International Business Management BSc (Hons)

The 20-credit yearlong Unilang modules (stages 1 – 5 depending on language) aim to encourage a positive attitude to language learning and to develop and practise the four language skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing introducing the basic/increasingly complex grammatical structures and vocabulary of the spoken and written language (depending on stage) and developing your ability to respond appropriately in the foreign language in spoken and written form in simple and increasingly complex everyday situations.

These modules also introduce you to the country and the culture of the country. In doing this, Unilang modules are intended to encourage and support international mobility; to enhance employability at home and abroad; to improve communication skills in the foreign language as well as English; to improve cultural awareness and, at the higher stages, to encourage access to foreign sources.

Your learning on this module captures global contemporary operations and supply chain challenges and issues, its contribution to organisational strategies and the development of competency in related tools. You will develop as an active learner and your learning on this module is three-fold:

1. This module provides you with an underpinning knowledge about international operations management, your learning underpinned by investigating the ongoing developments in both related theory and practice set in the global context. You will learn strategic theories and gain knowledge associated with common operations and supply chain management themes during interactive weekly lectures and seminars. The key themes include:
• Introduction to operations management
• Process, product and service design
• Global supply chain management
• Operations planning
• Global operations sustainability
• Quality management
• Resource and capacity planning
• Global procurement management
• Lean management
• Global location management
• Global logistics management
• Global supply chain risk management

2. This module will seek to develop your practical problem solving skills related to the global operations and supply chain context by analysing contemporary issues through interactive case study analysis that are central to weekly seminars. You will have opportunity to analyse cases relevant to each theoretical theme above and be able discuss these with your fellow learners with facilitation by your seminar tutor.

3. This research-informed module also aims at developing your research skills. You will have opportunity to learn more about critical reading and writing of the peer reviewed academic journal articles that enable you to develop the necessary and significant skills required to execute your research–intensive assessment tasks in this module and other modules as you progress through your programme.

The Study Abroad Semester module is a semester long 60 credit module which is available on degree courses which include the option to study abroad in Semester 2 of Year 2. You will undertake a semester abroad at a partner university equivalent to 60 UK credits.

The study abroad placement is an important element of your course structure and gives you access to modules from your discipline taught in a different learning culture and so broadens your overall experience of learning.

When taken and passed the study abroad semester will be recognised in your transcript as a 60 credit Study Abroad Module. The learning and teaching on your study abroad placement will be dependent on the partner and will be recorded in the learning agreement signed by you, the host University, and the University.

This module aims to provide you with an understanding of and an introduction to the application of key strategic decision making aspects and their interface with cultural contexts. The module extends and develops your learnings from Level 4 (in Global Business Environment). The introduction to global forces shaping international business and the macro business environments at level 4- are taken forward to engage strategic frameworks that businesses may deploy to inform international business.

1. Key cultural paradigms in relation to international business
2. Cultural differences as the Big C in CAGE framework and its application
3. International market entry and growth
4. Introduction to IB strategy frameworks such as Porter’s national diamond, CAGE framework (extending the analytical perspective provided by the Big C, triple A framework and the Bartlett and Ghoshal continuums of choices. Porter’s five forces and generic strategies also put in context)
5. Communicating across cultures
6. Identify and evaluate the issues relating to the management of internationally mobile employees
7. International business protocol
8. Ethics and Responsible Business in context of growth, localised contexts of international markets and managing the value chain in international business

On this module you will consider the management issues in relation to growth and resourcing for international business management. It is designed from a real world relevant point of view, and examines practical situations, with topical cases being used in seminars to highlight issues.

This module develops many of the concepts you were introduced to on the level 4 core modules “Financial Decision Making” and “International Business Environment”. In particular you will study:

• Mergers and Acquisitions including valuation issues in an international M&A context.
• Alliances, Joint Ventures and IB Networks
• Organic growth : coordination, coopetition and concentration premises
• Choosing and designing an appropriate growth strategy
• Investing in growth (investment decisions) and raising international finance
• Financial goals and corporate governance
• Investment environment volatility and international business currency
• Working capital management
• Professional and business ethical behaviour in an international financial management context.

This module will complement your studies in “Global and International Business Context” and “Performance Management”. Both of which are co-requisites of this module.

Completion of the course will ensure that you have the required knowledge to progress your studies in international business management.

