Global Strategy

Business School

Course Study Guide 2010–11

Global Strategy BUSI1271

BUSI1271: Global Strategy 2010-11 2

Contents

1. WELCOME ....................................................................................................................................... 3

2. INTRODUCTION TO THE COURSE ............................................................................................... 4

2.1 AIMS ........................................................................................................................................................ 4

2.2 LEARNING OUTCOMES ............................................................................................................................. 4

2.2.1 Knowledge and understanding: ................................................................................................ 4

2.2.2 Intellectual Skills: .................................................................................................................... 5

2.2.3 Subject practical skills: ............................................................................................................ 5

2.2.4 Transferable skills: .................................................................................................................. 5

2.3 LEARNING AND TEACHING ACTIVITIES ..................................................................................................... 6

3. CONTACT DETAILS ........................................................................................................................ 7

4. COURSE CONTENT ......................................................................................................................... 8

4.1 SESSION READING ................................................................................................................................... 9

5. ASSESSMENT DETAILS ................................................................................................................ 10

5.1 SUMMARY OF ASSESSMENT .................................................................................................................... 10

5.2 DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF ASSESSMENT ............................................................................................... 10

5.3 SOME ADVICE FOR YOUR REFERENCE..................................................................................................... 11

5.4 CRITERIA THAT WILL BE USED FOR MARKING YOUR COURSEWORK........................................................ 13

5.4.1 Criteria for marking the group assignment ......................................................................... 13

5.4.2 Criteria for marking the individual assignment .................................................................... 13

6. OTHER DETAILS ........................................................................................................................... 14


1. Welcome

Welcome to the interesting, dynamic, and important world of global strategy! In today‟s global

economy, strategy without a global perspective hardly helps businesses; and this is particularly

true when a company competes in a global market. However, strategic thinking with a global

perspective is not only important for business managers but is also crucial for students of

business and management.

When I prepare this course handbook you are constantly in my mind as a highly motivated

student, who is eager and determined to learn as much as possible about global strategy. I

expect you to study this course very hard.

I hope you will find that the course study guide tells everything you need to know about the

course. But if you have any more questions or queries which are not covered in the guide, you

are welcome to approach your tutor who is there to help you.

Finally, I hope you enjoy the course and find it interesting, challenging, and rewarding!

Dr Hantang Qi

Course Leader


2. Introduction to the Course

Academic research on global strategy came of age during the 1980s, including work by

Michael Porter and Christopher Bartlett & Sumantra Ghoshal. Among the forces perceived to

bring about the globalization of competition were convergence in economic systems and

technological change, especially in information technology, that facilitated and required the

coordination of a multinational firm‟s strategy on a worldwide scale.

Global strategy deals with the question of how firms can compete in a global environment.

Issues considered central to the study of strategic management in a global context cover a wide

range including the nature of global advantage, strategic alliances, competing in emerging

markets, international corporate governance, global knowledge management, and ethical issues

in international business. Due to time limit this course will focus on how firms can strategically

and globally compete in various functional areas. By integrating academic research with

practical examples and case studies the course informs students and managers of global

business about a diverse set of important strategic issues.

2.1 Aims

1. To help students put strategy into perspective relative to other areas of organisational

activity and demonstrate their interconnectedness within the whole.

2. To provide students with the analytical tools needed for the evaluation and comprehension

of the extent to which firms achieve strategic success in comparison with their strategic

objectives.

3. To help managers and potential managers add value to their organisations through the

acquisition of management competencies.

4. To provide participants with knowledge of the tools of strategy formulation.

5. To provide participants with the analytical skills required in order to choose strategic

directions from a range of options.

6. To provide participants with the opportunity to think critically and argue cogently about

strategy implementation.

7. To provide students with the opportunity to analyse and reflect upon organisational

structures and cultures and their degree of strategic suitability or „fit‟.

8. To provide an understanding of various business functions in a global context from a

strategic perspective at both a conceptual and a practical level.

2.2 Learning Outcomes

After successfully completing the course, students will be able to demonstrate knowledge,

understanding, and skills detailed below.

2.2.1 Knowledge and understanding:

Upon completion of your studies you should be able to

display an in-depth knowledge of comparative models of Strategic management

identify and evaluate organisational core competencies

apply the tools of environmental scanning

identify the key success factors of an organisation

evaluate different approaches to strategy formulation


evaluate competitive forces in the marketplace

analyse and evaluate the organisation‟s portfolio of products or services

identify types of competitive advantage and sustainability

relate stages of industry life cycle to particular strategic responses

show how value can be created through diversification

identify the entry modes of international expansion

appreciate the nature of business strategy and the dynamics of its development

reflect in a critical but constructive way on the strategic directions adopted by your firm

understand global strategy in functional areas of marketing, manufacturing, human

resources accounting and finance.

