Final Memorandum, assignment help

Final Memorandum, assignment help

The second part of the final project for this course is the creation of a memorandum. Legal situations arise frequently in everyday business practice, but the assessment of the key issues is not always clear. A working understanding of essential business law concepts is critical for the successful navigation of complex and diverse business environments. Successfully addressing real-world situations will sharpen your skills in spotting issues, identifying vulnerabilities that you may face as a member of the corporate world, and becoming more sensitive to legal dilemmas that commonly arise in business. For your two-part summative assessment, you will be preparing two professional business memorandums related to the application of business law in specific hypothetical scenarios. For Final Project Part II, you will prepare a five-page professional memorandum for your supervisor in a hypothetical U.S. corporation that is considering doing business overseas. Your findings and critical assessment of the cases will help shape the approach of corporate stakeholders to the legal matters raised, including each company’s response to each situation. The project is divided into one milestone, which will be submitted before Final Project Part II to scaffold learning and ensure quality final submissions. This milestone will be submitted in Module Seven. The final submission for Final Project Part II will be submitted in Module Ten. In this assignment, you will demonstrate your mastery of the following course outcomes:  Assess the impact of business law on organizational decision making for informing strategic legal decisions  Analyze pertinent facts of business client cases by effectively employing foundational law principles  Select key legislation and legal precedents that impact client cases for informing legal decisions  Assess the impact of public perception on companies in legal situations for informing business practices  Assess the legal and ethical implications of United States companies doing business abroad for informing business decisions that are compliant with applicable domestic laws Prompt For the second part of your summative assessment, you will assume the role of an employee at a fictional company and prepare an executive memo pertaining to the legal and ethical implications of a company doing business internationally. Scenario You are working for a major U.S. corporation that wants to expand its reach globally and has narrowed the search to either Mexico or Japan. Your supervisor has asked you to prepare a memo that analyzes potential compliance issues with respect to aspects of law and ethics that are specific to one of the two countries. You will choose to prepare your memo for either Mexico or Japan and address the critical elements below. This will help inform the final executive decision. Because you have some fluency with domestic laws, and given your background and history with the corporation, you have been asked to assess the pros and cons of the decision, and to provide your insights with respect to the ethical and legal implications of the expansion. Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed: I. What pertinent aspects of U.S. law should the company be aware of in its goal to do business internationally? II. Assess the legal implications of moving business abroad specific to your chosen country. What are the advantages and disadvantages? III. What are the ethical implications involved in this business decision? IV. Explain how other domestic companies have managed to comply with the U.S. laws related to this business decision in the past. How did these companies address potential compliance issues? Milestones Milestone One: Outline of Memorandum In Module Seven, you will submit an outline of your memorandum highlighting the following concepts: What pertinent aspects of U.S. law should the company be aware of in its goal to do business internationally? Assess the legal implications of moving business abroad specific to each country. What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? What are the ethical implications involved in this business decision? Explain how other domestic companies have managed to comply with the U.S. laws related to this business decision in the past. How did these companies address potential compliance issues? The milestone should be completed using the provided Outline Template. This milestone is graded with the Final Project Part II Milestone One Rubric. Final Submission: Memorandum In Module Ten, you will submit your completed memorandum. It should be a complete, polished artifact containing all of the critical elements of the final product. It should reflect the incorporation of feedback gained throughout the course. This submission will be graded using the Final Project Part II Rubric (below).

Here was the outline in part one

Final Project Part II, Milestone One: Outline Template

  I.  What pertinent aspects of U.S. law should the company be aware of in its goal to do business internationally?

a) According to the U.S federal law, companies should not operate within certain countries. But the list keeps on changing with time. This is in accordance to the Treasury Department`s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC). The countries that are listed include Cuba, Burma, North Korea, Iran, Sudan, Liberia, The Western Balkans, Zimbabwe and Syria. The penalties for violating this law are a fine of up to $1,000,000 and or 20 years imprisonment. The U.S is entitled the right to forfeit and seize goods of the company.

b) The American employment laws still apply to American employees and employers in foreign countries. It is imperative to note that the law does not apply to non-U.S. residents who are working outside the United States. The company ought to adhere to the local jurisdiction.

  II.  Assess the legal implications of moving business abroad specific to each country (Mexico and Japan). What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

a.  According to the free traders, United States companies should leap to the Mexican band wagon.  Mexico has undeniably low costs of labor and its local companies have been privatized over the last five years. This has offered an array of new investment opportunities. Any company that intends to move to Mexico needs to assess some of the legal implications. Mexico has created a more open free-market economy and is also a member of NAFTA, which is the largest free trade area in the world. This has enabled it to attract investments from U.S. and other parts of the world particularly in chemical, automotive and food processing industries.

Despite these advantages, Mexico has great inequalities between poor and rich, some sectors of the industry are still underdeveloped and a lot of drug trafficking that is accompanied by violence are deeply rooted in the Mexican society. Mexico offers a low-cost location due to close access to the United States market but stands on a dividing line between underdevelopment and development in economic sense and its location between Central America and United States.

III.  What are the ethical implications involved in this business decision?

a.  Human Rights- Human rights ethical implications can arise because in most countries basic human rights are not respected.  For instance, several rights are taken for granted in developed countries. For example freedom of speech, freedom of association, freedom of movement are by all means universally accepted. Therefore a company that makes the decision of operating internationally needs to enquire about the responsibility of multinational when operating in a country where human rights are trampled upon.

b.  Corruption- Corruption has been a great problem in any society in history and still continues to be today. International businesses have gained economic advantages by making payments to government officials. The U.S. has passed Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) to fight corruption. In 1997, United States adopted the Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public Officials in International Business Transactions that obliges states to make bribery of foreign public officials a criminal offence.

IV.  Explain how other domestic companies have managed to comply with the U.S. laws related to this business decision in the past.

a.  No two countries share the same legal and political systems. The key is to understand that once the company is in a foreign market, the employees have to abide to the laws and rules in that country. The domestic companies have managed to comply with the U.S laws by avoiding trouble by not imposing U.S standards on the local employees. It is worth noting that these companies are aware that they should not allow practices within their overseas branches, partners’ offices or franchise that would be considered illegal or unfair in the United States.

  V.  How did these companies address potential compliance issues?
Many U.S. laws regulate the international business activities of U.S. companies. For any international business to be successful, it needs to put an updated compliance program to address legal issues that could arise from these activities. United States companies are governed by two categories of laws. The first one entails laws that can also be applied in a domestic context such as employment, antitrust and economic-espionage laws. The second one entails laws that are targeted precisely to the international business such as FCPA. The companies address the compliance issues through comprehensive risk assessments of the company`s vulnerability to unlawful conduct in coordination with the company`s internal audit. The companies also address this by enlightening the employees about the compliance risks involved with each joint venture, subsidiary and country. Lastly they have achieved to address these issues by developing effective compliance procedures and policies to prevent, detect and punish misconduct in the firms to prevent such compliance issues from recurring in future.