Students will be asked to form a (virtual) ‘project team’ composed of a limited
Students will be asked to form a (virtual) ‘project team’ composed of a limited number of people. Their task will be to collaborate throughout the term in the organising, planning, researching, and writing of a 2,500-word final ‘business report’.
In the process of planning to complete the project, the team will be expected to make a live PowerPoint presentation of a draft plan of their report. The presentations will take place during tutorial time (10-15’ max) during the week of the corresponding lecture theme. This part will not be assessed and will be extremely useful to get valuable FEEDBACK both from their colleagues but also from the tutor. If students do not co-operate for their group work with genuine team spirit, the module leader reserves the right to exclude members from the group and assign them the report as an individual assessment.
The presentation topic: How did Telecom Italia and OTE respond to the market integration in European telecommunications? How did they change their mix of corporate ownership and their internationalization strategies?
Im supposed to do an overview of OTE which is HELLENIC TELECOMMUNICATIONS ORGANIZATION. And how they responded to integration and internationalisation. And their comparison to telecom italia.
Professor feedback:
A descriptive report with several historical/detailed facts would count for only few marks. You need to take the “facts” and the “context” of the case for granted and go straight to the CRITICAL ANALYSIS, DISCUSSION and EXPLANATION of the different strategies. You may use “facts” as necessary in your analysis, but pls remain focused.
Please DO NOT just do a summary of what the articles say, this will count only for a few marks.
The report should provide your own novel retrospective analysis of the cases, focusing on particular issues, with the help of additional literature and research (sources). Feel free to go against the arguments made in the papers to provide your own original/novel analysis/explanation, supported by evidence as far as possible.
I provide some “food for thought” below for you to consider, but you do not need to do everything, this is just a range of possibilities among many other. Pick and choose according to what you already have so that you come up with your own original analysis.
So more particularly, the interesting part of the focus is to try to explain the successful regional internationalisation of OTE vs. the failed global internationalisation of Telecom Italia in their wider context. Both sought to respond to the EU liberalisation of markets with privatisation/ownership change. However, note that paths and mode of privatisation differed.
Possible explanations to consider are important, the ‘funding’ (equity vs. bank-based); ‘origin of ownership’ and ‘managers choices’ some of which we also discussed in class.
But be as specific as possible, especially for access to capital to fund the internationalisation seemed to have played a role and esp. you may consider the Telecom Italia funding by debt the hostile takeovers etc. sitting on a mountain of debt. Other explanations would include saturation (or protection) in domestic market, govt interventions’ role, etc.
So I m confident that you will come up with an strong analysis of the factors and a good argumentative/analytical report, considering evidence and counterarguments.
Above is the professor feedback for the whole group. For me i only have to do the ote telecom part and the comparison and try to make it about 700-750 words. I will put some of the references i used for the presentation and i hope you can do a bit more and add more references.
Kornelakis, A. (2015). European market integration and the political economy of corporate adjustment: OTE and Telecom Italia, 1949–2009. Business History, 57(6), 885-902. DOI: 10.1080/00076791.2014.986106
Schure, P. (2013, January 1). European Financial Market Integration. Palgrave Macmillan UK. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137317360_6