A93123 International Strategy & Multinational Corporation

At the end of the course the student will be able:

1. to assess the main strategic choices made by multinational corporations;
2. to design appropriate strategic choices for multinational corporations;  
3. to adapt organizational solutions to the diversity of international strategic choices.

Multinational corporations are characterized by a higher complexity of the strategic management process because of the diversity of the environments they concurrently operate in. In addition, these firms are responsible for a large share of global wealth, consumption and employment. Therefore, their capability to make appropriate strategic decisions is a paramount concern that societies must address to ensure economic growth and prosperity. To this end, the course will provide appropriate coverage of the following topics:  

1. analyzing the global competitive and social environment;
2. the strategy of multinational corporations;  
3. entry strategies; 
4. the strategy-structure coherence in multinational corporations;
5. international alliances and M&A;
6. managing cultural diversity in multinational corporations;
7. ethics in multinational corporations. 

The course will be divided in two sections. The first section is run under a traditional format (lectures and case discussions). Lectures are based on 7 chapters of the primary textbook. In the second section, under the supervision of the instructor, students are asked to prepare a strategic analysis of a multinational corporation. Students are responsible to self-organize in groups, choose a multinational corporation, look for relevant information, analyze the case study and present it to the rest of the class. The knowledge generated in the second section of the course will be shared at the end of the course and will be part of the collective learning process. Students non attending classes, instead of running such a group work, are called to study 5 additional chapters extracted from the secondary textbook.

Students are responsible for consulting on a regular basis the website of the course on “my.liuc.it” where updates, additional material and slides about the course are posted. No excuse accepted for any failure during the course you may incur into due to a delayed consultation of the website.

For students attending classes, grade is based on an individual written exam (65%) on required readings and the group work (35%).

For students non attending classes, grade is entirely based on an individual written exam on required readings.