Advanced Seminar Marketing, Strategy, Leadership & Management: International strategy in light of geopolitical risks

The seminar is planned to take place on-site. First, there will be a mandatory two-day kick- off dealing with geopolitics, its assessment and preparation, and general business strategies. Then, the students will be allocated to groups and start to work on their selected project topic. These topics generally deal with methods and techniques to assess geopolitical risk as well as strategic approaches to prepare the firm for geopolitical events in different business contexts and environments as well as differently internationalized firms.

Participants will develop a basic understanding of the influence of the external (geo-)political environment on firm-level strategic decision-making. They learn how companies can assess and prepare for geopolitical risk and how this relates to well-established theories in management. Students will also improve their project management and teamwork skills, as they are required to elaborate on a complex project topic on their own. They will create basic skills in academic writing and literature search, too. Furthermore, they strengthen their communication skills while presenting their results in front of the class.

Each student will be allocated to a group of 2-3 people. Each group will choose a project topic which will be provided in the course. The examination consists of three parts: 1) A project plan about how the students intend to work together and how they elaborate the topic (worth 20% of the grade) 2) A 20 pages group seminar paper (worth 40% of the grade) 3) A 20 minute group presentation using MS PowerPoint (worth 40% grade) This procedure assists students to strengthen their academic writing, presentation, and project management skills.

Successful attendance of module "Fundamentals of Strategy" highly recommended but not mandatory

During the kick-off lecture, the students will get a basic introduction to understand the term geopolitics and strategic management. Afterwards, during the project group work, the team searches for adequate literature as well as develops appropriate concepts and case studies. The entire project is built on active interaction and discussion for improving personal, professional, and academic skills.