MBA 2407 Asian Business Trends

MBA 2407 Asian Business Trends

Course code: 
MBA 2407
Department: 
Strategy and Entrepreneurship
Credits: 
4
Course coordinator: 
Heidi Wiig
Course name in Norwegian: 
Asian Business Trends
Product category: 
Executive
Portfolio: 
MBA China
Semester: 
2018 Autumn
Active status: 
Active
Level of study: 
Master
Teaching language: 
English
Course type: 
One semester
Introduction

Recent economic growth in Asian countries (e.g. China, India) has forced companies to re-evaluate their strategies to take advantage of these opportunities. What are the current financial and human capital costs of doing business in Asia and globally? What might future challenges be? How do firms compete to capture emerging business opportunities? How should firms strategically position themselves today to take advantage of key developments in the Asian and Western economies to sustain high corporate growth? These fundamental concerns will be addressed by the proposed Asia EMBA Programme, specially designed for BI Norwegian Business School, to be conducted by the Nanyang Business School.

Learning outcomes - Knowledge
  • Gain insights into Asian perspectives on leadership and strategy, through reflection on lessons from Sun Zi Bingfa.
  • Gain insights into the tensions between stakeholders in multi-business corporations, and the implications for improving corporate governance.

 

Learning outcomes - Skills
  • Develop middle management strategic leadership competencies that are crucial in the changing and competitive global business environment.
  • Build cultural intelligence as a strategic leadership capability that will help manage global/local issues in a multinational work environment, create a global mindset that will help extract value from cultural differences and build alignment with global corporate strategy.
  • Develop the capability to analyze, understand, and adapt to the behaviour of people from different societal, generational, or organisational cultures.
Learning Outcome - Reflection
  • To gain a better understanding on how the global crisis is likely to affect Asia, its governments and its leading companies, with emphasis on China and India.
Course content

This is a 6-days programme comprising the following courses:

Sun Zi Bingfa and strategic leadership
There are many attributes and qualities required of a great leader. However, among all the important traits and characteristics, as highlighted by Sun Zi, the ability to make independent and bold decisions without compromising the overall objective of the organization is perhaps the most significant hallmark of a great leader. What exactly does this mean? This session will attempt to address the following issues:
• Responsibility and accountability
• Empowerment and enlightenment
• Attributes of leadership

Corporate governance
The course entails a comprehensive review of corporate governance issues, analyzing the relevant questions to derive effective solutions. The focus is on the analysis of the relationships among these parties, with a view of improving corporate governance and along with it enterprise performance, which means attaining the firm’s full potential, given its endowment with human, physical, and financial capital and taking into account the legal and ethical restraints in a world of environmental concerns, threatening technology gaps and cultural sensitivities. In view of the globalisation of markets for capital, technology, products and talent, clear views on how corporations are and should be governed, and which principles are to guide such governance, become very important for executives as well as those involved in shaping public policy.

Asia’s role in the Brave New World
This session discusses how the global crisis is likely to affect Asia, its governments and its leading companies (with emphasis on China and India). It then examines globalisation and discusses (a) the internationalisation strategies of a number of Asia’s emergent global companies and (b) the role Asia plays in the global strategies of leading MNCs .
Brave New World: How Asia might emerge from the Global crisis
a. China/ Korea/ Japan
b. The Indian sub-continent
c. Asean
( with emphasis on role of government in promoting
development & growth)
Marketing in Asia
The objectives of the course is:
• To familiarise participants with the latest marketing concepts
• Give an overview of the dynamic changes in the business landscape and the competitive forces in Asia
• Develop competitive marketing advantages that are sustainable for the future

Various stimulating reading materials drawn from various sources, including the Harvard Business Review as well as the Nanyang Business Review, will be prescribed for this programme. Appropriate case studies will be undertaken, including those from Harvard and Nanyang Business School’s very own Asian cases from its www.Asiacase.com portal.

Cross cultural management
It is a challenging job to motivate a workforce that is made up of people from different cultures. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to this difficulty. Management methods that work well for one culture may not work as well in another. To manage performance well, we need to pay attention to how cultural differences impact performance attributions, self-construal, employee motivation, and performance-related feedback behaviour.
Suggested topics:
(a) Common cultural dimensions
(b) Cultural intelligence
(c) Performance attributions
(d) Self construal
(e) Employee motivation
( f) Feedback behaviour

Company visits

Learning process and requirements to students

The course is conducted as a teaching module, where students have classes all day for four subsequent days, a total of 32 hours.

This is a course with continuous assessment (several exam components) and one final exam code. Each exam component will be graded using points on a scale  0 -100. The components will be weighted together according to the information in the course description in order to calculate the final letter grade for the course. Students who fail to participate in one/some/all exam components will get a lower grade or may fail the course. Candidates may be called in for an oral hearing as a verification/control of written assignments.

Specific information regarding the points system and the mapping scale beyond the information given in the course description will be provided in class. This information may be relevant for requirements for term papers or other hand-ins, and/or where class participation can be one of several elements of the overall evaluation.

The course is a part of a full MBA and examination in all courses in the MBA programme must be passed in order to obtain a certificate for the MBA degree.

 

Software tools
No specified computer-based tools are required.
Qualifications

Granted admission to the BI-Fudan MBA programme. Please consult our student regulations.

Exam categoryWeightInvigilationDurationGroupingComment exam
Exam category:
Activity
Form of assessment:
Class participation
Exam code:
MBA 24071
Grading scale:
China
Grading rules:
-
Resit:
All components must, as a main rule, be retaken during next scheduled course
50No -Individual Individual class participation, counts 50% of the total grade.
Exam category:
Submission
Form of assessment:
Written submission
Exam code:
MBA 24071
Grading scale:
China
Grading rules:
-
Resit:
All components must, as a main rule, be retaken during next scheduled course
50No 1 Month(s)Group ( 3 - 6)Group assignment, counts 50% of the total grade.
Exams:
Exam category:Activity
Form of assessment:Class participation
Weight:50
Invigilation:No
Grouping (size):Individual
Duration: -
Comment:Individual class participation, counts 50% of the total grade.
Exam code:MBA 24071
Grading scale:China
Resit:All components must, as a main rule, be retaken during next scheduled course
Exam category:Submission
Form of assessment:Written submission
Weight:50
Invigilation:No
Grouping (size):Group (3-6)
Duration: 1 Month(s)
Comment:Group assignment, counts 50% of the total grade.
Exam code:MBA 24071
Grading scale:China
Resit:All components must, as a main rule, be retaken during next scheduled course
Exam organisation: 
Continuous assessment
Grading scale: 
ECTS
Total weight: 
100
Sum workload: 
0

A course of 1 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of 26-30 hours. Therefore a course of 4 ECTS credit corresponds to a workload of at least 110 hours.