In order to prepare students as a well-rounded global business professionals, the content of the degree BA International Business that I lead develops competencies to enable students to be effective in a global business context, exploring a variety of international business issues. They will also learn the fundamentals of marketing, human resource management, economics, operations management and accounting. Most of these modules use standard textbooks, seminar activities such as case study analysis and assessment such as presentations. We try to make it interesting with visuals such as videos. I am currently working on next year’s curriculum and lecture content.
Below are three examples of TED talks. TED is a global set of conferences owned by the private non-profit Sapling Foundation, under the slogan “ideas worth spreading”. Lecturers use videos in class to raise a question to be discussed in seminars or in course work.
Typical TED talk for first year students: What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine.
Topics: Statistics, Economics, globalisation, technology, human resources
Typical questions: How are wealth and a washing machine connected to globalisation? How can statistics help the international manager? How would you, as a student, manage without a washing machine?
Typical TED talk for second year students: What makes a good idea? What is a theory or model? How do we know a global leader’s X Factor? Simon Sinek talks about leadership in action.
Topics: Multi-National Corporations, values and beliefs, leadership, management and human behaviour
Typical questions: How do we know business practices work? How can we recruit the best people? What is the evidence for the recipe for success?
Typical TED talk for final year students: How can we keep our global supply chains honest? Van Heerden makes the business case for fair labour.
Topics: Rule based vs. Consequence based decision making, cross cultural management, ethics, strategy.
Typical questions: Do companies have a corporate social responsibility? Do you agree with the speaker? Why/Why not?
In the end, I aim to provide students with the critical tools and mindset to analyse and identify responses to such questions. The class environment is a great context to explore perspectives of management, which is very important in the global environment.
