Managing in Multinational Organizations

Question: Why is the BlackBerry controversy prominent in Asia, particularly in the Middle East, and not anywhere else in the world? Answer: Introduction Blackberry smartphone was manufactured by the Canadian company research in motion RIM. In 2002, the company launched their fast smartphone by the co-C.E.O and founder of RIM Mr. Mike lazaridis. At first, they sold to business bodies and government organizations in US, Canada, and the UK, and then later the company decides to expand its market overseas and that is how blackberry smartphone introduced to the global market. Since the introduction of blackberry smartphone to the market, blackberry has the strongest encryption that will take a long time to crack. That is according to the RIM founder and co-C.E.O mike lazaridis (Cerdin, J.L. and Brewster, C., 2014). According to this case study, it states that numerous nations were complex on blackberry disagreement. There was more frustration that rose from the countries such as Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and India this was seen as the national security threat by the government due to sturdy encryption of blackberry structure that a certain the consumer confidentiality. It was difficult for the local administration to observe or capture conversation for instance terrorist or illegal activities since the information did go through domestic servers So many countries had demanded the setting up of a local server by the RIM apart from pursuing access to data transmission through blackberry phones (Cullen, J.B. and Parboteeah, K.P., 2013). The case study continue to explain that due to the mentioning of security worries UAE which had over 400,000 blackberry users, In June 2010 the government decide to announce their intention of banning blackberry services i.e. messaging, the web and email services this occurred when the government arrested a number of youths who were peaceful protesting using blackberry messenger. it was assumed the youths who were assailants to Mahmoud al-mabhouh. Who was the high-ranking leader for Palestinian militant group well known as the (Hamas)? Moreover, he died in a hotel, it was purportedly in Dubai that Israel intelligence agency team communicates strongly through blackberry phone; the officials in the United Arab Emirates maintain that some blackberry features that are used are against the laws of the country, consequently instigating social, judicial and national security anxiety. This outshines the primary consideration of the peoples freedom protection. The purpose of Saudi Arabia to b an the use of blackberry phones arise as the government appealed that the services of blackberry phones did not meet the governing requirements and poses a threat to national security. It is the biggest RIMs country in Middle East market with over 700,000 blackberry users, and it alleged that the youths influenced by the use of blackberry phones; as a result, it challenges the ethnic and moral values (Smale, al,t 2015). There are other countries in the middle east that are complex in the blackberry disagreement which are Bahrain, Kuwait, and Lebanon who air the same concern as other middle east counterpart nations about the issue of national security. According to Lebanon telecommunication regulatory authority TRA, the government was worried on the decency of telecom network this is after three people suspected to be Israel detectives were the arrest. The government of Kuwait did not threaten to ban blackberry operations, but it was the concern in holding talks with the RIM over their main worry that was security and moral concern. As the country, precise requested RIM to block the users from accessing the pornographic sites as it was a crime in most of the Middle East countries (ster, and Takashina, 2016) Using the internet in blackberry smartphone was much different compared to others smartphone internet usage, blackberry phone internet was not locally controlled by the wireless carrier that the phone was running on. It connects directly to the local wireless transporters network to the server in Canada, RIM server which is located in Canada provides freedom to its customers to watch or see whatsoever they want to, therefore even blackberry operators in Kuwait are capable of accessing everything same as the Canadian users(Mao, Y. and Hale, C.L., 2015). India is the second world major mobile smartphone markets with a total of 1, 0000 blackberry users, The Indian government raised their concern to the RIM, and they threat to ban blackberry operations if they cannot gain access to blackberry enterprise services which was being used by the government organizations and many business people in India. Blackberry Enterprise Services (BES)become popular among the initiative consumers as it provides tight security, in 2008 India raise anxiety over the services offered by the blackberry, but the RIM responded that it does not allow even its employees or third party to access data. That same year there was several attacks in Mumbai in which more than 100 people were dead and 308 were critically injured (Furusawa Brew(Hislop, 2013). This deepened the concern on Indian people over the government inability to access encoded information. according to the information gathered by the investigators, there was five blackberry mobile phones that was recovered from the crime scene, and it was believed that the terrorist executes their mission using these blackberry mobile phone. This was one of the reasons that the India government banned the use of blackberry phone. In addition, it was threats to national security (Jimnez-Jimnez, al,t 2015). Apart from the Middle East countries and India, there were few other countries such as Indonesia and Algeria. which also echoed on the blackberry phone issues, this was seen as a threat to national security by the Algerian government as they continue to monitor the blackberry services also the government stated that for blackberry company to continue doing its operations in the country they should monitor insecurity threats to the society. With more than 1.3 million blackberry mobile user country wide the Indonesia, government expresses their fear of the blackberry mobile users for the moral and security reasons. The Indonesia government asked the RIM authority to block the pornographic sites as it brings immoral behavior to the subscribers mainly the youths. It went further and summoned the RIM officials to sieve offensive materials, which is access by approximately half a billion-blackberry users in Indonesia (Al Ariss, Cascio, and Paauwe, 2014). Reference Furusawa, M., Brewster, C. and Takashina, T., 2016. Normative and Systems Integration in Human Resource Management in Japanese Multinational Companies.Multinational Business Review,24(2). Hislop, D., 2013.Knowledge management in organizations: A critical introduction. Oxford UniversityPress. Al Ariss, A., Cascio, W.F. and Paauwe, J., 2014. Talent management: Current theories and future research directions.Journal of World Business,49(2), pp.173-179. 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