Lead­er­ship and gov­ernance at Mul­tina­tion­al En­ter­prises

Course content

The decision-making of top executives at multinational enterprises is the focus of this course. Decisions at this level are associated with high complexity, uncertainty, and information asymmetry. Moreover, agency problems may plague the choices of MNEs' top executives. This course provides concepts from economic research, psychology, neurobiology and neuroscience to measure and predict the behavior and the leadership style of top executives in the international business context. For example, we will consider concepts related to risk aversion, overconfidence, and hubris, learn how to measure them and what behavioral consequences to expect when individual score high or low on these traits. Further, we will analyze the institutional environment that helps to make top executives internalize the interests of shareholders and stakeholders when taking important decisions. Specifically, we will consider corporate governance issue that are relevant for the international environment such as cross-border ownership, cross-listing, top executive compensation and the international market for CEOs. The main objective of this course is to equip stduents with a knowledge base such that they are able to participate in general decision-making concerning leadership and governance activities in a multinational corporation.

The format of the course is based on two elements:

Current academic literature: We will not use a textbook but a collection of academic papers that deal with specific issues of leadership and corporate governance, many of which have just been published in the recent years.

Student participation:You will actively participate in the class. In groups, you might be asked to present a paper, the solution to a case study and, if feasible, discuss a current example from the business press for which the paper is relevant.

Since this is a topic course, there does not exist one single course book covering the material in the course. Most of the required material is free to download when you are logged into the CBS network.. Some materials may be uploaded on Canvas.