040278 UK Small Business Economics (BA) (2021S)

This course is for bachelor students and covers selected topics in industrial organization. This course aims to investigate the challenges small firms face in their business environment. In particular, we will discuss what kind of strategic actions small firms implement to compete against potential and current rival firms. We also analyze, how these firms are able to establish entry barriers to remain profitable. Further, we explore small firms’ strategic decision-making with respect to product differentiation, pricing behavior, brand management, efficient negotiation management, employee policy, as well as delegation of processes.

After discussing firms’ strategic behavior theoretically, students will apply the theoretical knowledge and solve one business case. They will investigate one important strategic decision of a small firm. They will contact an existing company of their choice to investigate to what degree the theoretically defined determinants apply to the decision-making process of that firm and what potential other influencing factors prevail. This type of analysis requires course participants to engage in interviews with employees, which hold relevant decision-making competencies within the firm.

The intended goal of the course is to learn about strategic decision-making processes by means of practical examples, namely an existing company. Furthermore, the respective strategic decision should be embedded, discussed, and evaluated using a microeconomic framework. For doing this, econometric, experimental and theoretic work from current economic literature – particularly from the applied industrial organization and strategic management literature – will be discussed. In this way, different methods as well as their application are explored. Eventually, this approach will yield a well-founded result that can be used as a starting-point for a discussion during the presentations.