Online Business School is now open. Business/Management
and Research curriculum and learning contents subscriptions
are available to International Business Schools, Universities,
Management Development and Training Centres and their
Students and Staff throughout the world.
Today,
enterprises are wrestling with the difficulty of maintaining
consistency across multiple systems, information and people.
To achieve agility, companies need to adjust both its practices
and its processes to face the challenge of increasing competition
world-wide.
Current
economic conditions and increasing competition are forcing
businesses to streamline time for processing work, and to
deliver quality results for less time and cost. By not investing
wisely in the future growth generally and technology in particular
that enables effective management of processes and practices,
companies may fall short and fail to deliver results according
to plan.
The
goal of this course is to provide students with an understanding
of economic and cultural aspects pertaining to European business,
and thereby increasing their awareness of the factors that
motivate decisions and behavior in the European business world.
Students
will gain an understanding of how the European business diverges
from the Asian and American, and develop the understanding,
attitudes, and communication skills needed to function appropriately
within an increasingly global and multicultural working environment.
Learning
Outcomes
Students
will be able to demonstrate
an
understanding of European economic, political, socio-cultural
and technological environments
an
understanding of and the skills needed to cope with European
business culture and practices.
knowledge
and understanding of the EU policies and legislative instruments
and their effect on companies working in Europe
an
understanding of the impact of the European Union on global
markets and the reverse,
the
opportunities and constraints of the single European market
and the role of Europe in international business activity.
The official currency of the European Union is the euro, used in all its documents and policies. The Stability and Growth Pact sets out the fiscal criteria to maintain for stability and (economic) convergence. The euro is also the most widely used currency in the EU, which is in use in 16 member states known as the Eurozone. All other member states, apart from Denmark and the United Kingdom, which have special opt-outs, have committed to changing over to the euro once they have fulfilled the requirements needed to do so.
2007 GDP per capita in NUTS 3 areas
Also, Sweden can effectively opt out by choosing when or whether to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, which is the preliminary step towards joining. The remaining states are committed to join the Euro through their Treaties of Accession.
A single market is a type of trade bloc which is composed of a free trade area (for goods) with common policies on product regulation, and freedom of movement of the factors of production (capital and labour) and of enterprise and services. The goal is that the movement of capital, labour, goods, and services between the members is as easy as within them. The physical (borders), technical (standards) and fiscal (taxes) barriers among the member states are removed to the maximum extent possible. These barriers obstruct the freedom of movement of the four factors of production. To remove these barriers the member states need political will and they have to formulate common economic policies.
A common market is a first stage towards a single market, and may be limited initially to a free trade area with relatively free movement of capital and of services, but not so advanced in reduction of the rest of the trade barriers.
European
Competitiveness and Competition policies
Competition
policy is essential for the completion of the internal market.
The raison d'être of the internal market is to allow
firms to compete on a level playing field in all the Member
States. Competition policy seeks to encourage economic efficiency
by creating a climate favourable to innovation and technical
progress. It protects the interests of consumers by allowing
them to buy goods and services under the best conditions.
It also makes it possible to ensure that any anti-competitive
practices by companies or national authorities do not hinder
healthy competition.
Political economy originally was the term for studying production, buying and selling, and their relations with law,
custom, and government, as well as with a distribution of national wealth including through the budget process. Political economy originated in moral philosophy. It developed in the 18th century as the study of the economies of states, polities, hence political economy.
In the late nineteenth century, the term 'economics' came to replace 'political economy', coinciding with publication of an influential textbook by Alfred Marshall in 1890.[1] Earlier, William Stanley Jevons, a proponent of mathematical methods applied to the subject, advocated 'economics' for brevity and with the hope of the term becoming "the recognised name of a science."[2][3]
Today, political economy, where it is not used as a synonym for economics, may refer to very different things, including Marxian analysis, applied public-choice approaches emanating from the Chicago school, or simply the advice given by economists to the government or public on general economic policy or on specific proposals.[3] A rapidly-growing mainstream literature from the 1970s has expanded beyond the model of economic policy in which planners maximize utility of a representative individual toward examining how political forces affect the choice of policies, especially as to distributional conflicts and political institutions.[4] It is available as an area of study in certain colleges and universities.
A monetary union is an arrangement where several countries have agreed to share a single currency amongst themselves. The European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) consists of three stages coordinating economic policy, achieving economic convergence (that is, their economic cycles are broadly in step) and culminating with the adoption of the euro, the EU's single currency. All member states of the European Union are expected to participate in the EMU. The Copenhagen criteria is the current set of conditions of entry for states wanting to join the EU. It contains the requirements that need to be fulfilled and the time framework within which this must be done in order for a country to join the monetary union. An important element of this is the European Exchange Rate Mechanism ("ERM II"), in which candidate currencies demonstrate economic convergence by maintaining limited deviation from their target rate against the euro.
All member states, except Denmark and the United Kingdom, have committed themselves by treaty to join EMU. Sixteen member states of the European Union have entered the third stage and have adopted the euro as their currency. Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are the current participants in the exchange rate mechanism.
Of the pre-2004 members, the United Kingdom and Sweden have not joined ERM II and Denmark remains in ERM without proceeding to the third stage. The five remaining (post-2004) states have yet to achieve sufficient convergence to participate. These eleven EU members continue to use their own currencies.
EMU is sometimes referred to as European Monetary Union, this is not correct.
Europe's achievements in science and technology have been significant and research and development efforts form an integral part of the European economy. Europe has been the home of some of the most prominent researchers in various scientific disciplines, notably physics, mathematics, chemistry and engineering. Scientific research in Europe is supported by industry, by the European universities and by several scientific institutions. The raw output of scientific research from Europe consistently ranks among the world's best.
Human resource management (HRM) is a fairly new concept, first given general currency by the Harvard Business School in the early 1980s. Fifty years ago companies were still debating whether the term 'personnel department' should replace 'employment department' and in the 1920's even the largest companies commonly operated with simply a 'time office' and a separate 'welfare department'. This transformation of people management activities reflects a greater emphasis on individual rather than collective employee relations, an increase in the complexity of the employment process and the growth of an important strategic dimension based on the notion of 'human capital'.
In Europe, there has long been a considerable gap between the Anglo-Saxon and continental approaches to the way enterprises are organised and operated. Companies in the UK and Ireland have a significantly higher proportion of managers relative to other employees than companies in countries such as Germany, and particularly Italy.
Information
on the European economies (including macroeconomic data)
European Commission - Information Society Directorate-General
@ ecommerce@www.ispo.cec.be
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