Course Name: SG1017 (Jan 2023) Summative Assessment 1

PATHWAY: International Year 1

ASSESSMENT METHOD: Individual Case Study and Poster Presentation
WORD COUNT: 1500 Words
WEIGHTING: This assessment represents 40% of the module mark
LEARNING OBJECTIVES: LO2, LO3, LO4, LO9

PLEASE READ AND UNDERSTAND THE FOLLOWING INSTRUCTIONS:

1. This assessment consists of a Poster Presentation.
2. You are required to provide answers to the assessment question based on information from
the case study (see below).
3. Use PowerPoint for the Poster Presentation.
4. Take note of the mark scheme and word count allotted to each question.
5. Examples of the poster presentation will be provided on Moodle and discussed in the
lecture.

Assessment Questions
Read the case study below and answer the following questions by creating a poster
presentation:

1. Summarise the significance of Argentina’s business prospects to the international business

context. (approx. 250 words)

2. Analyse economic, social and environmental factors that have affected Argentina (approx.
250 words)

3. Compare how the economic performance of Argentina compares to your home country in
past decade. (approx. 250 words)

4. State the recommendations for Argentina by focusing on: (approx. 500 – 750 words)

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 a. Attracting foreign direct investment;
b. Regional stability and security; and
c. Economic diversification and productivity.

Learning Outcomes Assessed

LO2: Summarise the components of the international business environment especially

economic, sustainable, political, legal, linguistic, and cultural elements.

LO3: Recognise the nature of international business environment and the difference between
international and domestic business.

LO4: Compare and contrast the cultural differences between home and host countries in
international business.

LO9: Demonstrate problem solving, presentation, communication skills, and academic

writing skills.

Reading List

1. Hamilton, L. & Webster, P., 2018. The International Business Environment. 4th ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2. Lecture slides.
3. Academic References – approximately 10 per 1,000 words

Deadline:

Submission Dates and Times

You must submit your poster on Turnitin.
March 6th 2023 by 12:00pm (noon) GMT

Penalties: Penalties will be applied to any work submitted late. No submissions may be made
after 24 hours, we do accept submissions some hours beyond 24 hours, but penalty increases
to 20%.

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Candidates who exceed the word count by more than 10% should have 10 percentage marks
deducted. Word count excludes, title, candidate number, bibliography and appendices. It
includes the body of the text, all footnotes and in-text referencing. If a candidate is late (but
within 24 hours of the deadline) with their submission, they should have 10 percentage marks
deducted. If a candidate submits between 24 and 48 hours of the deadline, they will have 20
percentage marks deducted, and if they submit between 48 and 72 hours of the deadline, they
will have 30 percentage marks deducted.

Attention – Please note:

You must do all of the following:
• On the front sheet of your assignment write SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT 1 FOR
INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS. Also, on this front sheet, include your candidate
number and the total word count of your assessment (the word count should not exceed
10% above the required number of words for this assignment).
• Write your candidate number on the top right corner of each page of your work.
• Make sure all quotes, summaries and paraphrases are correctly referenced as explained
in the RHI Harvard Referencing Guide. In addition, make sure a full alphabetical
bibliography is included at the end of your written reflection, if this is appropriate,
detailing all texts cited in the body of the work and any others that have been consulted.
The Bibliography must follow the format laid out in the RHI Harvard Referencing
Guide.
• Avoid using Wikipedia and some other commercial websites as sources because they
may not be acceptable as evidence in your writing. If you have any doubts about what
sources are viewed as non-academic, please check with your tutor.
• Word process your work in Arial or Times Roman in size 12 font and use double-
spacing.
• Make it clear where paragraphs begin and end by leaving an extra space between
paragraphs. Ensure that your word processor uses UK spelling and adheres to UK
grammar rules.

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Case Study: Argentina

Like Australia and Canada, Argentina was an exporter of primary goods, and until the
mid-twentieth century, it followed a development path similar to theirs. Compared with other
areas in Latin America, Argentina had a small indigenous population; a low population
density; and a favourable stock of natural resources, which precipitated sizable export-driven
growth despite the country’s geographic isolation from key international markets (Gallo
1983; Duncan and Fogarty 1984; Di Tella and Platt 1986). The question remains, what
caused a society that achieved astonishing wealth within 50 years following its independence
from Spain to embark on a path of comparative decline? Sanz-Villarroya (2005) identified 2
years of structural break in Argentina’s development path compared with those of Australia
and Canada: 1896 and 1899. Those years marked important points in Argentina’s long-lasting
decline in comparison with the two countries. But compared to U.S, Canada and Australia,
Argentina never finished the transition to the open democracy supported by the rule of law.
When the military formally broke the constitutional order in 1930, Argentina embarked on
the path of unstable institutional development frequent back-and-forth transitions between
dictatorship and democracy. Instead of embarking on the path to sustained institutional
development, Argentina underwent a tumultuous electoral fraud with a near erosion of the
system of checks and balanced that precipitated the rise of populist leaders, like Juan Péron,
to power. Unstable de jure and de facto institutional framework failed to promulgate growth-
enhancing economic policies. Instead, it moulded government-backed favouritism of
dominant interest groups and encouraged pervasive rent-seeking instead of productive
economic activity. On the balance, such institutional framework condemned Argentina to
decades of stagnant productivity and poor economic growth.

Unlike Mexico and Peru, it never experienced a highly unequal and stratified society,
and its social and economic structure closely resembled that of English colonies, which
encouraged colonial settlement to a much greater degree than colonists sought resource
extraction (Lynch 1955; Garavaglia and Gelman 1995; Azcuy Ameghino 2002; Prado 2009).
The northern and southern parts of Argentina differed markedly in their social, economic, and
institutional makeup. The northern part, having a greater indigenous population density, was
swiftly integrated into the Viceroyalty of Peru to provide a source of cheap labour for the
Potosí mines and for large landowners; whereas, the southern part was never integrated into
the colonial economy (Kovac and Spruk 2017). The institutional framework of pre-

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independence Argentina was a prototype of Spanish colonial structure (Shumway 1991;
Ribas 2000). The Spanish elites immediately instituted the Repartimiento, an exploitative
labour system that rested on a forced distribution of goods and services to the local
population at heavily inflated prices, keeping the nonelite population in heavy and permanent
debt (Baskes 2000). Such exploitation and pervasive rent-seeking (Golte 1980) encouraged
various forms of servitude, critically depressed the formation of human capital, and led to the
near absence of economic opportunities for nonelites (Moreno Cebrián 1976; Andrien 1982,
1984; de Velasco 1983; Mukerjee 2008).

The perplexing political history of Argentina and its rampant institutional instability
invoke two fundamental dilemmas (Acemoglu et al. 2003). First, what would have happened
to Argentina’s long-run economic development had it managed to enshrine a set of de jure
and de facto political institutions comparable to those of the United States in its constitution
and had such an institutional framework been enforced? In the absence of institutional
breakdowns, would Argentina have remained a rich country? Would its path of economic
growth and development have been characterized by a similar slowdown had it established
and maintained US-style de jure and de facto political institutions such as competitive
polities, an independent Supreme Court, and open access to collective action for the broad
cross section of society rather than only for the privileged few? Second, how would
Argentina’s path of long-run development have changed if it had established US style de jure
and de facto political institutions at various junctures in the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, when it took an unfortunate turn toward institutional breakdowns rather
than developing a genuine system of checks and balances?

Source: Spruk, R. (2019). “The Rise and Fall of Argentina”, Latin American Economic
Review, 28, 16, pp. 1-40.

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