Core courses

RSM CORE COURSE 1: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT IN CHINA AND ASIA

Successful firms develop and implement corporate and business strategies that set their businesses apart from the competition and lay the foundations for sustained competitive advantages. Asia poses specific challenges to general managers, who see their firms exposed to the most intense rivalry from forms of organisation set against a backdrop of dramatic transitions for societies and economies. This core course introduces the fundamentals of formulating business and corporate and international strategy. Bearing in mind the increasing importance of Asia and Asian companies in the world economy, formulation and implementation of strategy is discussed with particular emphasis on China, Japan and Korea. Exploring the specific choices of corporate, business and international strategy made by foreign multinationals and local firms in those territories allows juxtaposing extant theory and research with the practice of strategic management in Asia.

RSM CORE COURSE 2: PREDICTING CHINA 

We need a thorough understanding of China’s business system. If we want to meet the challenges imposed by China, we need to acknowledge the geographic and organisational diversity of firms, and the cultural diversity within society. For that reason this programme offers a link between research questions, concepts and available information. The course will focus on: 

1. Analysing China’s economy and doing business in China 
2. Business challenges 
3. Features of China’s economy
4. Diagnosis 
5. Writing a research proposal 

LEIDEN CORE COURSE 1: UNDERSTANDING CHINA'S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

This course will provide an advanced reading and interpretation of China’s economy and development. In doing so, a selection of the main concepts of development theory and transition economics will first be reviewed, such as the ideas and notions of “path dependence”, “Lewisian turning point”, “bottom-up development” and the “Washington consensus”. The course then moves on to discuss the applicability of these concepts to the Chinese context. Where relevant it will be demonstrated in which ways development theory and transition economics diverges from China’s empirical reality. This course gives students an in-depth understanding of the historical origins, the physical “hardware”, the main drivers, and the potential future trajectories of Chinese economic growth and development.

LEIDEN CORE COURSE 2: CHINESE ECONOMY AND ITS INSTITUTIONS

This course will review and analyze the institutional foundations that underlie the Chinese economy and its development. As such the course squarely builds on the knowledge and competences that students have acquired during the course “Understanding China’s economic development” (BKCHEB02). The course starts out with a broad discussion of institutional economic theorists (e.g. North, Williamson, Weimer, Ostrom). It will then move on to a detailed examination of Chinese institutional change and innovation around the means of production: land, labor and capital. Special attention will also be given to understanding the overall sustainability of China’s development, in relation to notions of “greening”, environmental “leap-frogging”, “common property”, and ecological modernization. The course will provide students with an advanced understanding of the Chinese economy’s institutional structure; its shifts in time and place; and the institutional dilemmas and choices facing the Chinese leadership. Students will also be taught how to locate, calculate, interpret, and review Chinese qualitative and quantitive economic data and institutional development indicators.