Specialty area one: Global culture. While the U.S. has enjoyed decades of domestic economic prosperity, recent economic challenges remind us that our future economic success revolves around succeeding in the global economy. It is about who is empowered to leverage the power of culture to optimize an organization’s bottom line. Cross-cultural differences are a significant impediment to successful international ventures and projects. In the discussion forum and in your research paper, you should focus on why it is critical that leaders have a strong understanding of the impact that culture has on organizations within and throughout a global environment.

Examples of acceptable topics within global culture include: (1) Comparative cultural business differences between the United Sates and a foreign country such as South Korea, Italy, Japan, or Singapore; and (2) Analysis of specific failures due to an inability of a firm to adapt to a new cultural environment such as Wal-Mart’s failure in Germany.

1. Topic: Your research paper should focus on one of the two specialty area topics: global culture or global leadership. Do not randomly select a topic.

2. Your research paper needs to be in a professional business manner suitable for submission to a supervisor or to a team of peers. Grammar and effective writing style is graded. Make sure you stay on topic and make sure you connect the issues you raise back to the theme of your paper.

3. Your paper will in part be graded on exhibition of critical thinking. You need to objectively analyze and evaluate your chosen topic. Avoid a simple summary of your cited works.

4. Your paper requires a clearly defined introduction, body of arguments, and conclusion sections.

5. Format / Structure: The research paper minimum page requirement is eight-pages. Use Times New Roman 12 font, one-inch margins all round, and double-spacing. The eight-page limit does not include a cover page and pages devoted to references, tables, or charts. Do not embed tables, charts or figures within eight pages of text. Please number your pages as this facilitates reading and grading.

6. You need at least eight references. These may be Google-type newsfeed references. These articles cannot be password-protected articles. You need to specifically cite the articles in your paper.

7. The total set of rubrics you will be evaluated on (not in any relevant order) professional business tone, grammar, effective writing style, demonstration of critical thinking, and adherence to structure and formatting issues.