Oil: Industry, Economy, and Society: This course takes a multidisciplinary approach (primarily political economy and management) to oil and its effects on business, nation-states and the world economy. The first half of the course adopts a top-down viewpoint, examining the global oil environment. The second half is more bottom-up, using cases to grapple with industry issues. The course uses oil as a vehicle for applying and deepening understanding of intentional-business concepts. As by far the largest global industry, oil reflects and influences broader sociopolitical issues and developments, facilitating its pedagogic use.
Corruption, Development, and Good Governance (graduate level): This course examines corruption from real world as well as scholarly perspectives. It involves case studies, debates, guest lectures, and items from the news to examine how corruption can affect effective governance at the national and international levels and its trade spillovers. The course also examines how new technologies and strategies (from cell phones to the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative) can reduce corruption and improve governance.
Latino Migrant Remittances and Development in the Americas (graduate level): The purpose of this course is to integrate empirical knowledge with practitioner’s experience while providing analytical tools to understand the intersection between remittances and development. Therefore, the class represents a combination of reading, analysis, and guest speakers specialized on the subject of remittances.
Corporate Environmental Management in Emerging Markets (graduate level): This course aims to provide a graduate level introduction to corporate environmental management in developing countries. Its main emphasis is on discussing and understanding how the distinctive contextual characteristics of emerging market countries affect business, government, and social groups’ environmental protection preferences and behavior. While many in the business, government, and non-profit sectors view environmental protection as inevitably ignored and/or a threat to competitiveness, others see win-win opportunities. What allows some actors to see opportunities where others see degradation and/or a threat to economic growth and competitiveness? To answer this question, the course reviews critical and win-win perspectives on corporate environmental/social responsibility in developing countries. The main focus of the course is to understand how American corporations can gain competitive advantage from adopting socially responsible strategies to address environmental protection demands in emerging market economies.
