BMGT20050 Business Across Borders

Academic Year 2023/2024

"Business Across Borders" module is a second-level (year 2) introductory module on international business, management, and culture. This introductory module focuses on the challenges and opportunities associated with organizational management and business strategy in the global environment. Business Across Borders is a course that is essential for every organization be it a small and medium enterprise or large multinationals operating both domestically or across borders. Students will learn to understand the key Global and International issues involved in doing business on the Global stage.

The course focuses on integrating and applying the basic elements of management, culture and international strategic management and specialized contextualised strategies required for emerging economies and for international new ventures, including modes of entry and methods used to analyse and assess culture and political risk in developed and developing countries. The course will cover most issues for any businessperson to understand the complexities of doing business overseas and the ways to enter these markets and how culture plays an exceedingly impactful role in deciding between success and failure. Students will gain a general overview of the process and effect of internationalization in contemporary business, along with an introduction to theories, concepts and skills relevant to managing effectively in today’s global environment.

Through lively, topical, and accessible examples the course will try to integrate international management, culture, and strategies to allow students to conceptualize business operations globally. This module introduces two core perspectives, the institution-based view and the resource-based view. The course also includes numerous interesting and diverse examples of the intersection of business and culture to motivate students to read and learn. Students will be challenged to integrate the knowledge they have gained from other business core courses and apply their accumulated knowledge to business case studies. Students will engage in active research and analytical problem solving related to managing in the international environment and will frequently be called upon to brief their findings to the class. Discussion and explanation are the key learning skills.

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Curricular information is subject to change

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of this module, students should be able to:

1. Understand and assess the drivers and consequences of globalization; compare and contrast different political, legal, and economic systems and technological forces; understand and appreciate the need for ethics, culture and social responsibility in international business.

2. Describe and apply the concept of foreign direct investment and global and regional integration in the context of global business.

3. Integrate and apply the basic elements of international strategic management and the specialized strategies required for emerging economies and for international new ventures, including the modes of entry and methods used to analyze and assess economic and political risk in developed and developing countries.

Indicative Module Content:

1. Understand and assess the drivers and consequences of globalization, its impact on specific regions, and the emerging concerns about its influences on countries around the world.

2. Compare and contrast different political, legal, and economic systems and technological forces and their impact on international business.

3. Understand and appreciate the need for ethics and social responsibility in international business, and the growing pressures on firms to act in an ethically and socially responsible manner in their global business operations.

4. Explain and understand the challenges of trading internationally, investing abroad directly and dealing with foreign exchange rates.

5. Describe the challenges and apply the most important elements of entering foreign markets.

6. Compare and contrast the modes of entry and the basic choices for organizing firms involved in international business and describe the conditions under which specific entry modes and organizational structure are most effective.

7. Integrate and apply the basic elements of international strategic management, including the pressures and cost/benefits of strategies that emphasize global integration versus local adaptation; describe the specialized strategies required for emerging economies and for international new ventures.

8. Describe methods used to analyze and assess political risk and how MNCs apply those methods as they attempt to manage the level of political risk in developed and developing countries, appreciate the broader efforts firms make to manage their relations with host governments, and discuss the various options for managing alliances and joint ventures, especially those in which host governments are involved.

9. Understand the importance of marketing and supply chain management in global business.

10. Understand the tools and techniques used to provide motivation and incentives for employees across cultures, including compensation, benefits, work teams, and other approaches.

11. Understand and describe the practices for recruiting, selecting, training and deploying employees internationally, including the challenges of expatriate placement and repatriation.

