Contemporary Issues in International Business

Catalog description

Investigation of issues in international business practice interpreted from the foundations of the social sciences. Topics will be chosen from contemporary issues in global business and economics. I B 404 Contemporary Issues in International Business (3) I B 404 enables students to study the most current topics in international and global business from the framework of the social science issues that form the framework for understanding, business decisions. The course provides structured experiences in library research and data gathering, techniques, and builds the habit of reading the international business press daily and analyzing it weekly. The class is typically organized around 3 integrative business topics that represent a spectrum of questions important to business. These include questions about finance and economics in international business, questions about people and organizations in an international environment, and questions about products (development, production, distribution of goods and services) in international business contexts. This is not an introductory course, and as such, the topics chosen should be substantive and nuanced. For example, one topic might be how the structure of franchises must be modified to reflect the property rights in a particular country, and how those property rights laws impact the value of the franchise. The second topic might be how the internationalization of the structure and role of Boards of Directors in multinational firms contribute to globalization, and challenge the cultural norms in those organizations The third topic might be how North American firms have been forced to adjust their product packaging, in response to environmental impact laws in Germany, and how this shifts the locus of the product message from point-of-purchase to alternative media.