Global Challenges in Business Graduate Certificate

Globalization has brought dramatic changes to businesses. Markets are growing culturally diverse, and companies face the challenge of managing an increasing culturally diverse workforce. This course enables students to understand how globalization changes consumers and employees at a psychological level. The focus is on understanding that culture exists in the mind (e.g., values and beliefs) as well as in the environment (e.g., objects, brands, and institutions), and that globalization creates multi-cultural spaces in contemporary societies. The course provides cultural frameworks for better understanding cross-cultural consumer behavior and introduces the key steps for developing a global marketing plan. This includes an environmental analysis to provide cultural insights into the preferences of consumers in the new market, an audit of the brand under which products and services will be offered, and the integration of this information into a culturally focused marketing plan. Because brands often operate in multiple markets, a new culturally focused marketing plan needs to be harmonized with the current marketing strategy in existing markets. The course closes by reviewing the different approaches that successful global brands have taken in this regard.

Starting in the late 1990s, “globalization” became a buzzword to describe the apparent integration of markets in the world economy. Many authors and pundits claimed that the world was converging towards a market-friendly democratic place, while gurus and consulting firms were spreading advice on how to make profits out of the global economy. Decades later, new realities show that globalization does not mean political, cultural, and economic convergence and that forces against it are strong.

This course seeks to understand how firms adapt to, react towards, and shape the global economy. Students should be able to evaluate markets and be familiar with the best strategies firms should follow when operating globally.

This course introduces the fundamentals of cross-cultural management by describing the impact of culture on interpersonal processes in organizations, discussing how culture shapes decision-making, negotiation, leadership, teamwork, and organizational structure. Additionally, this course introduces the foundations for dealing with multiculturalism in the marketplace, discussing how culture impacts consumer behavior and how marketers can leverage these insights.