MSc International Management / CEMS

The block seminar is a one-week course within the CEMS programme that takes place at the beginning of Term 1 at all CEMS schools. Block Seminars bring together professors and students from various CEMS institutions. Subjects derive from different cultural and academic perspectives; many topics are not a part of the universities’ standard curricula. 

The Block Seminar is a mandatory element of the programme and accounts for 3 EC and students receive a letter grade for the Block Seminar in their CEMS curricular progress. For the MSc International Management curriculum, it is evaluated based on pass/fail. 

RSM offers two parallel Block Seminars in cooperation with CEMS social partner & RSM corporate partner, the European Space Agency. The first block seminar, The Entrepreneurial Challenge: Turning Technology into Business (TTB) focuses on developing a (non-space) business application of a European Space Agency (ESA) technology. It learns the students about entrepreneurship and developing new, viable businesses. The second block seminar is about strategy consulting and to support entrepreneurs with the development of their new business. 

Students are assigned to teams of 4-6 persons and as a team they work on a group assignment. 

For the module TTB, the assignment is to develop a viable business concept using space technology. The business concept needs to be presented at the end of the working week. For the module NVC, the assignment is to provide entrepreneurs with actionable recommendations how to improve their new business. These recommendations also need to be presented at the end of the week. 

The group project is a joint effort. This means that all team members should contribute equally and fully participate throughout the week. Lecturers, facilitators and experts will support and coach the students in their assignments during the week. The quality of the final work will be graded by the course lecturers in collaboration with an independent jury.  

Further details on the course organization and assignment will be provided on Canvas and during the first meeting. 

Taught by Dr G. Cross (TTB), Dr G. Criaco (NVC), N. Eldering (ESA), guest lecturers

This course will leverage academic articles, practical applications of theory, and cases to develop the students’ ability to analyze international strategy issues. Students will have the opportunity to demonstrate their understanding of core concepts through weekly quizzes and class discussion. They will end the course with a group project.  

We will focus on three core theories of international strategy: Industry-, Resource-, and Institution-based views. Individually, these theories provided the building blocks for international strategy. Porter (1980) introduced what we now call the industry-based view to help managers better understand competitive dynamics in industries. In the mid 80’s and early 90’s, the revival of resource-based approaches elaborating Penrose (1952) helped to explain how firms may develop capabilities and combine and leverage resources to gain sustained competitive advantages (Barney, 1991; Dierickx & Cool, 1989). And more recently, a group of scholars has been promoting the inclusion of an institution-based view to help explain the rules of game that may shape business and firm outcomes. Together, these theories create the basis for a strategy tripod. 

The strategy tripod helps managers to better understand four key questions (Peng et al., 2009): Why do firms differ? How do firms behave? What determines the scope of the firm? What determines the success and failure of firms around the globe? Each of these questions relates to firm performance, the fundamental focus of strategy practitioners and researchers and the core of our course. 

Review the course guide for more details.

Taught by Dr B. Pinkham.

Supply chain management (SCM) has emerged as one of the major areas for companies to gain a competitive edge. Managing supply chains is a complex and challenging task, due to current business trends of expanding product variety, short product life cycles, increasing outsourcing, globalization of business, and continuous advances in information technology. Supply chain management, as a natural successor to operations management, is a fundamental driver not only for further improving operations but also for strengthening the competitive position of firms. When a company faces the pressure of excessive inventories, degraded customer service, escalating costs and declining profits, or a poor return on assets, its supply chain is out of control. On the other hand, when a company moves into new markets or new technologies, it must have its supply chain prepared for new business challenges and opportunities. The course will introduce students to concepts and techniques related to the design, management and improvement of supply chains and supply chain operations.

The course focuses on a variet of challenging supply chain business situations.  For example, how different types of supply contracts can be used to design win-win solutions between buyer and supplier, how the benefits of information sharing can be estimated in the context of supply chain, and what supply chain strategies match with proliferating product variety. Other topics include, but are not limited to, inventory management, supply chain transportation and distribution network design, operational hedging and global supply chain risk management.

Review the course guide for more details.

Taught by Dr M. Pourakbar.

One manifestation of our globalizing world is the emergence of innovative start-ups that have a worldwide focus and sometimes resource base from inception. The international activities of these firms that have decided to go abroad almost directly after their creation, have received an increasing amount of attention over the past years; they are called born globals or international new ventures. In addition to small and medium-sized firms with incremental growth strategies, the focus in this course is on these dynamic start-up firms that make products and sell services that are ‘new to the world’, strive for scaling up their activities and seek international presence. These growth-oriented start-ups with global expansion strategies face a lot of uncertainty compared to established multinational companies with more traditional products and services: their novel products or services are unknown to the market, so is the effect of the product for the customer. Also, in bringing these niche products and services to the international market, young firms have limited resources and few complementary assets (they do not have deep pockets and needed additional start-up and growth financing).