In this module you will gain a comprehensive understanding of the nature and practice of creativity and innovation and how it can be applied, whether within the context of a new venture or an existing organisation. The module will cover theories relating to innovation and its management within a strategic management context. This will be combined with an introduction to processes of stimulating creativity in a variety of business contexts. The module will seek to facilitate the development of practical skills to promote creative thinking through practice-based elements in which real world problems are introduced for the testing of creative teamworking techniques.
Specific topics will include:

Innovation in a strategic context:
What is innovation, innovation and industrial dynamics, innovation strategy, disruptive innovation

The process of innovation and creativity:
Models of innovation process, sources of innovation, open innovation, innovation management, creativity, design thinking.

The creative environment:
The creative organisation, creative industries, creative class, creative places

Innovation and creativity policy:
Innovation systems and clusters, promoting creative places

Some enterprises are ‘born global’ – they operate internationally from the start. Such companies stand out because of the way, speed and scale they gain presence, revenues and market share in several countries simultaneously. They differ not only in their strategic and operational ambition, but also in the way their founders learn, make decisions and use networks creating powerful alliances.

This module will help you gain knowledge and understanding of ‘born global’ firms, their key characteristics, how they are launched and developed. Using case studies, you will also learn about internationalization strategies and learning processes of born globals. You will use your learning to develop a launch plan for a born global startup in your chosen industry.

The topics you will study will draw from the following themes:
• Born global firms: definitions, examples, characteristics, types
• Born global firms: case studies
• International Entrepreneurship: speed, scale and patterns
• Strategies for international success
• Thinking differently: learning processes of born global and their founders
• Use of networks and alliances
• Dilemmas: rapid growth vs control trade-off
• Planning to launch a ‘born global’ startup

This module focuses on ways to conduct independent research, together with the key academic skills of analysis, synthesis and criticality. You will be able to learn about processes and practices of conducting research from the initial idea to reporting results as well as understand the purpose of the research projects. The module examines the principles of research design before progressing to a more detailed treatment of data collection and analysis. You will be challenged to develop research ideas and critique existing literature primarily from academic sources. You will gain an understanding of various means of undertaking a research enquiry specifically to provide insights to solving a relevant problem, including activities as defining hypothesis/research questions, designing research objectives and research design that involves also budgetary limitations, primary and secondary data collection, research methods, and structuring of the final results.

This module aims to provide you with the knowledge and skills to understand how the emergence of the digital economy has created opportunities and challenges for international business. The module is delivered through lectures and seminars.

The module will cover the following issues:

• The scale and scope of electronic commerce
• Digital infrastructures
• Digitalisation and international business
• International institutions and the digital economy
• Transnational businesses and national governance structures
• International digital platforms

Through this module you will gain skills enabling you to analyse the growth and developing of the international digital economy. On completing the module, you will appreciate the scale, scope and dynamism of the international digital economy.

This module will teach you about challenges that face firms which operate in global and multi-cultural business environments. Global firms need to understand the vast differences in the environments in which they operate. In this module, you will learn how to assess and overcome these challenges in order to run a successful firm. To aid in this exploration, you will learn about theories and frameworks that explain cultural and institutional differences between countries, and the impact of these differences on individuals, teams, and firms’ behaviour. You will examine the strategies and structures that can be used by multinational enterprises to address these challenges and how an effective international human resource approach can be developed. You will explore the challenges of managing people across borders in the context of decision-making, leading and motivating culturally diverse employees, and knowledge transfer across national boundaries. Through these subjects, you will also have the opportunity to build your employability skills supported by activities and discussion tailored to international business management. Finally, the ethical issues arising from operating in multi-cultural environments will be examined.

In this module you will be exploring the field of finance in international business and builds on the basic level of knowledge of finance from your foundation level finance module. It is important to understand the rationale behind the globalisation process and this module will expose you to the financial drivers in that process. Starting with a refresher on basic finance, you will engage with imperatives in international project decisions, capital raising in international markets, capital deployment and management by multinational enterprises, banking aspects in international markets and country and multilateral participation in driving international finance. Topic areas will be as follows.

- Corporate valuation, capital budgeting, working capital concepts and cost-volume-profit and financial ratio analysis (mainly a refresher)
- Solvency concepts
- International project risks; currency risks
- Risk and regulation in country financial markets that impact multinational operation
- Banks and their role in international finance: cost, impact and regulation
- Enablers and barriers of international money movement
- Finance in international business and society

In this module you will be exploring the essence of negotiations in an international business setting. This module complements and builds on the cross-cultural management theory that you will acquire in the core module (SM9532) in semester one. The module emphasises on applying the theoretical concepts of cross-cultural management in practical and real-life scenarios. You will be introduced to the concept of balancing the tangible and intangible aspects of negotiation. After completing the module, you will be able to (1) identify, analyse, and resolve conflict situations during business negotiation; (2) identify, understand, and overcome cultural and national stereotypes; (3) improve your soft skills and interpersonal communication.