Question

Select a business/organization that you are familiar with and after providing a brief description of it, respond to the following questions:

(1) What current and/or emerging political and governmental factors might impact this business? (provide evidence);

(2) Informed by these factors, recommend some alternative strategic actions that the business might consider to reduce risk and even gain from the identified forces/variables.

cite at least 1 resource to support your discussions

Answer 1

The company that would be discussed further is a multinational publishing company headquartered in Amsterdam. The post is based on my knowledge and experience gained when I was a manager in the company.

1. Government factors- The government factors plays a crucial role in the publishing environment. There was a new government Open Access Mandate that was imposed on the company. Open Access is publishing the journals online. The free access to the journals is possible through repositories like PubMed Central. An example of the government imposed Open Access mandate is that all the research based on the NIH-funded research need to be posted in PubMed Central. It is mandatory that it should be done within 12 months of its publication. If there is any non-compliance by the author, then grant funding will be withheld for the researchers.

Political factors- The Intellectual property law (Copyright, patents) is one of the political factors that affect the smooth functioning of the publishing company. The IP law relates to the copyrights and patents of the journals ‘ publication. Whenever this specific law is changed or updated, then it has a great impact on publishing. Political parties have a great influence on this law. For example, in my publishing company, the new political influence on the IP law (Copyrights and patents) was posted which had a great impact on all the stakeholders (authors, researchers, reviewers, editors, publishers, etc). There was a special ‘Rights and Permission’ team to help the company to keep up with the changes in these laws.

2. The publishing company used these implications to the benefit of the company. The Open Access which was a great challenge for the company was used to its best to gain the competitive advantage. Similarly, the Intellectual Property Law (copyrights and patents) were handled exclusively by the Rights and Permissions team which was the backbone of the company. Any potential threats were immediately detected and removed which made the business to function smoothly.