• Critically assess the dynamics of globalization through the theories used in the course;
• Be able to identify and analyze challenges and possibilities facing companies in the globalization process;
• Demonstrate an overview of how virtual platforms and designs can facilitate globalization and potentially overcome the challenges companies face;
• Apply practices of virtual organization to a real life case study of an organization of own choice;
• Discuss the use of digital technologies in global organizing of internally and externally dispersed activities.

This course will take the point of departure in global restructuring of industries and how this can be managed through virtual platforms.

The first part of the course deals with global restructuring of industries. We will get an understanding of the three waves of globalization: production, market and innovation. Here we will learn about global value chains and their governance. This will give an understanding of how industries are now developing into global production networks. We will look into how lead firms govern activities that are globally dispersed, either internally through strategies of offshoring and foreign direct investments or externally through outsourcing. We will also get an understanding of the role of standards in this process. Second we will look into where value is created in these networks, the smile of value creation, and how it allows for actors to upgrade in these chains. This part of the course will draw on empirical cases of industries, such as just-in-time production and distributed chains in virtual organizations (e.g. Geox, Nike, iPhone etc.).

The second part of the course deals with how innovation is today increasingly organized in global networks, global innovation networks, and the strategies behind them. Here we will move to the level of specific networks to understand strategies of exploration and exploitation in global networks. This will enable us to also understand the challenges firms face in this process, e.g. the challenges of coordination and communitation in global innovation networks, the distribution of autonomy and mandate from the headquarters to subsidiaries and external actors. In some industries, innovation itself may be outsourced to a relatively new type of actor in global networks, the Knowledge Intensive Business Services (KIBS). This part will also draw on empirical cases of firms organizing innovation in global networks, such as Grundfos, Novo Nordisk etc. and on cases where certain knowledge intensive functions are outsourced to independent specialized actors, such as IT systems for pharmaceutical manufacturing and development (NNIT), blade manufacturing (LM Glasfiber) and wind turbine design (Aerodyn).

The third part of the course will move to the organizational level. Here we will look into specific firms that have developed digital platforms for their internal innovation practices (Novozymes), or developed models for open innovation (Coloplast). We will also look into the construction of global communities of practice and distributed and coordinated learning processes. This part draws on literature on organizational learning and knowledge sharing and bring in the perspective of globalization into this literature of economic sociology. In this part we will also critically assess the limits to digital organizing and how companies may overcome these.