Course Description
This workshop induces a critical undertaking of key drivers that affect strategy formulation, structural development, and political behaviours within the domain of global business. Scientific innovation will be seen as relevant to state security, the nation state system, and global governance as impacted by technical materials, scientific elements, and practices. Students will be exposed to the concepts of political science, such as conservatism, liberalism, and realism and will be confronted with interdisciplinary discussions, such as role of the global enterprise, value chains, economic and military power. This will lead to reconceptualization of the connections between science and the politics of business. Having introduced students to the challenges of globalization and its diverse perspectives, the course goes onto explore why businesses fail in global markets due to lack of awareness of complexities and placing too much importance on passion and not on strategic analysis and market fit.
Prereq: Level at least 3A Science and Business students
Purpose of the Course
The purpose of this course is to enable students to critically assess challenges in internationalization and scientific innovation, giving students a practical perspective on how global business is intertwined with technological progress of a country. It addresses the implications for science and technology-based firms competing in the global business environment. It raises questions related to competitiveness of firms on the global stage addressing issues such as expanding innovation across borders from four perspectives:
- Global politics of science and technology
- Innovation that is of niche value to countries while being culturally specific.
- Enterprise development in terms of sustainability, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder analysis, country cultural fit in terms of Hofstede's six dimensions of culture, and accountability.
Learning Objectives
Upon successful completion of this course, the students should be able to:
- Analyze complex global science and business issues and strategies.
- Apply the fundamental economic concepts in international business.
- Use and analyze online data sources.
- Understand alternative theories and applications in international business.
- Become familiar with language of international business.
- Apply theories, models, and concepts to contemporary issues relating to:
- trade promotion,
- the World Trade Organization & Supply Chains,
- strategy of international business,
- organization of international business, and
- globalization operations
Course Delivery
This is a fully on-line, synchronous, and asynchronous course. Students are required to attend all synchronous sessions. You will require Internet access (high speed recommended) and a computer that enables connection to outside Web sites (flexible firewall), has multimedia playback capabilities (video/audio), and can run a recent version of Internet Explorer, Safari, or Firefox. An audio headset and microphone for computer are required; a Web cam is optional.