BMGT30130 Global Industry Analysis

Academic Year 2024/2025

Global Industry Analysis

The focus of this module is to understand contemporary industries within the context of globalised and increasingly multipolar world. The term globalisation has been used to describe a series of economic, geographical, social, and cultural processes that involve greater integration and homogeneity at an international level. A number of key events characterise the global economy in recent decades: regional trade agreements, China’s Open Door Policy from 1978, the dissolution of the USSR and unification of Germany from 1991, privatisation of state-owned entities, liberalisation in the financial, and telecom sectors, 9/11, the global financial crisis, pandemic, war and sanctions, and the perceived ebbing of American political and economic power. It appears that the economic gains of globalisation in the post-World War 2 years may be rolled back as nation state protectionism moves centre stage.
Yet at a fundamental economic, geographic, and business level there has been a global shift away from so-called advanced industrialised countries, doing business with each other, to a more integrated and increasingly multipolar global system where emerging markets and advanced markets are deeply intertwined as part of global production and service networks, and global value chains. Ecological concerns and sustainability are also very much to the fore. Indeed, to this end, in this module, the UN Sustainable Development Goals that we would like to incorporate are: SDG7: Affordable and Clean Energy and SDG9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure.
The focus of this course relates specifically to the economic and geographical characteristics of globalisation and, at a practical level, its implications for business.