Course Content
I S E B – the Master’s degree in Economics
I = International
S = Strategies
E = Economics
B = Business
Managers and specialist staff in international organisations and companies must have a wide range of skills and qualifications in business and economic disciplines in order to carry out the strategic management and leadership tasks required of them. Knowledge-based and interdisciplinary skills are indispensable for managers who have to operate and make decisions in international contexts in order to be able to deal with the complexity of a global environment and the associated challenges. The ability to analyse, evaluate and make decisions is one of the prominent demands placed on international managers. The course focuses on teaching and developing these specific management abilities. The Master’s course builds on the foundations in the academic aspects of economics which the students have already obtained, and extends and improves their management competence by providing them with the key skills they need to develop this ability. In particular these include a deeper understanding of the interrelations between business and economic issues taking into account the ability to operate in an intercultural environment.
ISEB is a research-oriented Master’s course and as such also aims to teach research methods, providing instruction in problem-solving skills as well as theoretical-analytical abilities and hence developing students’ ability to actively undertake research work in the field of practically oriented, applied business administration and economics.
The course content concentrates on providing students with specific knowledge on the so-called "economics of strategy”, i.e. on the intersection of business administration and economics. Students should primarily learn how to develop strategies with sustainable economic profitability in typical markets with oligopolistic interdependencies in developed national economies. From an economic point of view they should learn how institutional markets with market power should be organised (e.g. by a policy of competition) so that economic welfare taken as a whole is promoted.
The course has 15 modules, which are assessed by means of examinations. A module comprises 4 hours of face-to-face teaching and 8 hours of self-study per week. The Master thesis and the viva on the Master thesis carry 18 ECTS (3 modules).
In the first semester of the course, the foundations of international business administration, microeconomics and macroeconomics, public finance and quantitative methodology are given at Master level. In the second semester, specific business specialisations are offered and the focus is on the core element of the course, the "economics of strategy”. As a research-oriented course, emphasis is also placed on the application of quantitative methodology. The third semester comprises a module on soft skills, the knowledge forum, in which current research projects on specific topics are presented and worked on, and students are supervised as they write their Master thesis.