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: Monday, 6:00 – 9:30PM
Ten non-consecutive meetings across the
15-week semester.
PREREQUISITE(S): MBA Core Curriculum
CLASS FORMAT: Cases and lectures
REQUIRED READINGS: Course Reader (cases, articles, book chapters, and lecture notes).
BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE:
A. Class Attendance and Participation: 25%
B. Case Write-Up: 25%
C. Group Project: 50%
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 strategy and management by the firm that engages in cross-border transactions, and the development and implementation of a strategic plan that will allow the firm to achieve its cross-border goals and objectives.
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.
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.
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.