UNIVERSITY OF ECONOMICS HO CHI MINH CITY

SCHOOL OF INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS - MARKETING

Course unit title: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS SIMULATION

Name of Instructor (s): Truong Thi Minh Ly, MA Email: truongly@ueh.edu.vn

Le Minh Tuan, MA Email: mtuan1682@ueh.edu.vn

Course unit code: BUS503014

Type of course unit: Compulsory

Level of course unit: Bachelor

Year of study: 1 Semester: 1st

Course learning outcomes:

After finishing the course, students should be able to:

- Recognise impacts of international environment to international businesses and how they react to these
impacts.
- Define & analyse differences in business strategies, understand and be able to make business plans.
- Know how to assign resources to respond to a fiercer business competitive environment.
- Build up organisational structures depending on business strategies.
- Understand a variety of business functions: Marketing, HR, Finance, Operations, Sales, Accounting; and
utilise the connections between these functions.
- Explain the roles of a management team in an international company and challenges in assigning
responsibilities between the team members, in order to implement international strategies.
- Be aware of obligations and responsibilities of international companies to local people, governments, and
communities in different countries.
- Apply knowledge to solve practical problems.
- Practice and fluently capture soft skills, such as teamwork, interpersonal skills, negotiation, leadership,
critical thinking.

Prerequisites: International Business Management course.

Course description: Business Simulation module requires students to apply combination of knowledge that they
have learnt in International Business major core courses, such as: Strategic Management, Operations and Supply
Chain Management, Marketing, Human Resources Management, and Financial Management into practice.
Students will execute business strategic decisions, which represented by data imported to a web-based system
that mirror the real-world characters of the digital camera industry. In this module, students shall approach the
real business practices by directly involving to manage virtual international companies. They should employ
various business strategies to compete with their rivals in the virtual competitive environment that have similar
settings with the reality.

1
In addition, the module helps students to enhance their soft skills, such as: communication skills, interpersonal
skills, team-work skills, problem-solving skills, leadership, and report analysis.

Mode of delivery: Face to face

Course materials:

Required readings:

Arthur A. Thompson, Jr. et al (2017). GLO-BUS Developing Winning Competitive Strategies (Participant’s Guide).
Mc-Graw Hill Education.

Recommended Readings:
Charles W.L. Hill (2014). Global Business for today, 8th ed. Mc-Graw Hill Education.

Assignments:

1. Attendance and in-class discussion: Students are required to participate in group tutorial every week.
This will support you to make decisions for your business.
2. 3-year business plan: each group will need to submit one long term business plan to the system in week
7.
3. Quizzes: in order to test your basis understanding of the simulation, two online quizzes needed to be
taken at the third week and the fifth week. There will be 20 questions in each quiz.
4. Group presentation: After completing the simulation at year 13, groups are required to prepare a final
report and submit file on LMS.

Assessment Methods

Attendance and In-class discussion 10%

3- Year business plans 10%
Quizzes 20%
Group report for presentation 10%
Final business performance 50%
Planned learning activities and Teaching methods: Tutorial will be the main teaching approach for the module.
Lecture: 15 hours
Tutorial: 30 hours
Group discussion & practice: 30 hours

Language of Instruction: English

Class schedule

Dates Learning objectives/topics/activities

Week 1 Welcome
8/1 Course introduction
Group formation and game registration.
First trial (Year 6)
2
 Read: Participant Guide
Tutorial:
- Business Strategic Plan
- Organizational Chart
- Group member performance evaluation

Week 2 Second trial (Year 7)

15/1 Tutorial
- Year 6 trial report analysis
- Year 7 trial strategic plan.

Week 3 Year 6 decision round

22/1 Tutorial:
- Year 7 trial report analysis
- Year 6 decision plan

Week 4 Year 7 decision round

29/1 Tutorial:
online - Year 6 result analysis
- Year 7 decision plan

Week 5 Year 8 decision round

19/2 Tutorial:
online - Year 7 result analysis
- Year 8 decision plan

Quiz 1:

Week 6 Year 9 decision round

26/2 Tutorial:
- Year 8 result analysis
- Year 9 decision plan

Week 7 (via Year 10 decision round

LMS and Glo- Tutorial:
bus) - Year 9 result analysis
- Year 10 decision plan
4/3
The 1st 3-year strategic plan:
YEAR 10 - YEAR 12

Week 8 Year 11 decision round

11/3 Tutorial:
- Year 10 result analysis
- Year 11 decision plan

3
 Week 9 Year 12 decision round
18/3 Tutorial:
- Year 11 result analysis
- Year 12 decision plan

Week 10
25/3 Quiz 2:

Week 11 (via Final report

LMS and Glo-
bus)
1/4

Week 12 Presentation
8/4

Please note that all your works must be in written and typing form, and hard copies should be printed out and
brought to class on tutorials, soft copies should be submitted to LMS site before coming to the class (please
refer to the submitting schedule on LMS). Thank you.