2.2.2 Intellectual Skills:

BREADTH OF OUTLOOK

The subject matter by its very nature means that you will:

develop an understanding of the nature of the business in context

appreciate the importance of a strategic approach in business decision making

identify key concepts of importance to firms from a general strategic management

perspective

explore the links between corporate business and operational strategies.

WISDOM

To take a reflective and reasoned approach to the subject matter

To take a rational and intellectually substantiated approach to learning

To value global strategy and its contribution to the firm‟s performance and competitive

position.

PERSONAL EFFECTIVENESS

To manage the learning relationships developed with peers and academic facilitators

To manage time in order to participate fully in a supported learning community

To develop a responsible approach to the implied learning contract that forms the basis

of your learning environment.

2.2.3 Subject practical skills:

To diagnose an organisation‟s strategic health and offer solutions for sustainable

improvement

To formulate global strategy for functional areas in a structured way.

2.2.4 Transferable skills:

Skills of group communication

The ability to apply conceptual tools drawn from other courses

Skills of learning how to learn

The enhancement of cognitive skills and report writing

Skills of case analysis and evaluation

Applying a systemic outlook towards organisational processes.


2.3 Learning and teaching activities

The learning experience for this course will be a conventional one. A programme of lectures

and seminars centred around case study material and supported by a main text book and

WebCT support. You will be introduced to the key concepts and models used in the

various stages of strategic management while participating in a multi-cultured learning

community to undertake case study analysis.


3. Contact Details Room Email address Phone number

Course Leader

Dr Hantang Qi QA208 [email protected] 020 8331 9867

Admin Programme Coordinator

Sonia Mankad QM245 [email protected] 0208 331 8815

Please see your programme handbook for more detail.


4. Course Content Week

beginning

Session Title and Description Reading or Preparation

20-Sep-10 1 Welcome to the course

27-Sep-10 2 Lecture Global Strategy in Globalization Inkpen & Ramaswamy

(2005) Chap 1 Seminar Initial meetings, group allocation

4-Oct-10 3 Lecture Strategy of Global Business Inkpen & Ramaswamy

Chap 2 Seminar The Watch Industry

11-Oct-10 4 Lecture Country Evaluation and Selection Inkpen & Ramaswamy

(2005) Chap 2, Daniels,

Radebaugh and Sullivan

(2011) Chap 12

Seminar Burger King Beefs up Global Operations

18-Oct-10 5 Lecture Exporting and Importing Daniels, Radebaugh and

Sullivan (2011) Chap 13 Seminar A Little Electronic Magic at Alibaba.com

25-Oct-10 6 Lecture Foreign Market Entry Peng (2006) Chap 6,

Daniels, Radebaugh and

Sullivan (2011) Chap 14 Seminar Will American Airlines‟ North Atlantic Joint Venture Fly?

1-Nov-10 7 Lecture Global Strategic Alliances Inkpen & Ramaswamy

(2005) Chap 4, Peng

(2006) Chap 7 Seminar Outsourcing Alliances and Competitive Risk

8-Nov-10 8 Lecture Organization of Global Business Inkpen & Ramaswamy

(2005) Chap 3, Daniels,

Radebaugh and Sullivan

(2011) Chap 15

Seminar The Search for the Best and Brightest

15-Nov-10 9 Lecture Global Strategy for Marketing Daniels, Radebaugh and

Sullivan (2011) Chap 16 Seminar Avon Calls on Foreign Markets

22-Nov -10 10 Lecture Global Strategy for Manufacturing and Supply Chain Daniels, Radebaugh and

Sullivan (2011) Chap 17 Seminar Ventus and Business Process Outsourcing

29-Nov -10 11 Lecture Global Strategy for Accounting Daniels, Radebaugh and

Sullivan (2011) Chap 18 Seminar The Challenges of Listing on Global Capital Markets and the

Move to Adopt International Financial Reporting Standards

6-Dec-10 12 Lecture Global Strategy for Finance Daniels, Radebaugh and

Sullivan (2011) Chap 19 Seminar Dell Mercosur: Getting Real in Brazil

13-Dec-10 13 Lecture Global Strategy for Human Resource Management Daniels, Radebaugh and

Sullivan (2011) Chap 20 Seminar Tel-Comm-Tek (TCT)


4.1 Session Reading Inkpen, A. C. and K. Ramaswamy (2005) Global Strategy: Creating and Sustaining Advantage across Borders,

Oxford University Press. Oxford.

Peng, M. W. (2006) Global Strategy, Thomson South-Western.

