Digital Transformation of Corporations and Corporate Strategies

Master 2024/2025

Type: Elective course (World Economy)

Area of studies: Economics

Delivered by: School of World Economy

Where: Faculty of World Economy and International Affairs

When: 2 year, 1, 2 module

Mode of studies: offline

Open to: students of one campus

Instructors: Ермошкин Николай Николаевич

Master’s programme: World Economy

Language: English

ECTS credits: 6

Full Syllabus

Abstract

The objective of the course is to introduce students to key trends of the global economy of the past 4 decades, driven by fast change in information and communication technologies (ICT), with the emphasis on the particularly fast pace of change of the past decade, and its impact on organizations. The course will focus on economic, social, managerial and human aspects of digitalization and its positive and negative impact on society, corporate strategy, on opportunities and risks it brings to young professionals. Ethical issues, unintended negative costs and externalities of IT will be addressed, helping students to develop critical thinking and approach. The aim of the program is to help students define key objectives for their personal development, career paths and hurdles, provide them with the understanding of main global players’ strategies across industries, familiarize themselves with the main actors of the digital stage, learn the basic terminology for an informed discussion, search for analytics and help integrate their newly-acquired knowledge into their future jobs, directly related or unrelated to IT function in their organizations. Digital economy is an ever-changing stage set of various technologies, actors, concepts, countries, hopes and phobias. It is not easy to base the course on an established body of knowledge or academic research. Hence, a lot of emphasis will be put on individual research, including going beyond the recommended sources, by doing a lot of group work and interacting with active professionals in the digitalization space. One of the challenges of such course is the ability to reach out to a class often comprised of students with very different degrees of knowledge, skills and personal involvement into IT, stemming from their previous academic experience, hobbies or professional careers. It is expected that the more ‘IT-advanced’ part of the class will help to contribute to the learning trajectory by providing their contributions on more ‘hard’ topics as well as playing the roles of IT professions in group discussions, while students with ‘soft’ skills will focus on more societal and managerial aspects of digitalization. The first part of the course will be devoted to key concepts (and buzzwords), players, technologies and success stories, providing a basis for understanding of how the IT and digitalization space came to exist in its current form and shape. The course starts with the introduction to the key concepts of digitalization as it is defined today, showing its relationship to the previous waves of IT and key enabling technologies and technology players. The concepts of the Cloud, Networks, Software, Data, AI will be addressed. A short introduction to the key global players in technologies and their strategies (Cisco, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Huawei, Samsung…) will be part of the class discussion, as well as the role of system integrators and mobile operators, particularly as potential employers for the class. 5G challenge and opportunities it offers will be discussed too, along with such hot topics as the blockchain (as a standalone phenomenon and enabler for data security). Data security and its challenges will also be addressed. We will also delve in more detail into the current landscape of the giants of the new economy, trying to assess their business models and understand the success factors explaining their current roles on the global or regional level. The importance of their ‘founding fathers’ in their success will be a topic of discussion. We will examine how trade, environmental policies, social trends, domestic and foreign policy considerations and government regulations are shaping the future of IT, what are the main risks of the rise of the tech giants and new disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence. In the second part of the course we will take a closer look at how digitalization impacts various industries. For each of the markets we will identify the main market trends and enabling technologies. We will zoom on banking, transportation, public sector, retail, industry and agriculture. Industry-specific trends will be addressed, as well as their impact on the future of each industry. The course suggests active self-study and students’ individual work. Some of the assignments are individual assignments and others will be group assignments.

Learning Objectives

getting to know the key trends of digitization, main concepts and players
getting a general idea of the ways digitalization affects global economies, corporations and governments
getting the basic knowledge of the value created by digitalization and how various players can benefit from it
determining the role of Russian and other regional players on the global stage
dealing with digitalization initiatives in various sectors
learning to identify sources of information, finding ways to acquire knowledge and skills on their own, work through long reading assignments, prepare posters and presentations, improve public speaking and time management skills and skills for effective team-working

Expected Learning Outcomes

Able for self-organization for solving professional tasks
Able to communicate taking into account aims and situation of the discussion
Able to create analytical report based on Russian and foreign sources of information
Able to do research, including analysis of the problems, setting tasks, finding subject and object of the research, choosing methods of the research and evaluating its quality
Able to evaluate resource needs and plan them
Able to gather, analyze and work with statistical data, information, scientific and research reports, needed for solving economic tasks
Able to organize the work of a small teammates created for realizing a concrete economic project
Able to present results of analytical and research activity
Able to set scientific and research tasks
Able to work with the information: use different sources for solving scientific and professional problems (including those needed for system approach)
Able to study, obtain new knowledge and get new skills, including those different from the professional field
Able to discuss and present ones thought orally and in written form both in Russian and English
Able to get scientific essence of the problems in professional field
Able to solve problems in professional field using analysis and synthesis

Course Contents

Introduction to the course.
Enablers of digitalization: key technologies and technology players.
Key global players in digitalization space: FANG, FAANG, GAFAM.
Sector impact and strategies. Transportation and travel.
Sector impact and strategies. Public sector, education and healthcare.
Sector impact and strategies. Industry and agriculture.
Digitalization of a traditional company
Sector impact and strategies. Ecosystem, banking.

Assessment Elements

Individual poster presentation
Presentation of a group project
Individual course projects
Individual course projects will be mainly class presentations on a given, mainly ‘hot’ topic, rather than an obscure academic discussion.

Interim Assessment

2024/2025 2nd module
0.5 * Individual course projects + 0.2 * Individual poster presentation + 0.3 * Presentation of a group project

Bibliography

Recommended Core Bibliography

Financial markets and corporate strategy, Hillier, D., 2012

Recommended Additional Bibliography

Financial theory and corporate policy, Copeland, T. E., 2005
V. G. Khalin, & G. V. Chernova. (2018). Digitalization and Its Impact on the Russian Economy and Society: Advantages, Challenges, Threats and Risks. https://doi.org/10.22394/1726-1139-2018-10-46-63

Authors

ERMOSHKIN NIKOLAY NIKOLAEVICH

Course Syllabus