Student Effort Hours: 
Student Effort Type Hours
Lectures

24

Practical

24

Autonomous Student Learning

70

Total

118

Approaches to Teaching and Learning:
Teaching and learning strategies for this module include a range of activities to accommodate and support different abilities, skills, learning styles that allow every student from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds to participate and to achieve success.
In this module, cultural diversity is the norm rather than the exception. Culture is characterised by shared patterns of behaviours and interactions, cognitive constructs and affective understandings, which are learned through a process of socialization . Hence my teaching and learning strategies are designed through student’s interaction and communication within and across cultural groups in the class.
Group work and collaborative learning in this module are to facilitate a deeper understanding of the issues discussed during the lecture and to develop intercultural attitudes and competence, through sharing of experiences and integration among students.
All collaborative work in this module is done through group assignments of international groups of three to five students. To maximise students’ opportunities to get to know more students from the same class, two/three different sets of international groups are created. International research confirms that intercultural learning has often happened as a result of mixed cohorts of students studying together.
When students had to work in mixed groups, it encouraged them to think comprehensively – appreciating the perspectives and input of students from other cultures, with different language and cultural backgrounds. It encourages them to learn how to communicate and collaborate with people from different cultures particularly when they are challenged with complex tasks or questions.
This module is structured around a series of lectures across 12 weeks, class debate and, where relevant, case studies and video materials. Class participation is an essential component of the design of this course. All students will be expected to engage in class discussion and debate in order to facilitate the formation of their critical judgements. Students are expected to have their name cards in the class during the sessions.


Class participation

Class participation is an essential component of the design of this course. All students will be expected to engage in-class discussion and debate in order to facilitate the formation of their critical judgments. All students will be expected to read recommended case studies and chapters from the textbook prior to the commencement of class. All students will be expected to work in groups on different group assignments during the semester.

Major Group Project Specification

Your group will prepare a report, including recommendations, for an actual company’s overall entry strategy into a foreign market. Your strategy should include attention to the social, political, and economic factors of the country you propose entering, the entry and organizational strategies the company should advance, including potential alliances with local firms. This analysis should integrate the readings and cases for the module in the context of the actions of a specifically chosen firm. This analysis will be summarised in an approximately 25-30 pages report, and you will present the findings in a short 25-30-minute presentation during the final weeks of class.

Group Presentations

Groups will make presentations in class on assigned Case Studies from the textbook. These presentations will be made by groups on a weekly basis and analyzed by groups in the class.

Individual Final Exam-Essay

The evaluation will assess your knowledge of the course content. The questions will focus on the concept and tools discussed in the class and covered in the associated texts. You will be expected to support your answers with examples. This is a 2500-word essay.

 
Requirements, Exclusions and Recommendations

Not applicable to this module.


Module Requisites and Incompatibles
Not applicable to this module.
 
Assessment Strategy  
Description Timing Open Book Exam Component Scale Must Pass Component % of Final Grade
Continuous Assessment: Individual Class Participation, Homework Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded No

10

Presentation: Groups presentations of assigned case studies. Throughout the Trimester n/a Graded Yes

20

Group Project: Group Project and Project Presentation Coursework (End of Trimester) n/a Graded Yes

40

Essay: Final Exam-Essay Week 12 n/a Graded Yes

30


Carry forward of passed components
Yes
 
Remediation Type Remediation Timing
Repeat Within Two Trimesters
Please see Student Jargon Buster for more information about remediation types and timing. 
Feedback Strategy/Strategies

• Group/class feedback, post-assessment
• Peer review activities

How will my Feedback be Delivered?

Group/class feedback will be provided by the end of the semester.

The essential textbooks for this module:

M. Peng, and K. Meyer. International Business, 4th Ed., Cengage, 2023. Print copies are available in the UCD library. Available as an e-book, and available in the campus bookshop.

Supplementary textbook:

1. F. Luthans, and J.P. Doh. International Business: Culture, Strategy, and Behavior, 10th Ed., McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2018. Print copies are available in the UCD library. Available as a 3-user e-book: http://librarym.ucd.ie/record=b2549235~S1, and it is available in the campus bookshop.
2. Charles Hill. International Business: Competing in the Global Marketplace, 13th Ed., McGraw Hill, 2021. Print copies are available in the UCD library.


Timetabling information is displayed only for guidance purposes, relates to the current Academic Year only and is subject to change.
 
Autumn
     
Small Group Offering 1 Week(s) - Autumn: All Weeks Wed 15:00 - 16:50
Autumn
     
Spring
     
Small Group Offering 1 Week(s) - 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33 Thurs 11:00 - 12:50
Spring