In this course we will look how innovative start-ups and ambitious small firms mitigate the risks of starting-up, early growth and internationalization, and more specifically how they address and manage their country selection and market investigation choice(s), their entry mode strategies and international operations and capabilities. Other interesting characteristics of these international new ventures are the importance of the founders and the entrepreneurial team, their particular motives for international expansion, and the relevance of strategic partners and investors.

Increasingly entrepreneurship is seen as a promising approach aiming to solve complex social, environmental, and economic problems with innovative solutions. Here we deal with the overlaps between collaborative entrepreneurship, sustainable development and social venturing. This entrepreneurial collaboration may manifest itself through cross-actor participation within entrepreneurial processes, addressing sustainability issues by developing entrepreneurial solutions, and society-wide cooperation between different forms of entrepreneurship such as social entrepreneurship, sustainable entrepreneurship, and institutional entrepreneurship. Compared with commercial and independent entrepreneurship, social and collaborative entrepreneurship is characterized by the process of pursuing opportunities in pursuit of high social returns (cf. market leadership, or profit maximization). Instead of establishing a new venture to seize and commercialize opportunities, the social entrepreneur recognizes a social problem and uses entrepreneurial principles to organize, create, and manage a venture to make social change possible or realize a societal goal (e.g. the slow take-off of recycle stores in the Netherlands).

This Master course is for students who plan to become involved in new ventures and fast-growing and internationalizing firms, or high-impact social ventures in the near future (i.e. immediately after graduating) or at mid-career. Another reason to take this course is that some simply want to more as a future consultant to young companies or entrepreneurship support manager about the key entrepreneurial and managerial processes found in start-ups and fast-growing companies.

Review the course guide for more details.

Taught by Dr W. Hulsink.

Whether an organization innovates determines whether it survives. Take the iPhone for example, which disrupted the cell phone market and within a few years became the most successful smartphone company (Nokia sold its cell phone division to Microsoft in 2014 due to huge losses).

In this course you learn why companies struggle to innovate, how to successfully analyze and implement an innovation strategy, and you learn to manage the innovation process.

The course consists of two pillars (or ‘walls’) that enable a company to become innovative (Innovation Strategy and Organization Design) and the innovation process itself (see figure below). The innovation process contains how to generate, select, implement, protect, experiment, scale, and diffuse ideas. Consequently, this course will provide you the skills and knowledge to manage innovations.

Review the course guide for more details.

This course is taught by Dr H. Klapper​​​​​​​​​​​​​​. 

Management Control Systems (MCS) form the bridge between the organization’s strategy and its operations/services. Their purpose is to align managerial behaviour and decision making with organizational strategic goals. Although financial management tools are typically crucial  in an organization’s MCS, the design and use of a MCS does not only require an understanding of accounting techniques. It should also be based on a thorough understanding of how managerial behaviour is influenced by relevant control system elements, such as target setting, performance measurement and monetary incentives. Indeed, as the proper design of MCS is paramount for organizational performance, organizational failure can often be attributed to a poor design or implementation of the organization’s management control system. Past scandals such as the collapse of Enron and the recent crisis in the financial sector can be directly traced back to failures in MCS design. The emphasis of the course is on the analysis and understanding of the drivers of managerial (rational and irrational) decision making in complex organizations rather than on the application of accounting tools often associated with financial management.
 
The course strongly focuses on the managerial issues faced by CFOs of multinational companies. Meetings are case-based: students discuss (financial) management control topics in close relation to case studies of multinational companies. The assignments/tests will allow students to show their theoretical knowledge, but also their understanding of how to apply it to real-life case situations.

Review the course guide for more details.

This course is taught by Prof. Dr M. van Rinsum​​​​​​​.

All electives enable you to broaden your knowledge of a chosen field before starting work on your Master Thesis. 

CEMS electives cover a broad range of subjects, from strategic management to current issues in sustainability. Through your selection of electives, you gain either in-depth knowledge of a certain field, or a broader view across the entire international business landscape, depending on your preference for your future career: to apply for a specialist entry-level job, or to gain a broad foundation for a wide range of careers in management.

CEMS students may choose free electives from among the CEMS-accredited courses indicated here at the EUR online course guide.

The contact between individuals and organizations from different countries, cultures, and social groups has never been greater than in our time. In recent decades organizations have continuously globalized their operations, resulting in increasing frequency with which employees interact with colleagues and customers from different cultural backgrounds and ethnicities. At the same time, as a result of legal, social and economic shifts, workforce participation rates of women, minorities, and disabled people have dramatically grown, thus turning diversity into a strategic issue in organizations. Further, as executives operate around broader regions, global teams are formed to address the need to become globally competitive, and customers and suppliers operate across borders, the demands on global executives are ever growing. 

