Faculty of Business and Accountancy University of Malaya
Faculty : Business and Accountancy
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Supply Chain Management
Many enterprises have been working toward streamlining their external operations with SCM (Supply Chain Management) solutions. SCM is an approach to coordinating information flows as well as material flows from raw material/component suppliers to consumers through manufacturers, wholesalers/distributors, and retailers. This course will examine SCM practices in different industries, and discuss their benefits and challenges. General managers as well as supply chain managers will benefit greatly from the course, as it helps them develop supply chain strategy to achieve competitive advantage. The course will also cover e-procurement and buyer-supplier relationships (arm’s length vs. collaboration).
Mobile Business Strategies
The Internet and the World Wide Web are changing rapidly in terms of intelligence, interactivity, and the mobility of the applications. Developments in the mobility dimension allow many users to connect to the internet through mobile phones, PDAs and other mobile devices. Starting from mobile commerce technologies, services and business models, the course moves into developing strategies for enterprise-wide businesses. It presents developments on the web in terms of mobility, covering topics such as mobile Internet technologies and businesses, m-business value chain and business models, privacy, security and mobile payment issues and how these can be used for mobile-Internet enabled businesses. At the end of this course, students will be equipped with knowledge of mobile internet technologies and how strategies can be developed for successful mobile businesses.
Environmental Supply Chain Strategy
The integration of the environmental issues into the supply chain is becoming increasingly important for firms. Many firms find opportunities to improve environmental performance and reduce cost simultaneously by integrating environmental considerations in their supply chain. Many firms require suppliers to disclose information on environmental performance such as the certification of ISO 14001. This course introduces concepts and practices of environmental supply chain management and strategy. We will review different theoretical approaches in environmental supply chain management and strategy to build our conception foundation on this subject. We will also use case studies to understand how firms integrate environmental considerations into their supply chain. In addition, we touch on the subjects necessary to understand in the supply chain management including ISO 14001, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), environmental accounting and environmental partnership building. We attempt to understand both theories and practices of environmental supply chain management and strategy through this course.
ICS , Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy
[Term 2] Organizational Capability (K. Kusunoki) (2008/Term 1&2 (Fall&Winter))
Organizational Capability is positioned as an extension of the Competitive Strategy course with an aim to provide students with an integrative understanding of how to gain and sustain competitive advantage. Organizational Capability is well paired with Competitive Strategy as they are two sides of the same coin. Both courses are concerned with gaining and sustaining competitive advantage. The two courses, however, differ in perspective. Competitive Strategy is fundamentally a matter of effective positioning that differentiates a firm from competitors, and is based on a sophisticated understanding of external factors, such as industrial structure.
On the other hand, the perspective of Organizational Capability focuses on internal contexts of competitive advantage. Effective positioning alone is not sufficient to gain and sustain competitive advantage. There are two main routes to competitive advantage: SP (Strategic Positioning) and OC (Organizational Capability), and this course focuses on the latter route.
With these issues in mind, the course will push you to understand how a firm can fully exploit the potential advantage of differentiated strategic positioning. Theoretical aspects of the course are based on recent developments in the capability- (or resource)-based view of the firm. Since knowledge is the crucial ingredient for firm-specific, costly-to-imitate organizational capabilities, the course has substantial linkage to Knowledge Management.
Students who will take this elective course should recognize that this course is not about specific skills and tools for strategy formulation and implementation, but about a perspective to deepen understanding of strategy and competitive advantage. The capability side of competitive strategy is a new and emerging arena of strategy thinking, relative to the positioning-based strategy taught in Competitive Strategy. Different from positioning-based strategy, there are no common, well-developed concepts and frameworks for analyzing organizational capability like Five Force, Value Chain, and so forth. Furthermore, the idea of organizational capability mainly focuses on intangible aspects of competitive advantage, which are difficult to express as fully explicit knowledge. Nevertheless, I believe that Organizational Capability will provide tangible power as a useful heuristic to cultivate more comprehensive understanding of how and why a company can gain and sustain competitive advantage.
Teaching Method
The sessions are primarily case-based. Some cases will be discussed in the traditional manner of case discussion. Given the emerging nature of capability-based strategy, however, some sessions will use cases as supplements or illustrations for interactive lectures. The course will include one presentation session from groups of students.
Since there are no “standard” textbooks on capability-based strategy, this course will not use a particular textbook. Instead, the course uses some chapters from the following book as reading materials:
Saloner, G., Shepard A., & Podolny, J. (2001). Strategic management. New York: John Wiley
& Sons.
Since the course will directly touch only some chapters from the book, copies of the selected chapters to be used in the class will be included in the course binder. However, I strongly recommend that students buy this book because it is very good at creating a bridge between the capability view and positioning view of strategy. In addition, I will deliver some readings in the classroom that will be helpful as supplements to the topics and issues covered in this course.
Being one of China’s 30 experimental universities for EMBA education approved by the State Council Office of the Academic Degree Committee and the Ministry of Education, the EMBA Program of the School of Management is geared to the needs of high-level managers and executives in enterprises and government bodies with good education background and rich management experience. The EMBA Program aims to train the entrepreneurs and high-level professional managers with outstanding international strategic perspectives and overall decision-making and leadership ability.
Since the first class opened up in the second half of 2002, many entrepreneurs and top managers at home and abroad joined in the program. The participation of many private entrepreneurs features the program, constituting a valuable network of elites. The EMBA program is developing steadily and commits itself to building a platform for entrepreneurs and top managers for study, communication and interaction so as to train high-level management personnel with strategic perspectives that can meet the requirements and challenges of global competition.
Education in the EMBA program of the School of Management includes orientation, course learning, supervisor selecting, overseas study tour, and dissertation writing, etc. There are key courses and elective courses in the EMBA program. The supervisor is selected by a two-way system. And dissertations should be defended after anonymous review and evaluation. The key courses in the EMBA program include Corporate Strategy, Managerial Economics, Advanced Financial Management, Operations and Supply Chain Logistics Management, Organizational Behavior within Cross-cultural Context, Strategic Marketing, etc.
Objective of EMBA Program: To train leaders in economic construction and development
Guidelines of EMBA Program: To inculcate intensive operational knowledge