LACK OF KNOWLEDGE AMONG THE INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STUDENTS

PAIR NAME: HAZWANI BT MOHD HATAR
NOOR AZIZAH BT MUSLIM


Topic: Lack of Knowledge among International Business Students
General purpose: To Inform
Specific purpose: To inform our audience about the lack of knowledge among International Business students.
Central idea: The causes of lack of knowledge, how to overcome the causes, as well as the advantages and disadvantages of knowledge.


INTRODUCTION

There is several meaning for the knowledge which will be different to one another. In Oxford English Dictionary, knowledge is defined as facts, information, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Philosophical debates in general start with Plato's formulation of knowledge as "justified true belief". There is however no single agreed definition of knowledge presently, or any prospect of one, and there remain numerous competing theories.
Knowledge acquisition involves complex cognitive processes: perception, learning, communication, association, and reasoning. The term knowledge is also used to mean the confident understanding of a subject, potentially with the ability to use it for a specific purpose.
“We suppose ourselves to possess unqualified scientific knowledge of a thing, as opposed to knowing it in the accidental way in which the sophist knows, when we think that we know the cause on which the fact depends, as the cause of that fact and of no other, and, further, that the fact could not be other than it is. Now that scientific knowing is something of this sort is evident — witness both those who falsely claim it and those who actually possess it, since the former merely imagine themselves to be, while the latter are also actually, in the condition described. Consequently the proper object of unqualified scientific knowledge is something which cannot be other than it is.”
— Aristotle, Posterior Analytics (Book 1 Part 2)




TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE

Ø Geographical knowledge
Although geographical knowledge of foreign countries is a crucial explicit knowledge.factor in successfully marketing goods and services to international markets, an article in this Journal in 1991 reported on the low level of geographical knowledge about foreign countries possessed by students majoring in business at a large public university located in the United States. This article describes the results of a replication of the earlier study, noting changes in business students' ability to identify the locations of countries of the world and the impact of seven key variables on this capability. Recognizing the apparent apathy held by educators teaching international business courses toward this subject, recommendations are offered for enhancing business students' international geographical expertise.

Ø Management knowledge
Management theory emerged in the 1990s. It seeks to understand the way in which knowledge is created, used and shared within organizations. It use two different model:
(i) The DIKW model, which places data, information, knowledge and wisdom into an increasingly useful pyramid.
(ii) Nonaka's reformulation of Polanyi's distinction between tacit and explicit knowledge.
Both of these models are increasingly under challenge with different of thought. An objective of mainstream knowledge management is to ensure that the right information is delivered to the right person just in time, in order to take the most appropriate decision. In that sense, knowledge managements not interested in managing knowledge but to relate knowledge and its usage.

Ø Entrepreneurship knowledge

According to Cheng Ming Yu and Cheryl Chan from Multimedia University Malaysia the entrepreneurship knowledge need students to have strong academic background, particularly those who know how to take advantage of Internet and other information communication technologies (ICTs) is required. Therefore, the growing concern is how the education institutions, particularly the tertiary education institutions, should impart essential entrepreneurial knowledge in the syllabus to equip future entrepreneurs with the necessary skills. In fact, MMU introduce the cyberpreneurship and the purposes of introducing the cyberpreneurship subject are twofold, which are:

1) to develop students interest to become entrepreneurs, even if they are not students from business or management faculties
2) to enhance students knowledge and understanding on the role of entrepreneurship in the new business world, especially the cyber world.

Ø Communicating knowledge
Symbolic representations can be used to store meaning. The mapping from the symbolic representation to meaning can be thought of as a dynamic process. Hence also the transfer of the symbolic representation can be viewed as an ascription process whereby knowledge can be transferred. We talk of 'data' (the symbols) and 'information' (the meaning). Knowledge is contextual however, so explanation and investigation is usually needed to transfer appropriate state information around which an appropriate interpretation can be established — in the case of two entities, a 'conversation' ensues during which 'understanding' can be developed. The communication plays an important role because business can’t be operated without it. However we need to adapt with different language which might be different among the other countries. For example Japanese, they always use their language and if we want to make a business with them we need to have a good communication in their language.

Ø Situated knowledge
Situated knowledge is knowledge specific to a particular situation. Situational knowledge is often embedded in language, culture, or traditions. Knowledge generated through experience is called knowledge "a posteriori" meaning afterwards. The pure existence of a term like "a posteriori" means this also has a counterpart. In this case that is knowledge "a priori", meaning before. The knowledge prior to any experience means that there are certain "assumptions" that one takes for granted.

CAUSES OF LACK OF KNOWLEDGES

Lack of reading newspaper

Newspaper is a good material that student’s especially international business students should turn to. In the newspaper people will be exposed to global news and alert on what was happening around the world. However, some of the international business students didn’t care much about the importance of newspaper. As an international business student we must to make sure that we can recognize the economic, geographical, political, and marketing for each country.