Daniels, J. D., L. H. Radebaugh and D. P. Sullivan (2011) International Business: Environments and Operations

(13th

ed.), Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Prentice Hall.


5. Assessment Details

The assessment is in two parts. When we first meet I will put you into group of four if I can

with as much of a multicultural mix as I can sensibly manage. You will then arrange when best

to meet on a regular basis and go about analyzing the MBA market in the UK and two other

countries of your choice which will be the subject of your research and the first assignment.

The second assignment is individually based. While you are not discouraged to meet and

discuss the assignment, you are reminded not to plaigiarize and/or help others plagiarize. Please

refer to your programme handbook for a detailed definition of plagiarism.

PART1: This is a group assignment involving the analysis of the MBA market in the UK and

abroad. You ar given the UK market but will select the markets of two other foreign countries.

The market analysis is the first step of setting up a privately-run business school based in

London but operated globally with an initial focus on the two countries of your choice. The

indicative length of your market analysis is 2500 words.

PART 2: This is an individual assignment involving a business plan aimed to convince

potential investors and to help you actually setting up the business school. However, the

potential investors are not given, therefore at the beginning of the plan you should indicate who

are the likely investors and how you will approach them. The indicative length of your business

plan will be 2500 words.

5.1 Summary of assessment

Assessment Title Weight

towards

final grade

Pass

Mark

Length Due Date Return

Date

Header Sheet

#

Group market analysis 30% 50% 2,500 18.11.10 3PM 15.12.10 172413

Individual business plan 70% 2,500 12.01.11 3PM 02.02.11 172414

5.2 Detailed description of assessment

You are an MBA Director of a business school in a UK university. Having worked for about 20

years in the UK educational system, you now want to challenge yourself by setting up a

privately run business school headquartered in London with a global orientation. The global

orientation can initially mean to recruit students from abroad with a focus on one or two foreign

countries; later it can extend to setting up branches/subsidiaries in the appropriate overseas

markets. Although the planned business school can be designed to run programmes at all levels

(foundation courses, undergraduate and postgraduate), you wish the new business school to

focus on MBA only.

You face with many challenges and it is your task to consider these challenges (what are they

and how you plan to overcome them). To begin with, you have no money and therefore need to

find and convince potential investors. Of course, you produce the two assignments to pass the

course, but only if you treat the assessment as a real life business will you have a chance to get

good results espeically because your business plan will be assessed mainly in terms of

creativity, feasibility and practicality. If you treat the exercise as real, then you should know

your two assignments will serve to convince the potential investors and to guide your actions in

the process of setting up the business school. In other words, you produce the market analysis

and business plan for the investors and for yourself.


Take the Executive Summary of the second assignment for example, to be creative, this should

be a concise “elevator pitch”, not a summary of the business plan. In one or two pages, it

should convey the market opportunity and the uniquely compelling features of the business that

will help it meet that opportunity. The executive summary should excite the investor or the

lender or whoever can be helpful to the new business and make them want to turn to the next

page. If it doesn‟t, you, the entrepreneur, might lack marketing or writing skills.

You are required to write an analysis of the MBA market in the UK and two other countries of

your choice for the potential investors outlining the following: (1) An analysis of the MBA

programmes run in the public universities; (2) An analysis of the MBA programmes run in the

private institutions. I expect you to do an environmental analysis. Paragraphs of miscellaneous

facts from which the implications are not derived are far from enough. The conclusion of your

analysis should convincingly justify there is a need for establishing a new prvitely-run business

school.

You are also required to produce a workable business plan for setting up the new business

school. You may find that what you have written in your first assignment is relevant for your

second assignment but you should only mention the key points without repeating the details.

From reading your business plan I want to know how you will turn the idea of setting up the

new business school into reality taking into account many practical factors. Hence you must do

research. Lists of factors to check are not enough.

In the process of your research, you may find some interesting materials, but please do not

attach them to your assignments unless you feel absolutely necessary. By “necessary” I mean

the attached materials should help the reader further understand the important points that you

are trying to illustrate. Careless and unnecessary attachments will not do you any good in

achieving good marks.

5.3 Some advice for your reference

As this is an MBA-level assessment I do not intend to give you a set format for the two written

assignments – you are expected to know this already or if you don‟t know you are expected to

have the ability to acquire the knowledge yourself. For example, Googling “business plan” or

“business proposal” will give you some ideas of what a business plan/proposal should look

like. You need to make sure your coursework is written in a clearly-structured way covering all

that needs to be covered.

You decide what needs to covered as a matter of research. The advice given below on how to

do well in these assignments is for your reference only – you decide to use or not to use it and

you decide what points are relevan or irrelevant to the first or second assignment.