This course is designed to help participants develop a deeper understanding of the issues that confront global managers today, and to prepare them for leadership roles in international organizations. Through business cases, experiential exercises, and real-life examples, the course strives to explore knowledge in leading diverse people as well as in leading global organizations. Emphasis will be placed on gaining awareness for the role of culture in organizations and on developing skills to manage diversity.

Review the course guide for more details.

Taught by Dr M. Shemla​​​​​​​. 

Climate change is one of today’s most pressing issues, receiving international attention from political leaders, corporations, the media, advocacy groups, and the general public. In the future, it is likely to become even more pressing as the effects of climate change intensify resource competition, natural disasters, disease vectors, water and food scarcity, and refugee migration.

According to Sir Nicholas Stern, former chief economist of the World Bank, the impact of climate change is likely to change the international business environment dramatically. However, the business relevance of climate change is insufficiently understood by future decision makers in international management and society.

We believe that tomorrow’s business leaders should be educated on the key elements of climate change – the science, the evolving policy, and role of business. They can become an essential part of the solution, but only if equipped with a sound understanding of the challenges at hand and the processes by which new policies are constructed.

The Climate Change Strategy course and its Model United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) form an innovative educational approach to closing this knowledge gap. Our goal is to broaden students' understanding of climate change, climate policy, and their impacts on the future of business.

The course modules deal with the core issues of climate change and include a wide range of effective didactic tools and exercises. Students are given a deeper understanding of the background and consequences of climate change for business, and of corporate responses to it. Special emphasis is laid on international and national regulatory frameworks, and on emerging resource challenges and market opportunities. Furthermore, the course will provide students with an opportunity to develop a broad set of personal skills such as negotiation, forming strategy, research, public speaking and debating.

The 2022 edition of the course will be simultaneously offered at eight leading CEMS universities and culminates in a two-day UNFCCC simulation event at one of the business schools.

Students will be using the 2015 Paris Agreement created at COP21 and be simulating the upcoming COP27. Negotiations will seek to enhance the current Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) of countries and work out details of how the new mechanisms and funds will function. The big challenge is how to improve the current commitments to be in line with the universally agreed target of limiting global temperature rise to ‘well-below 2 degrees’. Students will negotiate on issues such as mitigation of greenhouse gases (new voluntary targets, financing and compliance), adaptation to climate change (financing, climate change refugees, technology transfer), and market mechanisms (sustainable development mechanism, REDD+, aviation and shipping).

Students should attend and actively participate in the classes. Students are expected to engage in class discussions, ask questions of speakers, and demonstrate involvement with group exercises.

Review the course guide for more details.

Taught by Dr S.P. Kennedy.

The course is focused on using statistics and machine learning tools to solve problems in the area of new product development (NPD). This involves offline problems (e.g., how to design a new product, how to measure value creation) as well as online problems (how machine learning can be deployed to, in real time, assess consumers styles, recommend online products, and communicate with them in a personalized – but computer-mediated - way).

New product development is a marketing topic, and the lecturer is a marketing professor who has done extensive research on the use of machine learning in marketing. His research on machine learning methods for digital marketing will be extensively discussed and the quantitative methods he has published (such as morphing, machine-learning based assessment of cognitive styles, and reinforcement learning) will be taught in class.

Why is this course focused on new product development? Well, product innovation is consistently found to be one of the most important drivers for a firm’s success. More recently, the Internet has enabled products that are recommended and adapted to each consumer, but that requires the firms to be able to use analytics and machine learning.

The purpose of this course is to provide students with a deep understanding on (1) the machine learning methods that are being used in the development and commercialization of new products, both digital and non-digital, and (2) the analytics and machine learning tools needed for customization and recommendation of digital products.

Review the course guide for more details.

This course is taught by Prof. Dr G. Liberali​​​​​​​​​​​​​​.

Over the past years, small firms and start-ups have started to play an increasingly important role in our economy. R&D spending by small firms has increased and many disruptive innovations have been conceived by new entrants to an industry, thereby posing a major threat to existing firms. In order to sustain their competitive advantage, it is important for large firms such as Shell, DSM, and KLM to tap into the knowledge of these start-ups and to invest in corporate venturing. Corporate venturing can be achieved in different ways, including: taking a minority position in outside businesses (corporate venture capital), building a new business as a stand-alone unit (spin-out), or building a new business inside the existing firm with a structure allowing for managerial autonomy and independence (corporate incubator or accelerator). This course will discuss strategies, organizational structures and implementation challenges of new ventures within an established corporation as well as options to leverage external partners outside the boundaries of the corporation within the process of new business development.

