Globalization and Business Trends How globalization is affecting the political, legal, and economic forces impacting today's business environment

Globalization is indeed associated with a lot of interconnectedness of different sectors worldwide. It is affecting the political, legal and economic forces worldwide hence impacting on the day-to-day business environment.

Politically, poor nations have become more dependent on decisions being made by rich nations like USA which determines what is legal to be traded and how some patterns of trade are to be conducted and even the nature of business relationships thus affecting the business environment today as Mark K. Smith and Michele (2002) note.

In consideration of Brand globalization, globalization has affected economic forces in terms of brand standardization. This is significant for the Multi-National Companies (MNCs) in order for their products to be marketed all over the word which in turn has promoted standardization in the business environment today.

Shift of power to multinational companies; globalization has affected the economic forces by transferring a lot of economic power from the nations and the national companies to multinational companies promote trade monopolies in the business environment.

The role that organizational learning and creativity play in helping managers to improve their decisions

Gareth R. Jones (2004) defines decision making as the managerial response to opportunities and threats. Gareth and Jennifer...

George (2008), has it that organizational learning is the process through which managers try to improve the desire and ability of the employees to understand the company. In addition to this they note that every manager needs to emphasize organizational learning and creativity for this improves the quality of decision making in an organization at all levels of the organization as well as harnessing the available latent talent and sharpening the already existing skills.
Conditions under which managers might change from functional to product, geographic or market structure

Managers can change from functional to product structures if there is need to adapt different products to different needs of the customers. This change can be prompted by product specific clients who need some given detail from a product or the prevailing market forces and trends. For instance Microsoft changed to this structure according to free books online organization (2010).

Managers can also change to geographic structures from functional ones where different geographic regions have different tastes and preferences yet the company would like to retain and expand the clientele base. A significant instance is MacDonald's which had to change to this kind of structure to serve the needs of different regions.

Managers can as well change to market structures in cases where there are different types of markets that need to be served so as to satisfy the different markets effectively according to Zain Books (2011). This is mostly prompted…