Phase 1

You are advised to mentally locate the new business school in its environment. This is where

you set the scene and so you should:

Offer a brief overview of the School (from your own design and research).

Put the School in its context, which is international or global but based in London. At

this point you will start to use the various analytical tools available to tell me about the


environmental opportunities and constraints operating on the School and its Industry

(the MBA market). PESTEL is the usual device. You should also analyse the

characteristics of the industry in which the School has to compete and here you should

employ market segmentation analysis but above all I would expect to see Five Forces

Analysis carried out in some depth.

You could emerge from this phase with a partial SWOT, that is a specification of Opportunities

and Threats.

Phase 2

Now you focus on the school by conducting an internal analysis. Your objective here is to draw

out the capabilities that the new school nees to develop and to do so using well chosen

analytical instruments and models. So consider the following:

Should the school follow a clear Generic Strategy (Generic Strategies)?

How should the school respond to its markets (Market Segmentation)?

What and how knowledge based resources should the school acquire (Core

Competencies)?

How can the school excel at managing value adding activities (Value Chain Analysis)?

If the school initially wants to be associated with a larger established institution (an

option you can consider) what part of the product or service portfolio should it be

responsible for (The Boston Matrix)?

In analyzing/designing the school using these instruments (in brackets) you try to draw out the

Key Capabilities that should be acquired/owned by the school within limits. Your aim is to

match the KC‟s (key capabilities ) of the school against the KSF‟s (Key success Factors) of the

industry (derived from analysis in Phase One), i.e. what typical companies in the industry must

excel at to survive.

You should emerge from Phase Two with a valid view of the school‟s level of strategic success

and what it has to do to achieve that success. A good way of closing Phase Two is with the

remaining half of your SWOT analysis, that is a specification of the Strengthes and

Weaknesses.

Somewhere in this Phase you will need to appraise/budget the school‟s financial situation using

well established ratios of outcome and resource utilization to clearly indicate the number of

years needed for the school to break-even. Actually it is important to associate all activities

with resource allocations. As the financial resources are limited, you may wish to think of other

options, like partnership or alliances, in addition to a single new entity.

Phase 3

Phase 3 is about Strategic Options over the foreseeable future; what would you offer? Are you

sure that your proposals clearly emerge from your analysis at Phases 1 and 2, and make sure

they are feasible and can be resourced and implemented.

Take the time to learn how to write a business plan. You can start with any relevant site; the

site mentioned here is just an example: http://www.businessplanmaster.com/how-to-write-a-

business-plan.html.


5.4 Criteria that will be used for marking your coursework 5.4.1 Criteria for marking the group assignment

We will look for clear evidence that the authors have done extensive and in-depth research on

the MBA markets in the UK and abroad. We will also look for quality analysis that can be

applied in the business plan.

Marks

allocated

Criteria

20% Focus

Does the assignment focus on the given task? Does the assignment stay within and fulfil the

topic parameters?

30% Synthesis

Does the assignment bring together the literature in a significant manner that addresses the

given task?

30% Soundness

Does the assignment indicate a comprehensive understanding of the topic area and literature

discussed?

10% Clarity of structure

Is the assignment well organised and logically constructed to achieve synthesis while being

mindful of the needs of the reader?

10% Mechanical Soundness

Is the essay clearly written, spell checked and grammatically sound and referenced

appropriately?

5.4.2 Criteria for marking the individual assignment

The viability of the business and the likelihood of its success in the manner proposed are

crucial in evaluating your plan. We will also consider the writing skills and attention to details.

Marks

allocated

Criteria

20% Creativity

Is there any new idea in the business plan that is derived from a sound analysis of readings, a

logical, coherent argument and a spark of imagination?

30% Feasibility

Does the plan clearly describe the problem the business is solving or need it is meeting for

potential students, and then propose a solution? Will the solution actually address that

problem/need? Are the financial projections both promising and realistic?

30% Practicality

Are there sound and practical ways of doing things clearly indicated for programme

design, tuition fees, promotion, personal selling, publicity or advertising; and

importantly for association with a good UK university to use it‟s degree?

10% Clarity of structure

Is the plan well organised and logically constructed to achieve synthesis while being mindful

of the needs of the reader?

10% Mechanical Soundness

Is the plan clearly written, spell checked and grammatically sound and referenced

appropriately?


6. Other Details

The majority of information relevant to you while you study at the University has been brought

together into your programme handbook. Please refer to your programme handbook for any

further information you might require including methods of submitting assignments, advice and

administrative procedures.

Global Strategy

Documents

global perspective

global context

global market

global environment

global strategy deals

managers of global business

global knowledge management

course handbook