Review the course guide for more details.

This course is taught by Prof. Dr V.J.A. van de Vrande​​​​​​​.

This course teaches a general management perspective on financial decision making and provides participants with the skills and knowledge to increase the value of a corporation. The course should appeal to participants who want to work as finance executives within a corporation, consultants, investment bankers, private equity, or venture capital investors. The course is also suited for participants who simply want to extend their finance knowledge beyond the financial management courses.

The aim of this course is to teach participants the knowledge and skills that a manager needs for good investment, financing, and operating decisions. The first part reviews essential financial concepts. The second part teaches participants how to recognize and manage financial risks. The third part discusses international investment decisions.

Review the course guide for more details.

This course is taught by Dr C.H.O. Schmitt.

The International Business Project (or IBP) constitutes an important (and mandatory) part of the Spring semester within the CEMS programme at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM). Over a period of approximately four months, you will work intensively on a consultancy project together with three/four other students, carried out for a company or institution. Both a university and a company coach supervise the project. The general aim of the project is to respond professionally and effectively to a real-world management problem and to learn from working together in multidisciplinary and culturally heterogeneous groups.

Most students will already be familiar with various business disciplines through course work; however, the interdisciplinary use of this knowledge and the capacity to translate it into practical solutions is often a new challenge. The business project permits students to combine theory and practice – they learn how to formulate a project proposal and relevant research questions, analyse problems, develop recommendations and propose solutions to the problem. In addition to providing hands-on experience on how to deal with a business problem, the course also offers a unique chance to learn about how teams function and to learn how to work effectively in teams. Therefore, the project incorporates leadership sessions that challenge students to deepen their understanding of the process of working in multidisciplinary and international teams.

All electives enable you to broaden your knowledge of a chosen field before starting work on your Master Thesis. 

CEMS electives cover a broad range of subjects, from strategic management to current issues in sustainability. Through your selection of electives, you may gain either in-depth knowledge of a certain field, or a broader view across the entire international business landscape, depending on your preference for your future career: to apply for a specialist entry-level job, or to gain a broad foundation for a wide range of careers in management.

CEMS students may choose free electives from among the CEMS-accredited courses indicated here at the EUR online course guide.

The Research Clinic constitutes the formal start of the MSc International Management thesis semester. Students must have completed the full first year of the MSc International Management/CEMS programme in order to advance to the research clinic and thesis semester. The seminar informs IM students about the following research issues: 

• What makes good research compelling? 

• How does one write an interesting and persuasive thesis? 

• How does one formulate a challenging research question? 

• What is an adequate research methodology to answer the central research question? 

The Research Clinic is structured around four plenary lectures that address the research issues stated above; in parallel, students work in small-scale highly interactive work groups applying these themes to their own research topic. Groups will typically consist of students sharing similar research topics. The output of this seminar is a research proposal for the Master thesis. 

All plenary sessions are interactive; students can expect to be asked questions, to make presentations, or to engage in discussion with other fellow students. The preceding implies that students are expected to come to class prepared, having carefully read all the compulsory literature and submitted the assignments. 

In addition to the plenary sessions, students have three work-group sessions with their supervisor. These sessions focus on the actual writing of the research proposal. Depending on the supervisor these sessions will be run in groups or individually. 

Taught by Dr R. Olie.

The Master thesis constitutes the heart of the third and final semester of MSc International Management/^CEMS programme. The Master thesis requires that students complete independent, individual research on a topic of their choosing, in the academic field of International Management. In practice, this will generally cover the fields of Strategic Management, Organisational Behaviour, Human Resource Management, Marketing, Supply Chain Management and Finance. Other disciplines including Entrepreneurship and Global Business and Stakeholder Management may also be considered.

As many students may find it difficult to develop their own research ideas or narrow the scope, ideas for thesis themes will be provided by professors of various academic departments. However, students will have ample freedom to explore specific research topics within these themes. The professor(s) of the theme will act as thesis coach. An important requirement for the research topic is the relevance for an international manager. Furthermore, the topic should be both theoretically and practically relevant. Practical issues without a theoretical basis and relevance fall outside the scope of the Master thesis.

The IM thesis provides students with an opportunity to deepen their understanding of areas of interest, train their capacities of analysis and problem-solving, and improve their skills in practical scientific business and management research. The Master thesis is research-based and thus requires sufficient knowledge of methodology, the research process and effective methods of communicating research results. The Research Clinic at the start of the thesis semester provides a good basis for acquiring this knowledge. The research clinic introduces necessary elements for conducting academic and business research including problem formulation, data analysis, research design and writing a valuable report.

Review the course guide for more details.