The Business Environment: Comparative and International Perspectives
Convenor: Dr Frederick Guy
Assessment: Exam 75% (2 hours), Term paper - 2,000 words, due 25th November 2011 (Absolute Cut-Off deadline – 16th December 2011)
Aims
The aim of this module is to help the student develop an understanding of:
- What drives international economic integration, and whether it should be thought of as an inexorable process of ‘globalization’
- Interactions between production technology, forms of corporate organization, policies to regulate national economies, and the structure of the international economic system.
- Why different countries have different institutional environments for business, and how those differences affect international competition.
Learning objectives
By the end of this module, the student should be better able to analyse situations related to differences in the business environment between countries, and changes in the business environment over time, in either a business or a public policy context.
Content
- ‘Globalisation’.
- Definition; measurement; causes; who gains, who loses?
- International economic integration coming and going in history; regional blocs and regionalization of production systems; trade, licensing, and multi-national operations as alternatives; likely consequences of climate change for multi-nationals and global supply chains.
- Production technology, business organization, and the international order.
- The first large industrial companies in the 1800s, the rise of mass production, and the closing down of the 19th century system of free trade.
- Fordism: post-World War II mass production in national markets, with the gradual re-opening of trade
- Post-Fordism: increased variety and international specialization in production systems; a new international division of labour; financialization.
- Location in a global economy.
- Clusters, industrial districts, and regional systems
- The place of local networks within national and international networks
- Varieties of capitalism.
- National institutions, culture, and industrial specialization: explaining differences among the rich countries of North America, Europe, and East Asia.
- Newly industrialized countries: Tigers, BRICS, and others.
Background reading
- Frederick Guy, The Global Environment of Business, Chapters 1-12, 15. from Oxford University Press, 2009.
