International Marketing

The course will provide a general, unifying framework to synthesize the valuable and practical knowledge of the seminal articles about International Business Strategy published in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and California Management Review. The course will show how this knowledge can be applied to real businesses engaged in international expansion programs, especially as they venture into long-distance markets. At the end of the course, the student: 1) will be able to understand the functioning and the strategy of multinational enterprises; 2) will be able to write a literature review on a relevant topic in International Business Strategy or use the acquired concepts, frameworks, and tools in order to analyze the international strategy of a selected multinational enterprise.

Part I: Core concepts 1) The strategy of international business and its conceptual foundations; 2) A unifying framework to analyse international business strategy; 3) The critical role of firm-specific advantages; 4) The nature of home country location advantages; 5) The problem with host country location advantages; 6) Combining firm-specific advantages and location advantages in a multinational network; Part II: Functional Issues 7) International innovation; 8) International sourcing and production; 9) Managing managers in the multinational enterprise; Part III: Dynamics of Global Strategy 10) Emerging economy of multinational enterprises 11) International strategies of corporate social responsibility 12) International strategies of corporate environmental sustainability

(A) Alain Verbeke & I. H. Ian Lee, Loyola International Business Strategy - 3rd Edition - Rethinking the Foundations of Global Corporate Success Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (UK), 2021; the entire book; ISBN: 9781108738378; https://www.cambridge.org/it/universitypress/subjects/management/international-business/international-business-strategy-rethinking-foundations-global-corporate-success-3rd-edition?format=PB&isbn=9781108738378

(C) Robert M. Grant Contemporary Strategy Analysis, 11th Edition Wiley, New York, 2021; chapter 1; ISBN: 978-1-119-81523-5; https://www.wiley.com/en-ie/Contemporary+Strategy+Analysis%2C+11th+Edition-p-9781119815235

(C) Peter Buckley International Business Strategy: theory and practice Routledge, New York, 2015

(C) Bartlett, C. A., & Beamish, P. W. Transnational management: text cases and readings in cross border management Cambridge University Press., Cambridge, UK, 9th edition, 2024.

In addition to face-to-face teaching, students can access supplementary materials, which will be uploaded to an online platform. If you are not attending classes, please write to ernesto.tavoletti@unimc.it to be introduced to the teaching materials more effectively.

• Frontal lecturing, analysis of case studies, guidance on writing a literature review or other paper on a relevant topic in International Business Strategy.

• The student will submit (at least 72 hours before the exam to ernesto.tavoletti@unimc.it as a .docx named 'Name_Surname.docx’), present and discuss an 8,000-9,000 words paper: a literature review paper (on a relevant topic in International Business Strategy) or a paper that uses the acquired concepts, frameworks, and tools to analyze the international strategy of a selected multinational enterprise. The paper’s content must be proposed, discussed, and approved by the instructor before being drafted and submitted. The paper will be evaluated based on its originality (10%), relevance for the field (10%), rigor (15%), completeness (15%), mastery of the concepts presented in class (15%), and clarity (10%). The presentation and discussion evaluate the student's ability to present and defend the paper (15%). Early ideas about the paper will be discussed in the last two lectures.

English is the only adopted language.

English