An Integrated Curriculum 

Project Background

Economic systems create value from basic human and natural resources.  Today's economy is a global web of institutions, public policy, and business practices that govern economic activity to fulfill our needs and sustain our way of life.  This course focuses on the economic decisions that manage and coordinate production, marketing, and consumption activities that allocate resources over time, geographic location, and vertically within global market chains and networks.  This course takes the student into the global agricultural and food system to understand the economic decisions that determine how global market chains and networks function, how they organized, how they are coordinated, and how they perform.   In each case, an economic perspective is taken that focuses on the economic decisions that drive these systems within the dynamic global political, social, and economic environment.  The course prepares students for an European study tour that will provide an intensive exposure to global perspectives, issues, and state-of-the-art methods that support management of global market chains and networks.      

Project Objectives

1) Establish a network of academics and professionals in the EC and the US to build sustainable capacity for education in the subject matter area of value chain management,

2) Prepare students for management careers in global value chains by expanding student consciousness of and capacity to participate in global business organizations,

3) Develop a process for collaboration across academics, industry management, and students  for curriculum development and evolution to ensure contemporary relevance and experiential learning opportunities in the global economy.

Project Outcomes

1) A new curriculum the integrates economics and business management to develop understanding why value chains and networks have emerged to manage inter-organizational interests, and how these interests can be managed,

2) Establish an experiential learning lab that provides transnational teams of students with opportunity to collaborate in developing solutions to industry-based problems that challenge the performance of value chains and networks,

3) A sustainable and expanding consortium for learning and research that integrates industry experience with the curriculum.

Project Participants

Further details                   FIPSE Program Grant P116J040032