Descriptions
The past decades have witnessed the fast and growing trend of globalization in our modern societies. Globalization, from its very beginning through Silk Road, has brought forth profound and everlasting influence on human civilization, and also generates tremendous opportunities and challenges to individuals, companies, and governments around the world. Nevertheless, public sentiment about globalization has taken a sharp turn in the past few years. The rise and fall of Trump Administration, Brexit, and the surging of nationalism as well as ultra-right parties in Europe and other areas are all symbols of growing displeasure with the free movement of trade, capital, people, and knowledge. In addition to the political and social uncertainties around the globe, the recent outbreak of Covid-19 posed yet another unprecedented challenge to the global supply chain and the overall operations of multinational enterprises. It is therefore imperative for business and public policy leaders to have a close investigation on how various agents react and strive in global markets under the context of very different dynamics and institutions.
Among the wide encompassed commercial globalization phenomenon, this course mainly examines issues regarding industry globalization, firm globalization, and management globalization, and in particular, we focus on studying how global managers managing the challenges associated with devising strategies, building organization capabilities, and governing the operations of the enterprises whose activities stretch across national boundaries.
What makes the study of multinational enterprises unique? How does it differ and relate to conventional management and organization studies? One of the most striking characteristics of multinational enterprises (MNEs) is having subsidiaries or agents simultaneously operating in various countries with distinct economic, social, and political context. Global managers then have to deal with the diversity, dynamics, and inter-dependency arising from both external and internal environments facing MNEs. Therefore, in addition to the traditional focus on the environmental and strategic challenges to globalization, the organizational and management challenges to globalization, both critical but understudied, will be well examined in this course. In particular, taking the perspective that human capital is the key resource and ongoing foundation of a successful strategy, we investigate the behaviors and decision-making process of various global managers, and study how their roles, responsibilities, and relationships within the MNE’s are developed and evolved through the internationalization process.
Summing up, this course intends to first familiarize the students with the related analytical framework and logics developed from both academia and practice, and then to build up the capabilities for the application. The contents of this course are hence organized as follows:

Part I Environmental Challenges to Globalization
Part II Strategic Challenges to Globalization
Part III Organizational Challenges to Globalization
Part IV Management Challenges to Globalization