2015/2016

2015/2016

DM270

SECS-P/08 (ECONOMIA E GESTIONE DELLE IMPRESE)

DIPARTIMENTO DI SCIENZE ECONOMICHE E AZIENDALI

INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS - ECONOMIA E MANAGEMENT INTERNAZIONALE

PERCORSO COMUNE

1°

Secondo Semestre (22/02/2016 - 21/05/2016)

6

44 ore di attività frontale

INGLESE

ORALE

HAGEN BIRGIT (titolare) - 4.5 CFU
LIESCH PETER WAYNE - 1.5 CFU

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Starting and managing an international business is a risky albeit potentially rewarding undertaking. The complexity and challenges – as well as the potential payoffs – which entrepreneurs and business managers face vary across different countries and are even greater when their business ventures are international in scope.

This course addresses the issues specific to international venturing including search and identification of opportunities in foreign markets, logics of international business expansion, and international market(ing) strategies.

After taking this class, you should be able to:

· Discuss the importance of international entrepreneurship and the global trends affecting the emergence of international new ventures (INVs)

· Analyze the conditions for entrepreneurship in various countries

· Identify and analyze the challenges of cross-cultural issues related to international expansion

· Identify possible sources and characteristics of viable business opportunties in an international context

· Develop sustainable International strategies which respond to potentially different country requirements

· Integrate functional areas into strategic business problems

· Identify the types of human, information, and financial resources required for launching and managing an international venture

· Foresee challenges of developing a business concept in geographically dispersed, international teams.

There will be three routes to obtaining the course grade, all of which have the objective to apply the concepts learned in class to a real-life context, stimulate discussion and enrich the class by providing information that is going beyond frontal lectures and readings.

1) Participation in the X-Culture-project

One of the main objectives of this class is to raise your awareness of the global business environment and cultural and institutional differences, to identify their influence on international activity and to design viable and sustainable international strategies. Participation in the X-Culture project (see www.x-culture.org¸ https://www.facebook.com/XCultureProject) is done with these objectives in mind. You, jointly with your global virtual team, will be asked to conduct research on the environment in a particular country and discuss the implications of your findings from the viewpoint of the firm operating or contemplating an entry into international markets.
Last year’s colleagues were extremely successful - read here more about their results and awards. http://news.unipv.it/?p=5445

2) Hot topics in International Entrepreneurship – theoretical discussion and presentation of a case study

This option requires an in-depth study of a hot-topic in International Entrepreneurship. Here you will start with an overview of extant scholarly research (articles, books etc), which summarizes and and critically comments the State-of-the Art of our knowledge. You will then compare and match theory with a practical part, a case study which you consider to be appropriate to illustrate, confirm or contradict, the current knowledge on the topic. These projects will be developed and presented individually.

3) EU Erasmus project - MARCIEE – Marketing communication innovativeness of European Entrepreneurs (jointly with Universities from Germany, France, Iceland, Italy – Trento, Spain, The Netherlands, Finland, Lithuania, Hungary)

The project’s overall objective is to help European entrepreneurs set up and grow their ventures. The focus in on the exploitation side of their businesses, ie marketing and business model innovations and digitalization in particular.
A selected group of 9 students will take part to activities at home (eg case studies, development of a survey) and the international project week, this year to be held in April (tbc) in Vilnius, Lithuania. Travel, accomodation and subsistence of the project week are covered by the EU. Selection will be based on a „Call for Application“ which will be open to all Master Courses but MIBE students will have priority over other Master courses.
This year’s project focus will be defined early October; if interested please check this page for updates and application dates.
Read about your colleagues’ experiences and achievements with MARCIEE here http://news.unipv.it/?p=5249; see also http://www.uni-kassel.de/fb07/institute/ibwl/personen-fachgebiete/wagner-prof-dr/marciee.html

Frontal lectures, project work: group-wise and individually, class presentations and discussion

Class participation consists of both regular attendance and active participation during lectures. The class will benefit from your questions, viewpoints and reports of relevant experience you may have had.
Teamwork is very important in today’s business world and as the research shows, many born global firms (INVs) are started by a team of individuals. Working in a group can be an extremely rewarding as well as an extremely frustrating experience. You should put forth a full effort on all the group projects considering that other people’s grades may be affected by it.

Ghauri P., Cateora P. (2014), International Marketing,McGraw Hill Education

Zucchella A., Scabini P. (2007), International Entrepreneurship, Palgrave MacMillan

More readings and project material will be provided in due time.

Evaluation will be based on the project outcome and the final group report and presentation. Class participation and Peer-to-peer assessment will be considered. Peer-to-peer evaluations will be used to have the group’s viewpoint on the individual member’s cooperation and contribution.

Academic conduct:
All written assignments (individual/group) must be your original work. Academic misconduct by a student includes knowingly misrepresenting the source of any academic work. Any work you hand in will be check through plagarism software. If an instance of academic misconduct is suspected, the student will be informed of the infraction and the penalty to be imposed.

Non-attending students are evaluated on the basis of a written exam (see material in Readings, course material) and individual case report and its presentation/discussion.

This year, we are happy and honored to host Professor Peter W. Liesch from the UQ Business School, University of Queensland, Australia, one of the Top Universities worldwide, as Visiting Professor.
Peter Liesch is a very renowned scholar in the International Business/International Entrepreneurship area and an excellent teacher. View more informaton here https://www.business.uq.edu.au/staff/peter-liesch