BUSINESS ECONOMICS AND MANAGEMENT OF THE FIRM-1

The course is a core one within the degree program in Business Administration and Management. The goal of the course is to provide a basic understanding of how firms are structured and managed. The course will stress the economic logic underlying the main strategic and organizational decisions faced by firms. The course provides a review of business, management, and organization as an area of theoretical development as well as a field of practice. It comprises classical management theories and modern approaches to organization and business practices.
The main blocks of the course are the economic foundations of strategic and organization choices (cost functions, the vertical structure of the firm, analysis of competition), contemporary theories of the firm, and how motivation and information factors affect the structuring of organizations and management policies.
The course includes elements of organizational design and strategic management. The main objective of the course is to present modern concepts of management to the students and to help them in developing skills in the analysis of business organizations both in terms of their internal functioning and interaction with the environment. There is a strong emphasis on internationalization processes and international firms.

1. Knowledge and understanding. Students are expected to acquire knowledge of the fundamental concepts of business economics and management and to understand how they explain key choices of the firm, in the domains of organization, strategy and management policies (e.g. incentives).
2. Applying knowledge and understanding. Students will develop a capability to apply basic concepts to specific examples, often based on in-depth case studies, and to reason critically on the assumptions underlying such concepts and the limits of their applicability.
3. Judgmental capabilities. Students will learn to compare critically alternative explanations of basic organizational and managerial phenomena, and to develop their own analysis and suggest solutions in case studies.
4. Communication abilities. Students will learn to communicate with groups through in-class groupwork opportunities and to discuss their ideas with a broader audience in the classroom.
5. Learning abilities. The course will enhance the ability of students to make a critical use of textbooks, to look into integrative readings, and to integrate different forms of learning, in particular integrating text-based learning with case studies discussion.

Students are expected to have achieved the learning objectives and to have passed (propaedeutic subjects) the exams of "Principles of Management and International Accounting - 1" and "Principles of Management and International Accounting - 2". In particular, students should be familiar with concepts an methods related to basic management and financial accounting (cost terms and concepts, budget and budgeting process, etc.).

PART I – Anna Moretti
1. Basic principles: costs, profitability, demand and revenues (Economics primer)
- Cost functions
- Long-run vs. short-run cost functions
- Sunk vs. avoidable costs
- Economic vs. accounting costs
- The price elasticity of demand
- Total revenue and marginal revenue functions
2. Economies of scale, scope, learning curves (Ch. 2)
- Definitions
- Special sources of Economies
- Complementarities and strategic fit
- Sources of Diseconomies
- Diversification
3. Make versus buy (Ch. 3)
- Upstream, downstream
- Defining boundaries
- Reasons to "buy"
- Reasons to "make"
4. Integration and alternatives (Ch. 4)
- Governance
- Making the integration decision
5. Competitors and Competition (Ch. 5)
- Competitor identification and market definition
- Measuring market structure
- Market structure and competition
6. Entry and exit (Ch. 6)
- Basic concepts
- Entry-deterring strategies
- Entering new markets

David Dranove, David Besanko, Mark Shanley, Scott Schaefer (2017). Economics of Strategy, 7th Edition International Student Version, Wiley, ISBN: 9781119378761
Chapters: Economics primer (pp.8-25), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6

The exam will be written, with fifteen multiple choices. Questions will ascertain the knowledge of the basic concepts presented in the course, the capability to apply them to examples, and the critical understanding of such concepts. A student scores +1 point for every correct answer and loses -0.25 for every wrong answer. Attending students will get up to +2 points on the final grade if participating in the optional activities during the course. Attending students will have the opportunity to access a different type of exam whose modalities will be explained in detail at the beginning of the course, and described clearly on the course's Moodle page.

The course will be based on classroom teaching, with all material used during classes made available to attending students through the moodle platform.
During classroom hours there will be activities of case studies discussion, used to apply theoretical concepts presented during the week's classes to empirical cases.
Additional readings and materials will be available to attending students on the course moodle page.

COVID-19 EMERGENCY
During possible Covid-19 emergency periods, there could be some changes in teaching and exam modalities for the sake of students' safety.

Exam registration
Only registered students will be allowed to take the exam. Any registration problems must be solved with the Campus Economico before the registration deadline.

Accessibility, Disability and Inclusion
Accommodation and support services for students with disabilities and students with specific learning impairments

Ca’ Foscari abides by Italian Law (Law 17/1999; Law 170/2010) regarding support services and accommodation available to students with disabilities. This includes students with
mobility, visual, hearing and other disabilities (Law 17/1999), and specific learning impairments (Law 170/2010). If you have a disability or impairment that requires accommodations (i.e., alternate testing, readers, note takers or interpreters) please contact the Disability and Accessibility Offices in Student Services: disabilita@unive.it

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This subject deals with topics related to the macro-area "Cities, infrastructure and social capital" and contributes to the achievement of one or more goals of U. N. Agenda for Sustainable Development