TAKE-HOME ASSIGNMENT 2012-2013
Information and instructions As described in the course manual, the take-home assignment primarily tests students’ ability to apply the theoretical insights discussed throughout the course to a real multinational enterprise (MNE). The assignment must be made by teams of three students and uploaded on the ‘Safe Assignment’ Blackboard page of the course before 21 May 2013 at 09.00 hours a.m. Teams submitting the assignment after the deadline will be downgraded by one point (on a ten-point scale). Assignments submitted more than 48 hours after the deadline will not be considered at all, implying that these overdue submissions will automatically receive a grade of 1.0. Each team is free in its choice of MNE but is strongly advised to select a reasonably-sized firm for which sufficient public information is available. Note that very large and diversified MNEs such as Philips and Shell often consist of several divisions or business units that each operate largely autonomously. For such MNEs, students are free to answer some or all of the assignment questions from the perspective of a specific division or business unit, as long as the adopted perspective is clearly specified in the submitted answers. If specific questions cannot be answered at the division or business-unit level (for instance due to a lack of information), you are free to answer these questions at the corporate level instead, and vice versa.
The submitted assignment must have the following format: Times New Roman letter type, 11-point font size, 1 inch (2.54 cm) margins all around, single line spacing. The maximum length of the document is 10 pages A4. The document’s first page should list all team members’ names, student numbers, and e-mail addresses. The rest of that page should be used to describe the MNE chosen. The next 6 pages should be used to answer the below assignment questions in the order in which they are