COURSE NUMBER: EWMBA299B.1

This course is cross-listed with Full-Time MBA

COURSE TITLE: Global Strategy & Multinational Enterprise

UNITS OF CREDIT: 2 Units

INSTRUCTOR: Paul Tiffany

E-MAIL ADDRESS: tiffany@haas.berkeley.edu

CLASS WEB-PAGE LOCATION: bSpace

MEETING DAY(S)/TIME: Mondays, 6:00 pm – 9:30 pm

Ten non-consecutive meetings across the 15-week semester.

PREREQUISITE(S): EWMBA Core Curriculum

CLASS FORMAT: This offering of MBA/EWMBA 299B will be highly participatory, relying heavily on class discussions of cases and related readings.  Students must be willing and ready to engage in classroom discussion of the subject matter if they expect to pass the course.  In addition, a case write-up and a written group project will be required of all students. 

REQUIRED READINGS: TBD

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE:

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

A.  Class Attendance and Participation:   25%

This portion of the grade is awarded for both attendance in class on a regular basis and participation in classroom discussion. As much of the course is built on case discussions, two or more unexcused absences (20% of the course schedule) will be grounds for a no-pass situation.  Voluntary role will be taken during each class session.

Participation will be a function of quality more than quantity.  However, it should be understood that the instructor would be unable to judge the quality of a student’s participation if that student does not contribute in class.  The Instructor will reserve the right to engage in cold calling when necessary.

B.  Case Write-Up: 35%

Students will select two cases from a list of course cases and prepare a brief (two-page) write-up.  This is an individual assignment.   Please see the description at the end of this syllabus; further specifics of the assignment will be provided in class.

C.  Group Project: 40%

Student groups (in general, four to six participants each) will select a firm that is engaged in a cross-border market and complete a comprehensive analysis of the firm’s perceived strategy.  The student group will be able to make its own choice of a firm, with the approval of the instructor.  Details of this assignment are provided at the end of this syllabus; however, this paper will be due one week after the last class of the semester (that is, April 28).  In order to facilitate progress, an early class meeting of the semester will provide time for group formation and industry selection, and additional class time may also be devoted to work on this project.  The composition of groups, and a tentative choice of a firm for analysis, must be submitted to the instructor by the fourth class meeting (February 24).

Yet while the development and pursuit of a successful strategy is common to all firms, the fact that this course is specifically concerned with global strategy and multinational enterprise adds a further dimension to the issue.  We will necessarily have to review the political-economic context of host nations in which multinational enterprise competes, and determine how these differing situations effect the formulation of a given firm’s strategy.  While MBA/EWMBA 299B is not a course in international economics or international political economy, we will nevertheless have to consider various concepts drawn from that domain.  As well, the issue of national “culture” is one that is more salient for the firm competing across borders: not all consumers throughout the world  behave in the same way or respond in similar ways to given market signals.  Accordingly, the manager of the cross-border enterprise must, in general, have a greater appreciation of these differentiating variables if the firm’s plans are to succeed.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH:
Paul Tiffany is a Senior Lecturer at the Haas School of Business of the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches courses in Business Policy, Competitive Strategy, and International Management. Professor Tiffany also serves as a Visiting Professor at Sasin, the Graduate Institute of Business at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand; IOMBA, the International Organizations MBA program at the University of Geneva; and at the AVT Business School in Copenhagen, Denmark. In the past he has taught at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford, INSEAD in France, and at CEIBS, the international school of business in Shanghai. Professor Tiffany earned his undergraduate degree from Loyola University, an MBA from Harvard University, and his Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.

Professor Tiffany is active in a number of academic organizations, and has published his research in various journals. His book The Decline of American Steel was published by Oxford University Press in 1988, and published in a Japanese edition in 1989. Business Plans for Dummies (IDG Books), co-authored with Dr. Steven Peterson, was published in 1997 and again in 2005 in a 2nd Edition. It was a finalist in the Booz Allen/Financial Times Best Business Book of 1998 competition. The first edition went through fifteen printings, and was available in twelve languages. Professor Tiffany is the recipient of several awards for his teaching, including the Cheit Award as the outstanding professor in the Berkeley-Columbia Executive MBA program, in both 2003 and 2004.

Prior to entering academia, Dr. Tiffany worked as a consultant with several national management consulting firms and as an assistant to the president of a large financial services firm. Currently, Dr. Tiffany heads Paul Tiffany & Associates, a multi-specialty consulting and training organization that offers management services to firms throughout the world. Recent clients have included Deutsche Post World Net (Germany), Siam Cement Group (Thailand), Royal Bank of Scotland, Genentech, The Hartford Insurance Co., Statoil (Norway), NFL Players Association, Microsoft, Mohegan Sun Resort and Casino, US Steel, Raytheon, Isuzu (Japan), Cisco Systems, Korean Management Association (Korea), Banc of America, Johnson & Johnson (Thailand), Magellan Health Services, and MinSheng Bank (China), among many others.