Man­aging People in Mul­tina­tion­al Cor­por­a­tions

Course content

This course is about how multinational corporations (MNCs) can motivate, enable, attract, and retain people to pursue their strategic organizational goals. It is aimed at helping students understand the key issues in the management of people in contemporary MNC contexts and providing them with theories, frameworks, and tools to help them recognize, understand, and manage human resources more effectively. 

Among the topics of the course are:

• Strategic International Human Resource Management
• Structuring MNCs to be locally responsive and globally integrated
• Managing expatriation
• Dealing with cultural differences
• People Analytics
• Incentives and performance management in MNCs
• Managing people during organizational change and global expansion

During the lectures, the students will be introduced to selected contemporary literature from a wide range of disciplines, including strategy, human resource management, and organizational behavior, to better understand and predict how employees behave in the international context of a multinational firm. 

In relation to Nordic Nine

The course Managing People in Multinational Corporations (MPMNCs) supports the Nordic Nine values in providing students an understanding of and ability to apply key concepts and theories that are relevant broadly to organizational contexts (NN1), focusing on the tension between global integration and local value creation in multinational firms (NN9). The case-based approach is centered on group and class discussions to achieve learning goals in collaboration (NN6) and enhance the learning of peers (NN8). With this approach, the course puts students in the shoes of decision-makers to reflect on their decisions’ implications on the competitiveness of businesses while compassionately considering their effects on employees and other stakeholders (NN4). Lastly, the course provides students with an understanding of how employee data can be used to analyse employee behaviour in multinational corporations and the ability to detect and navigate sources of ambiguity (NN2), as well as ethical dilemmas between opportunities and potential downsides of these analyses (NN5).