Global Reach. Global Knowledge.

Executive Education
in Europe

Changing the Game—Europe
Negotiation and Competitive Decision Making

June 28-July 3, 2009 (London, UK)

Designed as a comprehensive program for practical success, Changing the Game features courses, cases, and activities that improve every aspect of negotiation, including objective self-assessment tactics, negotiation simulations, situation analyses, and advanced decision-making skill sets that can be shared across the entire organization.

All Global Executive Education Programs

2009

Global Capital and National Institutions: Crisis and Choice in the International Financial Architecture

Alfaro, Laura
October 2009

All managers face a business environment in which international and macroeconomic phenomena matter. International capital flows can significantly affect countries' development efforts and provide clear investment opportunities for businesses. During the 1990s and early 2000s, the world witnessed an explosion in capital flows at the global level. Gross foreign assets and liabilities stood at two or three times GDP for many countries, as compared to just two decades ago. This explosive growth, especially in emerging markets, has been fueled both by changes in world politics (e.g., the end of the Cold War, collapse of the Soviet Union, shifting political climate in China, and political changes in Latin America and Asia) and advances in technology. Private capital flows-debt finance, equity capital, and foreign direct investment (FDI)-became larger than current and past official capital flows. This new era of foreign capital mobility has also been characterized by low interest rates in industrial countries, growing external imbalances in the U.S. economy, and the rise of China, all of which posed new challenges to policy management. In 2009, the global economy remained mired in a deep crisis following the subprime meltdown in the U.S. The situation was also a true testimony of how intertwined individual economies had become over the years. The effect of policies to deal with the ongoing global crisis and new policy choices remain to be seen. Understanding these phenomena-the determinants of capital flows, the effects of foreign capital on host countries, the impact of exchange-rate movements, and the genesis of financial and currency crises-is a crucial aspect to making informed managerial decisions. The cases in this book have been designed to give students an appreciation of the critical role of institutions and policies in affecting patterns of international capital flows and the abilities of government to manage them effectively. The case studies are tied together by two broad themes: (1) the determinants and effects of international capital, and (2) policy-makers' management of these flows. The cases approach these themes by exploring institutional detail in deep local context. The cases expose students to recent key events that have shaped the way economists think about these subjects. The events covered have a clear global perspective as the cases are set in Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, as well as the United States. The cases also cover events that occurred during the last three decades as not only do they affect the business environment that managers face today but they also hold important lessons. An important feature the cases reveal is the cyclical nature of international capital flows. Global Capital and National Institutions: Crisis and Choice in the International Financial Architecture is composed of three intellectual segments: (1) Determinants and Effects of International Capital Flows, (2) Policies and Strategies for Harnessing the Benefits of Financial Globalization, and (3) Challenges and Policies of Large Economies. Chapter I presents a detailed overview of the cases and readings in the module and relates the cases included to the main patterns of international capital flows in the last thirty years. Finally, the chapter also presents the key insights from the field of international economics covered in the cases as well as the current state of debate among policy-makers.

The Decline and Renewal of British Multinational Banking

Book chapter in Business in Britain in the Twentieth Century

Jones, G., and Lucy Newton
October 2009

This chapter discusses the renaissance of British multinational banking from the 1990s. British commercial banks had pioneered multinational banking during the 19th century, but they were unable to build on this legacy during the new wave of global banking that began in the 1960s with the advent of the Euromarkets. However, from the 1990s there was major restructuring and a much improved performance. The chapter explores the shifts in strategy and management that enabled HSBC and other British banks to become global leaders in contemporary multinational banking, at least until the global financial crisis, which began in 2007, raised fundamental questions about the future trajectory of the entire global financial system.

World Scientific Publishing Company

Company Strategy: Business Model Reconfiguration for Innovation and Internationalization

Casadesus-Masanell, Ramon, and Joan E. Ricart
September 2009

Competitiveness in Catalonia: Looking Ahead-A Report of the Center SP-SP at IESE Business School

2008

New Evidence on Cluster Organizations (pdf)

Preface to Automotive Clustering in Europe

Ketels, Christian H.M.
December 2008

Darmstadt, Germany: Europäischer Wirtschaftsverlag GmbH, 2008.

2007

Capital Rules: The Construction of Global Finance

Abdelal, Rawi
May 2007

The rise of global financial markets in the last decades of the twentieth century was premised on one fundamental idea: that capital ought to flow across country borders with minimal restriction and regulation. Freedom for capital movements became the new orthodoxy. In an intellectual, legal, and political history of financial globalization, Rawi Abdelal shows that this was not always the case. Transactions routinely executed by bankers, managers, and investors during the 1990s--trading foreign stocks and bonds, borrowing in foreign currencies--had been illegal in many countries only decades, and sometimes just a year or two, earlier. How and why did the world shift from an orthodoxy of free capital movements in 1914 to an orthodoxy of capital controls in 1944 and then back again by 1994? How have such standards of appropriate behavior been codified and transmitted internationally? Contrary to conventional accounts, Abdelal argues that neither the U.S. Treasury nor Wall Street bankers have preferred or promoted multilateral, liberal rules for global finance. Instead, European policy makers conceived and promoted the liberal rules that compose the international financial architecture. Whereas U.S. policy makers have tended to embrace unilateral, ad hoc globalization, French and European policy makers have promoted a rule-based, "managed" globalization. This contest over the character of globalization continues today.

Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007

The Empire in One City? Liverpool's Inconvenient Imperial Past

Book chapter in Return to Imperial Trade? John Holt & Co (Liverpool) Ltd. as a Contemporary Free-Standing Company, 1945-2006

Decker, Stephanie
September 2007

John Holt & Co is one of a group of unlikely survivors from the imperial era: medium-sized firms that continue to trade between Europe and Africa and whose continued existence is only rarely commented upon. The Liverpool-based John Holt & Co with its Nigerian subsidiary John Holt PLC is an interesting case for a pilot study because the company returned in 2001 to an organizational form that is known as free-standing company in the historical literature on imperial business. These companies only had a small head office in the metropolitan country, often in major port cities or the capital, which supervised the operations in another, normally less developed, country, where all business and investment took place. Although frequently associated with imperialism, there is reason to believe that John Holt is not an isolated case of a company assuming this form. Holt and others function as intermediaries between global business, which rarely invests in small African markets and where commercial practices are often complicated, heavily based on personal contacts, and incompatible with the structures of large multinationals.

Manchester: Manchester University Press, forthcoming

2006

UK Competitiveness - Old Labour Market Institutions, New Collaborative Roles

Book chapter in Productive Partnerships: The Role of Employment Relations in Growing the UK Economy, edited by Tony Pilch, 12-23
Ketels, Christian H.M.
August 2006

London: The Smith Institute, 2006

Consumer Capitalism: Politics, Product Markets, and Firm Strategy in France and Germany

Trumbull, Gunnar
May 2006
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006

Die vernachlässigte macht der altmodischen face-to-face Kommunikation in Unternehmen und Betrieb: BMW im Gespräch (The Neglected Power of Old-Fashioned Face-to-Face Communication in the Firm and Factory)

Book chapter in Ferrum: Nachrichten aus der Eisenbibliothek
Fear, Jeffrey
May 2006

Ferrum : Nachrichten aus der Eisenbibliothek