Cross-border transactions and multinational operations force managers to consider the effects of exchange rate fluctuations, legal regimes, institutional rigidities, international tax rules and country risk. These cross-border factors are increasingly important with the impetus of global shift towards trade liberalization and economic integration. In this course, you will analyze major decisions undertaken by firms regarding  currency exposure and hedging, corporate funding and capital structure, international capital budgeting and international portfolio management. You have the opportunity to translate the foundations of finance from previous courses to this richer cross-border setting.

This course will begin by examining your preconceptions regarding developing countries, and how well they conform to the data. An understanding of aggregate development indicators is important in understanding the developing world. However, aggregate statistics often fail to capture important subtleties in the economic environment. In particular, doing business in developing countries remains fraught with difficulties associated with poorly developed markets and institutions. The bulk of the course will therefore be devoted to understanding and confronting some of these difficulties.  The course will help you develop a more nuanced picture of the developing world and how to deal with the challenges posed by institutional gaps and market failures.

Building on group and team concepts introducted in the Organizational Behavior course, in this course you will investigate group and team issues that can be particularly challenging and troublesome in the global setting, including communication, conflict and dispute resolution, and ethical issues that are unique to the international arena. You will be exposed to the unique character of social groups around the globe, and how culture affects team processes and performance.

In this course you will look at various strategies which a firm can use to capture value from innovation. You will examine not only the traditional legal mechanisms for protecting intellectual property, such as patents, copyright, and trade secrecy, but also non-legal strategies the firm can use, such as using fast commercialization process and bundling with complementary assets. You will also discuss how alternative business strategies, such as licensing and self-commercialization, affect the firm’s ability to capture value from innovation. Finally, you will analyze issues influencing when a firm may be able to shape its environment to capture (more) value from its innovation.

The characteristics of B2B (business-to-business) marketing differ significantly from B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing, particularly when dealing with high-tech products and services. In this course, you will develop frameworks and tools to understand the key challenges of selling high-tech solutions on B2B markets. You will learn to develop options to overcome these challenges, based on theory as well as on practice, and through case-studies, you will be exposed to the most current marketing strategies of high-tech companies in global markets.

This course will expose you to both basic concepts and the newest thinking in the Marketing of Global Brands. You will focus on topics related to global consumer behavior and global branding. You will discuss cases involving expanding brands globally and analyze customers’ reactions to the brand. While this is essentially a marketing course, you will also address cross-functional problems. The goal of this course is to open managers’ eyes for less obvious differences between global consumers and how these differences in consumer behavior may affect not only the success of the brand, but also of the business in international markets.

The ESMT Executive MBA is a degree program in general management for future business leaders. As part of the curriculum, program participants are required to take part in the International Field Seminar (IFS), a combination of academic sessions and interaction with organizations in a foreign country. The IFS will acquaint you with key issues of international business and management, drawing upon first-hand insights gained from interaction with foreign organizations and managers. You will put into context the concepts and tools learned in the classroom, while gaining cross-cultural experience. Acting as a team, all program participants interact with regional offices of global businesses, and with local businesses which best demonstrate the business culture of the destination. Previous locations visited by the ESMT Executive MBA include Brazil, Argentina, Russia and Turkey.

As part of the curriculum, ESMT Executive MBA program participants are required to work on a practice project and prepare a Master’s Thesis. The Practice Project provides participants with an opportunity to apply much of what they have learnt in their MBA studies and the knowledge gained from prior work experience to a business or management issue that is relevant for their own organization as well as for their own future career. The project should aspire to give value back to the sponsoring company as part of a “return on education”.

The Master’s Thesis addresses a business or management issue of broader relevance, based on the practice project and extending it with academic research beyond the specifics of the project context. Both the Practice Project and Master’s Thesis take place in the later stages of the EMBA.