HA.E105 - European Business: Strategy and Integration* *NOT ESTABLSHED*

Faculty
Martin Jes Iversen

Course Coordinator
Martin Jes Iversen

English language skills on an A-level or equivalent. Fundamental knowledge on corporate strategy and economic integration.

This course has been developed for the tri-continental BA “GLOBE” program. [1] In the spring 2010 it is for the first time offered as a general elective at CBS. As the course has been developed for the intensive Globe Program it is a very demanding elective, which include in-depth student assignments, corporate visits / interviews and a four days field trip to the European institutions in Brussels. The lecturer, Martin Jes Iversen, will use the course discussions and sessions as important inputs for the writing of a new international text book entitled “European Business: Strategy and Integration”. The course is therefore only suitable for ambitious students with a strong academic and personal commitment.

Most books, research projects and courses within the studies of economic integration are focused at the analytical macro- or meso level. In other words the macroeconomic consequences of economic integration or the sector based consequences – such as structural changes within the banking industry, telecommunication or the energy sector. In contrast this course is focused on the economic micro-level: how have the actual managers in European corporations responded to the increased competition caused by economic integration, and which general lessons we can learn from successful - and unsuccessful - responses.

In the last quarter of the 20th century new market formations – particularly in Europe - resulted in increasing cross-border trade, growing foreign direct investments and enhanced competition. But – as the recent financial crisis has unveiled – the process also caused increasing economic interdependency and thus fragility at the national, the corporate as well as the individual level. The transnational market formation was not an inevitable process but rather a process resulting from a wide range of conscious economic and political decisions and initiatives. The course aims to develop Neil Fligsteins existing theories on the creation of trans-national markets and translate these concepts to a theoretic framework focused on the economic micro-level. This translation can help us to understand the concrete corporate relations to the economic integration process.

Following the presentation and discussions of the theoretic framework for analyzing corporate responses to European integration the course will include sessions on the corporate responses to market integration within four important sectors: goods market integration, telecommunication, banking and shipping. The four sectors reflect the chronological order of the integration in Europe which was initiated by the goods market sector, then from the late 1980s followed the telecommunication sector, the banking sector and finally the shipping sector from the mid 1990s onwards. Each of the four sector sessions are focused on the strategic responses to the integration process of selected case companies. In order to show the most powerful and important corporate actors the course will be focused on Europes largest corporations from the respective sector: the British-Dutch branded goods company Unilever, the German telecom company Deutsche Telecom, the British bank HSBC and finally the Danish shipping company A.P. Møller-Mærsk.

[1] A co-operation between CBS, CUHK (Chinese University of Hong Kong) and UNC (University of North Carolina).

This course is aimed to develop three inter-related sets of personal competences:

1) The ability to analyze relationships between public regulation (in terms of European market integration policies) and corporate growth strategies

2) The ability to use abstract economic-sociological theories, such as Neil Fligsteins framework of market integration in relation to a concrete empirical case studies

3) The ability to understand and analyze which role public regulation (in terms of economic integration) plays for the dynamics of modern capitalism

At the end of this course the student must be able to:

· Describe the role of the European economic institutions in the political and economic decision-taking process

· Classify and structure the European economic integration process within four key sectors: manufacturing, telecommunication, banking and shipping

· Combine Neil Fligsteins economic sociological theories on market formations with concrete corporate strategic changes

· Analyze the micro-economic consequences of economic integration within manufacturing, telecommunication, banking and shipping in Europe

The examination consists of a 20 minutes oral examination based on a synopsis (an in-depth group project on corporate responses to European integration)

Students at the HA programme are able to write their bachelor project in connection with this course: Yes

Neil Fligstein, “Euroclash, The EU, European Identity, and The Future of Europe”, Oxford University Press, 2008

Neil Fligstein, “The Architecture of Markets, an Economic Sociology of Twenty-First-Century Capitalist Societies, Princeton University Press, 2001

Edward Garderner et. al. (eds.), “Banking in the New Europe”, Palgrave Macmillan, 2002.

Jacques Pelkmans: European Integration, Methods and Economic Analysis, FT Press, 2006