Working Across BordersLaajuus (5 ECTS)

Objective

The struggle of the advanced economies to compete with businesses in the emerging markets is one result of globalization. Global operation creates complex organizations and brings about challenges for managing global organizations.

The course explores strategic choices of global operation and encourages the participant to analyze the performance and cost of operations. The participant gains a comprehensive overview of potential challenges and rewards of doing services business globally, and develops awareness to plan and implement reasonable integration plans.

As a cultural change globalization results in blending of business styles and preferences from varieties of cultures and locations. This course is based on recognizing a cultural diversity dimension in modern business practices, and it focuses on a variety of successful practices and problems experienced by globalized businesses.

Content

Topics include, among others:

10. International growth strategies; strategic choices; managing global organizations; the changing nature of organizations
11. Offshoring/reshoring and target destinations
12. Mergers, acquisitions, alliances and integration plans
13. Working across cultures; diversity management

An additional objective is to apply the newly acquired skills in IM program international teams by working on team assignment, conducting discussions in international teams, and reflecting on cultural awareness in a culture workshop.

Qualifications

Bachelor's degree (240 cr) and three years of work experience.

Assessment criteria, satisfactory (1)

Assessment criteria, satisfactory (1 - 2)

The coursework meets with several of the five criteria below. The student performance shows satisfactory performance in three or more of the criteria.

The following criteria are used for assessing the IM Master’s coursework (workshop involvement, discussion, interviews and their documentation and discussion leaders).

•The student shows an understanding of the relevant course content in relation to the contents of the articles, lectures, informant interviews and discussion.
•Student texts/presentations demonstrate an understanding of the source content and an ability to select, interpret and justify key messages in a grounded manner.
•The student shows interconnections between the proposed concepts and current business practice, showing abilities of reflection, evaluation and discussion.
•The student shows professional initiative, active participation in team discussions and responsibility in preparation, production and presentation of team work.
• The student shows the ability to collect valid knowledge for his/her topic from outside the course sources by using scholarly search tools, by questioning current business practice and by practicing source critique.

Assessment criteria, good (3)

Assessment criteria, good (3 - 4)
The course work meets with most of the above five criteria.

Additionally the assignment shows good quality (=3) or very good (=4) performance in three or more of the criteria or otherwise good interpretation.

Assessment criteria, excellent (5)

Assessment criteria, excellent (5).The coursework meets with all the above five criteria.

Additionally the assignment shows excellence in three or more of the above criteria or otherwise deviating excellence.

Assessment criteria, approved/failed

The coursework meets with several of the five criteria below. The student performance shows satisfactory performance in three or more of the criteria.

The following criteria are used for assessing the IM Master’s coursework (workshop involvement, discussion, interviews and their documentation and discussion leaders).

•The student shows an understanding of the relevant course content in relation to the contents of the articles, lectures, informant interviews and discussion.
•Student texts/presentations demonstrate an understanding of the source content and an ability to select, interpret and justify key messages in a grounded manner.
•The student shows interconnections between the proposed concepts and current business practice, showing abilities of reflection, evaluation and discussion.
•The student shows professional initiative, active participation in team discussions and responsibility in preparation, production and presentation of team work.
• The student shows the ability to collect valid knowledge for his/her topic from outside the course sources by using scholarly search tools, by questioning current business practice and by practicing source critique.

Further information

The advanced professional courses are integrated with each other to increase effectiveness of learning in a one-year program. This is why the timing of courses (lectures, workshops, team/individual work as assignments) is not always sequential, but activity- or theme-based, to allow for a variety of competence and substance area expertise development.