Courses Major IB / IBE Strategy

The Department offers two Majors in Strategy.

The IB (International Business) major in strategy consists of the following four courses: Strategic Management (3013B), International Business Strategy (3015B), Business Innovation (3034B), and International Business History (3035B).

The IBE (International Business Economics) major in strategy consists of Strategic Management and International Business Strategy, which are core courses in the Strategy major for both the IB and the IBE programmes, as well as courses on Project and Production Management (3014B) and European Business (3016B).

Strategic Management deals mostly with the issues identified as internal to the firm. These include investment under uncertainty and the use of real options, as well as the make-or-buy decision and determining the boundaries of the firm. These strategic decisions are explored on the business unit level, the corporate level and the network level. International Business Strategy is somewhat more focused on the external drivers of performance, and the impact of globalisation on business strategy. The issues dealt with in this course include theories of the multinational enterprise, managing technological innovation on an international scale, use of international strategic alliances, and managing political risk. In addition, the course explores strategic issues related to competition policy and intellectual property rights regimes.

The two courses completing the strategy major for IB students are Business Innovation (3034B) and International Business History (3035B). Please note that these courses are not currently available to IBE students as electives. The course on Business Innovation addresses internal change and organizational design in the context of innovation processes. Business innovation is the process of new business development in order to thwart the corporate value erosion that occurs as a consequence of competition. In this course innovation is viewed as a continuous quest for value, both within the value chain and across different value chains. The key topics include value erosion and value creation, implementing an innovation process line, lateral organization, knowledge management, and innovation in services.

The course on International Business History offers a comparative historical study of the emergence of the large industrial enterprises in the United States, Britain and Germany. These firms continue to form a large proportion of the Fortune Global 500 group of multinationals, and studying their historical origins allows us to explore both the internal drivers of corporate performance as well as the important differences in the external institutional context of these three economies. Due to their extensive histories, these firms offer ample opportunities for studying the true long-term performance of firms, and the degree to which the ‘visible hand’ of managerial decision making is critical to corporate survival.

The two courses completing the strategy major for IBE students are Project and Production Management (3014B) and European Business (3016B). Again, please note that these courses are not currently available to IB students as electives.

The Project and Production Management course addresses internal change and organizational design in the context of projects concerned with the development of new products and services. In project management people from different parts of the organization are brought together on a temporary basis to accomplish a complex task. In this context special attention is given to project selection, the role of the project manager, project planning, resource allocation and project control. In the production management part of the course issues of operations strategy and process management are discussed, including capacity, l ocation and lay-out decisions, inventory management, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP).

In the European Business course, the internal drivers of performance of European firms are analysed within the external institutional context of the diverse EU economies. Based on a foundation of strategy, marketing and cross-cultural management, decision making in the European Union is looked at, along with the relationship between business and politics. This involves an analysis of the different traditions of political decision making in Europe, their historical background, and how such differences should be taken into account by firms when anticipating or aiming to influence decision making in the EU. Other topics covered in the course include the sources of national competitive advantage in Europe and the impact this has on location decisions, EU competition policy and its impact on acquisition strategies, and the entry of Central and Eastern European countries into the EU.

Students who do not follow a major in strategy can do a strategy minor by choosing two of the four courses in the strategy major. It is also possible for a minor to consist of one strategy course in combination with a course from another major (neither major can be the same as the student’s own major).