Lack of interest

Some of the students don’t have an interest to find a knowledge because they feel that it just wasting of time keep on searching about others country ways of business. They thought each country will accept whatever ways of doing business. As all we know each country have their own cultures. For example, if you want to do a business in Arab country you must have an interest to know their cultures and adapt with it. It maybe take an ample time for you to adapt and implement your knowledge in order to market your product there.

Lack of social

Get involved with people is the important element in a way to increase our knowledge because we are exchanging ideas. The more social we are the more benefit we get especially with the foreigners. By having this we are actually gains an information which might be useful to enter other countries market. From the information we may get an ideas to plan a long term strategy.

Environment

The environment of study also plays a role to attract an interest not only for the international business students but also goes to other courses. The environment means the condition of the class, the material which have been using to teach the students and how to tackle students in delivery. An important part of the course is a series of classes focused on learning how to use the Bloomberg terminal for business, financial and economic research

Lack of exposure( trip)

The meaning of international business tell us that is about the globalization so that it mean students need to have an exposure outside of their own country to get clear picture about each country in all over the world. Students who does not expose with the ethics of each country may find the difficulty to understand and to enter their market because we need an information detail about the capacity of the other countries, political problems and their geographical.









OVERCOME LACK OF KNOWLEDGES

Campaign
- The only best way to overcome this problem is by doing a campaign. The campaign that will be used is by giving a speech on the importance and the benefit of taking this course. At the same time the campaign will followed by giving and exposure about the each country and how to enter their market to expand our business. The speech should be given by someone that already has an experienced about the international business. For example by Steven Lysonski is an Associate Professor at Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He is a former member of the marketing faculty at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ and the University of Rhode Island at Kingston. In addition to presenting research to more than 30 academic conferences, he has published widely in such journals as the Journal of Marketing, The European Journal of Marketing, the International Journal of Advertising, the Journal of Product Innovation and Management and Psychological Reports. His research interests focus on product management, international issues of marketing, and ethical implications of marketing.

- In fact, we can also build an interest in order to increase of knowledge among the international students by conduct a book festival which will offer the great discount.


Trip

Trip to another country and see the developing of their industry can increase our knowledge in term of their economic growth and marketing strategies. The knowledge that we get can be apply when we want to do an international business between two boundaries. Global trade is a fascinating lens through which we can examine some of the most interesting and complex issues of our times. We must be well versed in economics, business, politics, immigration, poverty and public policy.


ADVANTAGES OF KNOWLEDGE
According to Robert Williams, Director of Breed Improvement and Foreign Marketing said that by having a lot of knowledge we may improved our communication link and sharing of information will aid in collecting meaningful data. Furthermore, he also said that data only is valuable if you are adequately interpreted and understand it. This will lead to there is no point of having amount of data but we could not to understand the meaning or its messages that they try to deliver. As a result the data obtained does not be transferred as knowledge.
We also may apply such knowledge in decision making purposes. For example, imagine two similar breeds of mushroom, which grow on either side of a mountain, one nutritious, one poisonous. From wikipedia resources stated that relying on knowledge from an ecological boundary, after crossing to the other, may lead to starving rather than eating perfectly healthy food near at hand, or to poisoning oneself by mistakes. So that, base on that knowledge, we are avoid from having poisonous food and eating a healthy one.

In addition, having a good knowledge may increase one self confidence. This is due to they know how to react with people and may exchange their knowledge with others. This confidence may create a good image and perception from others. Thus, it would increase their self esteem.



DISADVANTAGES OF LACK OF KNOWLEDGE

There are various disadvantages that we will get if we were lacking of knowledge. Based on Swami Krishnananda, the Divine Life Society said that from psychology of human nature, we will find that the whole of mankind is stupid and it has no understanding of what right conduct is, in the light of facts as they are. In that case, if we were lacking of knowledge, we will remain stupid for the whole of our life. Thus, nobody will respect us and they may play fool in front of other people. This will lead to decrease our motivation and self esteem. We also will afraid to communicate and interact with other people because there is nothing to share with.

Knowledge may create a good image of person. Lack of knowledge would create a bad perception from others. They have no self confidence to show off their ability and strengthen. People will look down of these individual and assume that they have no any specialty that would contribute to any profit of organization.

These kinds of individual also do not expert in making decision and in fact they do not know how to make a good decision. These individual will categorize as people who follow the flow which they accept any decision that make by others.










CONCLUSION

In conclusion knowledge is necessary for everyone. Without having any knowledge people would look down to us and do not have respect from others. Furthermore, these kinds of individual also do not know how to communicate with public. In addition, having lack of knowledge will create a bad perception from other people as well as lack of self confidence. However, being knowledgeable has a lot of advantages such as good communication skilled, confidence in making decision, and create good image. The lack of knowledge also can be causes from lack of reading newspaper, lack of interest, lack of social, environment factors, and lack of exposure. On the other hand, there are a few outcomes that can be taken to increase the level of individual knowledge. For instance, they may setup a program such as education trip and campaign. Apart to that there are many types of knowledge and it included geographical knowledge, management knowledge, entrepreneurship knowledge, communicating knowledge and situated knowledge.