Global Executive MBA

Strategic management is concerned with what is perhaps the most pressing issue for strategic leaders: how can I make my firm outperform its competitors? To formulate value-creating strategies, managers must identify core competencies, analyse industry environments, and develop new ways of outcompeting their rivals. The overall aim of this course is to help you to think like a strategist and contribute to C-suite level strategic decision-making.

Corporate governance is about getting “the rules of the game” right within which firms can secure resources, develop their core activities and business models, secure their societal licence to operate, and create and capture value for their shareholders and stakeholders. Rather than presenting an optimal corporate governance set-up that suits all firms, we will discuss the ownership and governance choices ofthe firm as a matter of strategic design and decision-making.

Strategic questions that we will discuss include:

- Who would be the best owner of the firm?

- How do we secure that strategically important stakeholders such as employees, suppliers and customers continue to be ‘invested’ in the firm?

- How do we develop and maintain the firm’s societal license to operate?

Visionary business leaders of the future need a toolbox that helps them to tackle some tough strategic decisions. In this course, we discuss some of the toughest financial decisions senior managers may have to take, such as:

- What is the best capital structure for my company?

- Should I diversify my company or should I focus, and what is the impact on my corporate cost of capital?

- What are the financial pros and cons of having a stock market listing versus being privately held?

- Given your company has a stock market listing, what can you do to improve the stock’s liquidity?

- How do you redistribute the net profits of your corporation?

This course seeks to enable you to apply foundational concepts and insights from micro- and macro-economics to analyze some of the most relevant trends and issues in global businesses today. Specifically, this course will discuss concepts such as incentives and behavior, market power and market structures, asymmetric information, vertical integration, and outsourcing, for example, to analyze phenomena such as the international fragmentation in trade and FDI, economic crises and contagion, the role of multinationals in global business, regulation, trade agreements, as well as other current phenomena that are important for strategic leaders in global business.

The rapid changes in global business and society mean that new perspectives are needed to prepare strategic leaders for an uncertain future. This course will not only invite top-level executives, experts, and faculty to help you to envisage and understand which global mega-trends may be coming our way, but will also offer an introduction to some practical tools (such as scenario-analysis, for example) to help strategic leaders to navigate an uncertain future.

Managing people and organisational development is a mission critical C-suite competency that no business can afford to do without. Managers of globally active businesses need to continuously readjust their organisations to volatile or uncertain environments; navigate international and culturally highly diverse contexts; develop and engage with a competitive workforce based on the business’ value proposition; and engage in informed decision-making using evolving techniques such as people analytics, big data, and artificial intelligence. In sum, leading and managing a globally active organisation at a C-suite level requires specific knowledge, skills and attitudes. This course seeks to hone and develop these skills, so you can develop and lead organisations with purpose.