International business strategy

Business across borders offers both challenges and opportunities. This module provides a framework for analysing decisions made by firms in an international context. While the foundations of the course are concepts developed in economics, they will be combined with (and challenged by) insights from strategy, international finance, marketing, human resource management, and other areas. The final aim of the course is to provide you with a critical understanding of whether and to what extent the ways economists have studied and modeled firms’ internationalization decisions offer any support in real world decision making.

The module will address the following key questions: What are the specific challenges associated with international operations? How should firms tackle these challenges depending on their own competitive advantages as well as the characteristics of the countries and industries in which they operate?

Objectives and learning outcomes of the module

The module analyses the opportunities firms face in the global economy. By the end of the course you will master economic concepts that are useful for the analysis of and decision making on the internationalization activities of firms.

At the end of this course students should be able to:

• Analyze the issues pertaining to foreign direct investment (FDI)
• Analyze the advantages and the disadvantages of the different modes of firm internationalization
• Analyze in detail the role of multinational firms and the issues related to outsourcing and offshoring in emerging countries.

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