International by Default: Markets, Trade, and Corporations

Decision-Making as a Process

Who Makes Decisions in Corporations? What is Strategy?

Bridging the Gap – From Your Decision to the CEO’s Decision

Students will obtain a better understanding of decision-making in MNEs. This simple topic – there is a boss who makes decisions – becomes increasingly complex when behavioral assumptions (e.g. limited rationality) and the efficiency-benefits of MNEs are relaxed. In the process of debugging such logics, students are being confronted with the question of “who they are”. While the course does not, and cannot, provide a final answer to this fundamental inquiry, it presents students with various ways in which it can be answered. These different answers, in turn, put different perspectives on decision-making. The freedom of choosing between different perspectives and therefore, free decision-making, constitutes the course’s main learning outcome.

Lectures present the basic ideas. PowerPoint slides and assigned readings will be made available by the instructor.

Your learning experience will be materially enhanced if you participate in class by asking questions, seeking clarifications, volunteering information, and responding to requests for discussion.

20% Class Participation

30% Mid-term

50% Final Exam