1 - 10 of 16 results for: POLECON ; Currently searching offered courses. You can also include unoffered courses

Politicians, regulators, and voters place limits on - and present opportunities for - nearly every business. Firms like Uber, Airbnb, and Google do not only remain cognizant of existing laws, they also look for opportunities to change the law in ways that help their business. In this class, we will learn how businesses can influence political decision-making and develop frameworks for political strategy. We will examine firms' interactions with competitive firms, market incumbents, customers, and institutions, including interest groups, legislatures, regulatory agencies, courts, international organizations, and the public. Case studies include intellectual property, health care reform, carried interest in private equity, ride-sharing, and peer-to-peer lending. Students will complete the course with a better appreciation of how politics works, of the opportunities and perils associated with alternative political goals, and of tactics likely to achieve those goals. Special emphasis is given to beyond market strategy for start-ups and how to integrate market and beyond-market strategies.

This course shares significant material with POLECON 230 and the goal of developing integrated strategies for optimal firm performance that combine elements within and beyond markets. POLECON 231 diverges from the base course to delve deeper into issues that are particularly salient for entrepreneurs in emerging and frontier markets. Using a combination of cases from developed and developing countries, we will expand the list of topics considered to include managing political risk and protecting the firm in the face of uncertain and discretionary regulatory environments. The objective is to provide a solid grounding in the techniques explored in 230, while refining skill sets and whetting appetites for investment in higher risk environments.

This course addresses managerial issues in the social, political and legal environments of business. Cases and readings emphasize strategies to improve the performance of companies in light of their multiple constituencies, both within the US and internationally. Most core courses focus on firms' interactions with customers, suppliers, and alliance partners in the form of mutually beneficial voluntary exchange transacted in markets. In contrast, this course considers the strategic interactions of firms with comparably important constituents, organizations, and institutions beyond markets. Issues considered include those involving activist and interest groups, the media, legislatures, regulatory and antitrust agencies, and other forms of political risk. In many of the class sessions, we will draw on theoretical and empirical research in political economy, a field that is particularly relevant for understanding relationships between firms and governments, because (unlike most of economics) political economy focuses on interactions that are neither voluntary nor transacted via money.

This course explores the experience of respected business leaders who have been able to integrate their spiritual and business lives successfully. It also provides an explicit opportunity for students to discuss their own intentions to find deep meaning in and through their business careers. Difficulties, struggles and barriers will be examined as well. Readings will include both biographies of specific business people and background materials on the major religious and philosophical traditions represented. A number of the exemplars whose biographical information will be examined, like Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, will be invited to class -- initially to listen to the class discussion, and then to provide feedback to students, expand on their own biographies and the background resources read in preparation for each class, and respond to questions and answers. This course will help students elucidate how their business careers fit into what ultimately matters most to them and how to build moral courage and long-term commitment to their ideals.

This course uses novels and plays as a basis for examining the moral and spiritual aspects of business leadership and of the environment in which business is done. On the one hand literature is used as the basis for examining the character of business people, while on the other hand literature provides illumination of the cultural contexts of values and beliefs within which commercial activities take place in a global economy. The course is organized around the interplay of religious traditions and national identities. Classes are taught in a Socratic, discussion-based style, creating as much of a seminar atmosphere as possible. A two-text method is used, encouraging students to examine their own personal stories with as much care as the stories presented in the literature. This course will be graded on the basis of class participation, weekly reflection papers (1 page), and a final paper. There will be no exam.

What does one need to know about Islam to do business effectively in an Arab country? How can understanding the Protestant ethic help Mexican managers deal with U.S. partners? How does Confucianism influence Chinese business ethics? What are the business advantages of knowing how different countries rate on the spectrum of individualist versus communitarian values? These are the kinds of issues discussed in this course, which seeks to help students who will be engaged in international business during their careers. It aims to examine the deeper levels of attitudes and beliefs, often unconscious, which lie beneath the way business is done in various countries. Information will be provided on major religious and philosophical traditions like Confucianism, Shinto, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Christianity. Some cross-cultural frameworks will also be considered. Case studies and background readings are set in nations like China, Japan, India, the United Arab Emirates, Israel, Mexico and the United States. The class will be discussion-based, drawing on students¿ own life experiences as well as the cases and readings. The hope is to provide a competitive advantage, both theoretically and practically, to students through understanding certain unspoken rules of the game in global business.

Cities are where billions of people live and they are the engine for innovation and economic growth. They are also going through enormous change and battling with fundamental problems, like housing, transportation, urban planning, the environment, safety, transparency and more. Innovation offers the promise of exciting solutions. But for that change to happen, it must serve the interests of the people who live in a city and overcome the challenges of politics and policymaking. The class will focus on this intersection. We will analyze cities as a distinct phenomenon, look at what is possible technologically, and explore how change can be made to happen. The class will consist of a combination of case studies, guest speakers, and class discussion. It will be led by Steve Callander, GSB Professor of Political Economy, and Sarah Hunter, the director of Global Public Policy at X, the google Moonshot Factory.

This course studies the cognitive scientific foundations of political economy. It builds on the explosion of research in cognitive psychology, evolutionary anthropology, and allied fields over the last few decades to provide perspectives on political beliefs and behavior that are not tweaks on theories of complete rationality; they are distinct ideas with their own premises of how humans think, plan, and decide. These premises do not posit that we are irrational. Such claims are wildly off the mark; they cannot explain how we have become the dominant species on this planet. Instead, they describe a clever but computationally constrained primate whose evolution, cultural as well as biological, has produced a characteristic configuration of mental software and external symbol systems (writing, numbers). The representational and computational capacities of this software and these symbol systems, combined with our unusual ability to cooperate with unrelated strangers, has in a remarkably short time produced massive knowledge-intensive political institutions that can deploy nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and can use epidemiology and molecular genetics to combat epidemics. Such achievements warrant explanations. In short, we are boundedly rational, but that's only half the story; we're also really really clever problem-solvers. This course explores theories that explain both halves in a unified way.

This course provides an introduction to political economy with an emphasis on formal models of collective choice, public institutions, and political competition. Topics considered include voting theory, social choice, institutional equilibria, agenda setting, interest group politics, bureaucratic behavior, and electoral competition. Also listed as Political Science 351A.