COURSE NUMBER: MBA299B-1
This course is cross-listed with the Evening-weekend MBA Program.
COURSE TITLE: Global Strategy & Multinational Enterprise
UNITS OF CREDIT: 2 units
INSTRUCTOR: Paul Tiffany
E-MAIL ADDRESS: tiffany@haas.berkeley.edu
CLASS MEETING DATES:
1. January 23
2. January 30
3. February 6
4. February 13
-- break on February 20-school holiday
5. February 27
-- break on March 6- am out of town this week
6. March 13
7. March 20
-- break on March 27- spring break week
8. April 3
9. April 10
10. April 17
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: Required readings consist of a Textbook and a Course Reader (cases, articles, and lecture notes). The text is D. Collins, International Strategy (Wiley, 2014). Collis offers a comprehensive review of the field in his book, incorporating the most recent scholarship along with countless examples. While an advanced treatment of the topic, it should nevertheless be useful as well to those who are encountering this topic for the first time. Other books that can be consulted are:
J. Cullen and K. Parboteeah, MULTINATIONAL MANAGEMENT: A STRATEGIC APPROACH,
6th Ed. (2010, Cengage)
C.A. de Kluyver, FUNDAMENTALS OF GLOBAL STRATEGY (2010, Business Expert Press)
P. Ghemawat, REDEFINING GLOBAL STRATEGY (2007, HBS Press)
C.W. Hill, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS, 9th Ed. (2012, McGraw Hill)
A. Inkpen and K. Ramaswamy, GLOBAL STRATEGY: CREATING AND SUSTAINING ADVANTAGE
ACROSS BORDERS (2006, Oxford University Press).
M.W. Peng, GLOBAL STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT, 3rd Ed. (2014, Cengage)
D. Spulber, GLOBAL COMPETITIVE STRATEGY (2007, Cambridge University Press)
A. Verbeke, INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS STRATEGY
(2009, Cambridge University Press)
The leading academic journal that covers this subject matter is the Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS); it can be consulted for a more research-based approach to topics in the course. For journalistic coverage, the Financial Times offers the best general daily review in English of stories concerning international business, while the NYT and the WSJ also have broad coverage of global events effecting US-based firms. All of these sources are available through the Long Library on campus. Additionally, there are several useful websites that track international business; sources will be provided in class.
BASIS FOR FINAL GRADE:
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 Presentation: 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 the syllabus; however, this project
will consist primarily of an in-class presentation, made on the last class of
the course. In order to facilitate progress, an early class meeting of
the semester will provide time for group formation and target firm selection,
and additional class time may also be devoted to work on this project.
The groups must be formed and a target firm tentatively selected by the fourth
class meeting.
CAREER FIELD:
For career field, the course would be useful for anyone considering working
abroad, or whose firm is currently competing in off-shore markets (or
anticipating to). As well, students working in domestic firms facing
international competitors should also find benefit from the course.
From Professor Paul Tiffany: “It never ceases to surprise me how parochial so many US-based firms are relative to the global economy and the opportunities that can be found there, so I also like to think the course is useful in bringing about a better understanding of the international economy and how it works from the perspective of a domestic US firm.”
ABSTRACT OF COURSE'S CONTENT AND OBJECTIVES:
GLOBAL STRATEGY AND MULTINATIONAL ENTERPRISE is a two-unit
cross-listed course in strategic 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 strategy that would allow the firm to achieve its
cross-border goals and objectives.
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. 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 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 in order to
successfully pass the course. In addition, several brief case write-ups
and a group project will be required of all students. Details on the
course assignments are provided at the end of this syllabus.
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; the Academy of
Management in Almaty, Kazakhstan, 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 an MBA from Harvard
University and 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 (Wiley 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), Zoetis (SE Asia), the Government of Thailand, 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, Prudential Assurance of Thailand, and MinSheng Bank (China), among many others.