International Business Management: The Essentials for MBAs and Executives: 2025 Edition – A GlobalBusiness© Publication (International Business: Short Course)

This 2025 updated edition in the series covers essential knowledge for managers and MBAs seeking to practice International Business. Suitable for an introductory MBA or senior undergraduate course, it also is a review of the essentials for practicing executives at the middle or senior level in multinational companies. This is not a book on geography or the international business environment, per se. Instead, it takes a “management strategy” perspective on issues such as foreign direct investment (FDI), trade and tariffs, global supply chains, and managing across cultures, currency, and political risks. It also treats alliance partner risks, leakage of proprietary intellectual property, and handling of foreign currency risk.

The book also alludes to international issues such as “dumping,” international price differentiation, the benefits and drawbacks of having foreign joint venture and licensing partners, and how to reach foreign markets via exporting versus contractual licensing or joint ventures versus establishing foreign subsidiaries in foreign nations.

Theories and concepts, such as Comparative Advantage or Purchasing Power Parity, are presented in language accessible to the thoughtful manager and are related to real-world issues. The reader will gain insights on when some currencies are “undervalued” and others “overvalued” so that a company can make an educated guess about the future of its operations in a foreign country.

Every 24 hours, more than $7.5 trillion worth of currencies change hands in foreign exchange markets worldwide – the “lifeblood” or flow of international business. In twelve easy-to-understand arithmetic problems and solutions, a chapter in this book covers the management of foreign exchange risk for importers, exporters, and multinational companies and includes related issues, such as how pricing in foreign markets is affected by changes in currency values over time.

The art of international management also includes balancing or reconciling the two imperatives of standardization versus local adaptation. Either can improve global total profits, but they are at least partially contradictory strategies: (1) Global standardization (of product designs, brands, marketing, and other business methods) across many countries reduces global total costs, whereas (2) country-by-country adaptation (of products, brands, and other criteria) is liked by each country’s customers or governments, which increases sales revenue in each nation and hence worldwide.

Ethical issues increasingly compel the attention of international managers in areas such as tax avoidance, ethical sourcing in global supply chains, treatment of foreign workers, sustainability, compliance with government mandates, bribery, and other sensitive subjects. While this book is consciously a short text, it delves sufficiently deeply into the most important topics essential to International Business.