COURSE NUMBER: MBA299B.1

This course is cross-listed with EWMBA

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): MBA Core Curriculum

CLASS FORMAT: Cases and lectures

REQUIRED READINGS: Required readings consist of a Course Reader (cases, articles, book chapters, and lecture notes). There is also a course text: International Business, C.W. Hill.

BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE:
A. Class Attendance and Participation: 15%
B. Case Write-Up: 25%
C. Group Project: 60%

ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:

GLOBAL STRATEGY AND MULTINATIONAL ENTERPRISE is a two-unit course in management. It is designed to acquaint the student with the delineation of business policies by the firm that engages in cross-border transactions, and the development and implementation of a strategy that will allow the firm to achieve its cross-border goals and objectives. The pursuit of such ends usually occurs within a competitive context, in which other rival organizations seek similar if not the same ends (e.g., market share, profits, control of scarce resources, etc.). Accordingly, the essential drama of the marketplace is how one firm attempts to "win" vis-a-vis its rivals-- that is, how it develops and implements a competitive strategy for cross-border business transactions.

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 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 "culture" is one that is more salient for the firm competing across borders: not all consumers 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.

This offering of MBA 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 written group project will be required of all students. Details on the written assignment are provided at the end of this syllabus, and as well can be discussed in class. Finally, there will be a written in-class examination at the end of the semester to test your mastery of the core concepts of this course.

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.