040562 VK IM: International Strategy & Organization (E) (2011W)

A. Course Contents & Goals: This course is concerned with the evolution of multinational firm and the formation of the network structure of MNCs. The course will consist of lecturers, presentations, and case analysis. The students are expected to develop skills in evaluating international competitive strategies in multicultural environment. Additionally, various forms of market entry for multinational firms (e.g., licensing, strategic alliances, mergers & acquisitions, consortia, franchising and clusters) will also be briefly discussed.

The objective of this course is to familiarize students with a broad range of theoretical and practical perspectives on the strategy and organization of multinational firms.

B. Case Presentation: The students have to form groups of 4-6 members and select a case to be presented in the class. The presentation (20-30 minutes) should focus on the key points of the case and the discussion questions. Number of students in a group and time allowed for each presentation may be adjusted according to the actual number of students registered for the course.

C. Case Reports: Each student has to write three case reports of approximately 1000 words each. A student cannot use the same case for presentation and case report. This is an individual exercise not a group-work and each student is expected to use his/her own analytical abilities to write the case reports. All reports will be passed through a strict plagiarism check. The case reports should be electronically submitted (by email and e-learning platform) latest by December 15, 2011.

D. Public Lectures: It is a regular practice at our chair that we invite senior management of reputed companies to deliver lecturers on strategy and organization of their firms. All students registered for this course are expected to attend the public lectures to be held during the winter semester 2011. These lectures provide students an excellent opportunity to directly interact with the real-world business strategists and discuss the application of theoretical knowledge. In addition, the students may earn bonus marks (to be accounted for final grading) by attending these lectures. The schedule of lecturers will be announced later during the semester. The students should visit the following webpage for updates in this regard. http://im.univie.ac.at/windsperger/im-public-lectures/?no_cache=1