Professor Gary Gereffi Spring 2000
264 Sociology/Psychology Building TTh, 3:50-5:05 pm
Tel. 660-5611; ggere@soc.duke.edu 331 Sociology/Psychology Bldg.
Office hours:  By appointment.  

 

 

Capstone Course in Markets & Management Studies

MMS 190.01

 

            Integrative learning is a fundamental challenge in our contemporary world.  The Markets & Management Studies Program at Duke is premised on the idea that an interdisciplinary perspective offers the best training for people who will be pursuing careers in business, government, or the non-profit sector. We live in a complex organizational world that is increasingly global.  In order to successfully navigate your way in this setting, you need to look closely at how actual companies operate on a regular basis, confront and solve problems, and push themselves to higher levels of performance.

 

            This Capstone course is intended to help M&M students pull together material from core courses in the program, but it is meant to facilitate integrative learning in other ways as well.  You will learn how to work in teams to identify and resolve problems confronting companies, industries, and communities today.  This is a difficult assignment because you will be expected to blend your diverse perspectives and backgrounds, to bridge theory and facts, and to convince the participants or stakeholders in the situation you are analyzing that you have a realistic contribution to make.  In this regard, you must move beyond the passive learner role ordinarily associated with students to become both engaged researchers and policy advocates. 

 

You also will be encouraged in this Capstone to explore, in a more individualized manner, the conditions in a particular company, country, region, or occupational field in which you have a special interest.  The emphasis will be on the determinants and consequences of changing industry boundaries, and on the related shifts in the strategies of lead firms and the governance structures of diverse industries.  More detailed guidelines for both the group and individual projects will be provided later in the course.

 

 

GOALS

 

(1)  Briefly review major perspectives and concepts from core courses that you have had, including:
 

(a) neoclassical and efficiency approaches;
(b) resource-dependence, transaction cost, and other structuralist approaches;
(c) institutional and organizational theories;
(d) globalization perspectives.
(2)  Apply and test our ideas on a weekly basis via discussion of academic and popular press coverage of M&M issues.
(3)  In teams, generate and evaluate global websites that deal with an industry, country, or organization of your choosing that highlight key issues related to the shifting boundaries and strategies related to globalization.
(4)  Produce a case-study final project focusing on a product, firm, industry, occupation, country, or region, which draws upon two or more different intellectual perspectives (from core courses, or disciplinary perspectives).

The syllabus and other information relevant to this Capstone are available on the Markets & Management Studies website, and also will be provided through CourseInfo at http://cinfo.aas.duke.edu/courses/MMS190.01/ 

READINGS

 
(1)    Charles H. Fine.  Clockspeed: Winning Industry Control in the Age of Temporary Advantage.

Reading, MA: Perseus Books, 1998.

The articles we will read for the course are all available through E-Reserves at Perkins Library: http://www.lib.duke.edu/access/reserves/

REQUIREMENTS

Four components determine the final course grade:

15% -- 1) Students will take turns leading seminar discussion, and applying relevant theories and materials to business and academic articles.
35% -- 2) A team project to create and evaluate global websites to highlight the competitive challenges, resources and strategies for industries, countries, or organizations chosen in consultation with the instructor.  A comprehensive industry list could include the following general categories, which in many instances would need to be broken down into more specific products: 
  ·
·
·
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· 		Primary products:  Bananas, chocolate, coffee, fruit and vegetables, oil, timber.
Consumer nondurable products:  Apparel, footwear, sporting goods, toys, video games.
Consumer durable products:  Airplanes, automobiles, bicycles, computers, weapons.
Intermediate products:  Computer software, hard disk drives, semiconductors, specialty chemicals.
Services:  Banking, entertainment, tourism.
    Each website will be constructed according to a series of key dimensions outlined in a separate memo, and illustrated in class sessions covering a variety of different global industries.
35% -- 3) An individual case study on a particular industry, company, country, or occupational field in which you have a special interest.  Two or more intellectual perspectives need to be applied in the case study.  This paper will be 12-15 pages long, and it is due on April 18th.
15% -- 4) Participation in class and periodic written commentaries.

COURSE OUTLINE

 

Jan. 13 Introduction
The Competitiveness Debate
Jan. 18 Robert Reich, “Who Is Us?”  Harvard Business Review (Jan.-Feb. 1990), pp. 53-64; Michael Byers, “Woken Up in Seattle,” London Review of Books, 6 January 2000.
Jan. 20 Film:  Robert Reich (host), "Made in America? -- Winners and Losers."
Jan. 25 Selected articles from Foreign Affairs: Paul Krugman, “Competitiveness: A Dangerous Obsession” (March/April 1994); Alan Tonelson, “Beating Back Predatory Trade” (July/August 1994); Paul Krugman, “The Myth of Asia’s Miracle” (Nov./Dec. 1994); and Stephen Radelet and Jeffrey Sachs, “Asia’s Reemergence” (Nov./Dec. 1997).
Jan. 27 Media day (presentation and discussion of examples from the business press).
Feb. 1 Michael Porter, “The competitive advantage of nations,” Harvard Business Review (March-April 1990): 73-93.
  Recommended:  Michael E. Porter, “Clusters and Competition:  New Agendas for Companies, Governments, and Institutions.”  Pp. 197-287 in Michael E. Porter, On Competition (Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press, 1998).
Feb. 3 Gary Gereffi, “A Commodity Chains Framework for Analyzing Global Industries,” American Behavioral Science, forthcoming.
Feb. 8 Global Websites (discussion of group projects).
Global Supply Chains and Industry Clockspeeds
Feb. 10 Fine, Clockspeed, chs. 1-3.  [Extend clockspeed analysis: examples.]
Feb. 15 Fine, Clockspeed, chs. 4-5.
Feb. 17 Fine, Clockspeed, chs. 6-8.
Feb. 24  Apparel group (Tachea Corbett & Monica Gonzalez)
March 2 Autos group (Fernando Cisneros, Jeff Naples, & Dara Williams)
March 7 Electronics group (Anjali Harsh, Barry Lee, & Wendy Polit)
  SPRING RECESS (March 14, 16)
Readings on “The New Economy”
March 23 (Thursday)  
  Electronics group (cont’d) and profiles of student papers
March 28 (Tuesday)
   “A Survey of E-Commerce: Shopping Around the Web,” The Economist, Feb. 26, 2000 (special section).
April 6 (Thursday)
 

James Curry and Martin Kenney, “Beating the Clock: Corporate Responses to Rapid Change in the PC Industry,” California Management Review 42, 1 (Fall 1999): 8-36.

Andy Reinhardt, “The New Intel,” Business Week, March 13, 2000, pp. 110-124.

Joan Magretta, “The Power of Virtual Integration: An Interview with Dell Computer’s Michael Dell,” Harvard Business Review (March-April 1998): 73-84.
April 13 (Thursday)
 

Shawn Tully, “The Modular Corporation,” Fortune, February 8, 1993, pp. 106ff.

Richard Wise and Peter Baumgartner, “Go Downstream: The New Profit Imperative in Manufacturing,” Harvard Business Review (Sept.-Oct. 1999): 133-141.

C.K. Prahalad and M.S. Krishnan, “The New Meaning of Quality in the Information Age,” Harvard Business Review (Sept.-Oct. 1999): 109-118.
In-class presentation of student papers 
April 18 (Tuesday) TBA.
April 25 (Tuesday) TBA.