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The increasing pace of globalization and technological developments of the past decade have opened up new avenues through which firms can create competitive advantage. This course deals with the strategic challenges managers in multinational corporations (MNCs) face in such environments and provides students with an understanding of Strategy and Strategic Management in an international context. Besides discussing general principles of strategy-making from different viewpoints, the course puts a special emphasize on the following issues that I perceive as paramount for contemporary Strategic Management in the globally operating firms:

• Diversification strategies
• International alliances and inter-firm cooperation
• Global strategic technology and innovation managament
• Building and profiting from multinational subsidiary networks

The course is specifically tailored to enable students to:

• …understand the content of strategic and international management theories;
• …apply different concepts of strategy, including the way strategy is formulated;
• …analyze data about a company and how to build a strategic argument;
• …balance local adaptation versus global integration imperatives;
• …understand the preconditions and challenges linked to managing innovation in a global context;
• …reflect on the basic principles and mechanisms of global strategy;
• …identify and assess the costs and benefits of building and maintaining operational flexibility in multinational networks; and
• …exploit operational flexibility potentials in order to profit from environmental uncertainty in international markets.

The course will be taught in distance mode, requiring students to be generally available and online (i.e. having a proper internet connection) during course hours.

The course will be taught in distance mode, combining synchronous and asynchronous lecture parts with virtual groupwork and self-study components.

In addition, we will invite leading consulting firms and guest speakers in a virtual classroom-setting to provide first-hand insights into their daily business of strategy building as a means to pronounce the practical applicability of the presented theories, tools, and frameworks in real-life business settings.

A reading list with core (mandatory) and supplementary (optional) readings will be provided to students, in an effort to give them a comprehensive picture of what global strategy is all about and to encourage them to develop a deeper and more contextualized understanding of those topics or concepts they consider particularly interesting and valuable.

Overall, students will be assessed on:

• Their knowledge of the content domain of Global Strategic Management discusses in the (a-)synchronous teaching sessions;
• Their ability to understand the strategic issues in the cases discussed, to use appropriate analytical techniques, and to marshal the relevant data in their individual and groupwork assignments.

The final grade consists of individual and group components and will be based on the following elements:

• Participation and responsiveness in synchronous online teaching sessions (10%)
• Individual assignments (40%)
• Groupwork assignments (40%)
• Peer evaluation (10%)