International Expansion Blog

Global Glance: June 8, 2015

6/8/2015

John Bostwick, Managing Editor, Radius A quick look at intriguing international stories

By John Bostwick, Managing Editor, Radius 

Welcome to Global Glance, my pick of entertaining and informative international business stories from around the web. This week we look at: 

Parkinson’s Law and the Case for More Paid Time Off 

A shrewd friend of mine once said: “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” I didn’t know it at the time, but he was quoting from a tongue-in-cheek 1955 Economist article called “Parkinson's Law,” by C. Northcote Parkinson. If you’ve ever worked in, and been baffled by, an inefficient bureaucracy whose workers seemed more intent on protecting turf and position than on getting work done, the article should be required reading. Basically, Parkinson proposes a mathematical “formula” to explain why staff proliferates at bureaucracies “irrespective of any variation in the amount of work (if any) to be done.” 

A column in last Tuesday’s Financial Times on the relationship between long hours and productivity recalled Parkinson’s dictum. In it, Sarah Gordon cites an analysis of mostly European countries “which explored the degree to which longer annual hours since 1950 had been associated with per-hour productivity.” The analysis found that “the productivity for a given increase in working time was always negative.” In this context, Gordon cites a fact that most of us know (and many might resent): that permanent workers in France are by law entitled to a generous amount of paid time off — a minimum five weeks off a year from their 35-hour-a-week schedule. My guess is that most of us do not know that this generous allowance does not result in an unproductive workforce. On the contrary, as Gordon writes, “the productivity among French workers is one of the highest in Europe and exceeds levels in Germany and the UK.” 

Hong Kong’s Pricey Micro-Apartments 

If you feel oppressed by the high cost of real estate in your area, you might take some solace in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal article, “In Hong Kong, the Apartments Are Fit for a Mosquito.” It describes a Hong Kong studio apartment that’s 180 square feet — about the size of a parking space —and recently sold for over a half million US dollars. In a passage fit for the pages of The Onion, the Journal reported that the property’s real estate agent “described the window sill as a potential area for ‘entertainment.’” 
 
While the details of the apartment’s proportions — including an accompanying video using a free-throw lane on a basketball court for comparison — are amusing, the article puts the Hong Kong trend in a global context. Other cities like New York and London are experiencing similar price increases, in large part because investors see residential real estate as a safe place to put their money. And as usual, what happens in one part of the world affects other parts. For example: China’s rising real estate prices, together with its population’s increased wealth and other factors, are affecting prices here in my city of Boston. A 2014 article from Boston Magazine explains why the city “is the seventh-most-attractive city internationally to Chinese real estate investors, and 5.5 percent of those investors consider it the most desirable place in the world to sink their cash.” 

US Club Soccer Team Plays in Cuba

Amid recent bribery allegations brought against FIFA executives by US and Swiss authorities, world soccer received a bit of positive PR last Tuesday when the New York Cosmos played Cuba’s national team in Havana. The game appears to have been a “friendly” in all senses of the word. This Guardian article on the Cosmos' 4-1 victory reports that the Cuban crowd “cheered after the [US]  anthem was played, which was surprising in itself in a nation that has been forbidden to many Americans for 54 years.” 

 
The game was another step forward in the normalization of relations between the US and Cuba. It was also a reminder of the durability of effective branding. The New York Cosmos lured Brazilian great Pele to the United States in the 1970s, and during his time with the team it was a genuine world phenomenon. But the Cosmos and the league it played in — the North American Soccer League (NASL) — folded in the eighties due to a number of factors, including rampant spending and over-expansion. (For a fascinating history of the Cosmos, watch the 2006 documentary Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos.) A new NASL was born in 2009 — it is currently the US’s second soccer division, under Major League Soccer (MLS) — and the Cosmos reformed a year later. Even given the success of MLS, the Cosmos (who now play in the second-tier NASL) are still probably the US’s most recognized global soccer brand. 
 
For an interview about the Cuba friendly — including the importance of building a global brand and the logistical difficulties of taking a US sports team to Cuba — listen to this Beyond the Pitch podcast with Cosmos’ CEO Erik Stover. Stover mentions in the interview that the Cosmos have played games in a remarkable 41 countries.