: Industry, Energy, Healthcare and Infrastructure & Cities with 19 divisions in sum. There are more than 400.000 people throughout the world engaged in this business. For all of them “Siemens AG” offers professional growth and career promotion, providing special learning programs and motivating with various bonuses. The company seeks to establish long-term relationships with each employee. That is why joining a stuff of such an organization would be a great pleasure to me.

Билет № 2

2.1 Structure of multinationals

Many well-known companies are multinationals, these are companies which operate in a number of countries. Multinationals often have a complicated structure. There is usually a parent or holding company. This company owns other companies or parts of other companies, called subsidiaries. Owning foreign subsidiaries is one of the most basic structural models of a multinational company. The subsidiaries are self-contained units with their own operations, finance and human resource functions. In multinational corporation the executive headquarters are situated in one nation, while production facilities are located in one or more other countries. This model often allows the company to take advantage of benefits of incorporating in a given locality, while also being able to produce goods and services in areas where the cost of production is lower. Thus, the foreign subsidiaries are autonomous allowing them to respond to local competitive conditions and develop locally responsive strategies.