Postgraduate Course: Innovation in China: From emerging economy to global powerhouse (CMSE11516)
Course Outline
| School | Business School |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 11 (Postgraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 15 |
ECTS Credits | 7.5 |
| Summary | China is now home to the world's fastest development of innovations, particularly in the digital space, offering a rapidly changing array of internet and mobile technology-based services across a wide range of industries from e-commerce, fintech, music, literature and film creative culture to sharing economies and climate change. China's innovation has been transforming the country over the last decade. Once an economic backwater, later dismissed as copycats and now poised to challenge the world, China's rise has engendered great fears and hostile sentiments. These developments demand rigorous study, understanding and critical evaluation.
This course will require students to engage with a range of radical and disruptive innovations, including topics, such as WeChat, TikTok, Huawei, big data of peoples' footprints during the pandemic, social credit, digital currency, climate change, artificial intelligence, micromobility and the development of sharing economy platforms.
Students will be introduced to the complex and sometimes, contradictory features of Chinese society that underpin these developments: the seemingly competing value systems running through China's recent history in the transition from a traditional hierarchical society, the socialist legacy of central planning and the market system with Chinese characteristics. Students will explore the distinctive social-technical features of digital technology, such as connectivity, information flow and social media engendering mass participation, transparency and decentralised governance.
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| Course description |
The central objectives of the course will be met through case-study research and group discussion to help students critically evaluate sometimes controversial cases and how they may be perceived differently from different perspectives, and through comparative analyses. This will allow them to understand how different social and technical environments lead to varying trajectories of innovation paradigms.
After completion of the course, students are expected to be able to engage with various disciplinary conceptual and analytical frameworks available in the literature and selectively apply them to undertake a study of the phenomenon of digital business innovation in the Chinese context.
Student Learning Experience:
Explore the Chinese business environment, being aided with available literature and information in varied media forms, to know the Chinese characteristics of the modern landscape of the society and the economy, which has built on the culture and social norms rooted in a long history.
Recognise a value system different from students own and be familiar with the diversity of the world we are living in.
Exchange perspectives and views with peer students brought up in different cultures and educational backgrounds and to learn by self-awareness and reflection .
Practise useful skills for researching, analysing, oral and written presentation and team working.
Tutorial/seminar hours represent the minimum total live hours - online or in-person - a student can expect to receive on this course. These hours may be delivered in tutorial/seminar, lecture, workshop or other interactive whole class or small group format. These live hours may be supplemented by pre-recorded lecture material for students to engage with asynchronously.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | None |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
150
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 15,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 3,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
132 )
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| Additional Information (Learning and Teaching) |
Seminar/Tutorial hrs are the min total live hrs, online or in-person, students can expect to receive
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
50 %,
Practical Exam
50 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
50% coursework (individual) - assesses courses Learning Outcomes 1, 2, 3
50% presentation (group) - assesses all course Learning Outcomes |
| Feedback |
Formative:
Formative feedback will be given during classes.
Summative:
The feedback for summative assignments, both the group presentation and the individual coursework, will be provided at the end of the course. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Demonstrate a general knowledge of the distinctive social-technical features of digital technology, and have an overview of China's innovation paradigm and the specific business landscape resulting from the social and technological transformation.
- Understand the intertwined and dynamic relations between innovation and its embedding social and technical contexts - encompassing how the context shapes innovation and uptake and may, in turn, be transformed by widespread use of new digital services.
- Explore appropriate conceptual and analytical frameworks and develop and apply an interdisciplinary approach to the discovery of new emerging and rapidly changing phenomena in the digital business realm.
- Demonstrate the ability of independent thinking and to contribute to collective learning and group performance.
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Reading List
Mahbubani, Kishore (2020) The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy - Has China won? New York: Public Affairs.
Shen, X. and Williams, R. (2005). A Critique of China's Utilitarian View of Science and Technology. Science Technology & Society, 10(2) pp. 197-223.
Baldwin, C. Y. and von Hippel, E. (2011) "Modeling a paradigm shift: from producer innovation to user and open collaborative innovation"; in Organization Science; 22 (6), pp. 1399-1417
Fagerberg, J., Mowery, D.C. & Nelson, R.R., 2005. The Oxford handbook of innovation, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hyysalo, S., Pollock, N., & Williams, R. A. (2019) "Method matters in the social study of technology: Investigating the biographies of artefacts and practices"; in Science & Technology Studies, 32(3), pp. 2-25
Kshetri, N. (2016) "Big data's role in expanding access to financial services in China"; in International journal of information management; 36(3); pp. 297-308.
Latour, B. (1991) "Technology is society made durable"; in J. Law (ed.); A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination, London: Routledge; pp. 103-131
Latour, B. (1996) "On actor-network theory: A few clarifications"; in Soziale welt; pp. 369-381
Shen, X., Williams, R., Zheng, S., Liu, Y., Li, Y., and Gerst, M. (2019) "Digital online music in China- A "laboratory" for business experiment", in Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 139(C); pp. 235-249
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Enhance abilities and skills for oral and written communication through group presentation and individual essay writing.
Accumulate practical skills for effective independent & collective learning and to enhance confidence and abilities to work in multicultural environments through team working.
Acquire knowledge of diverse cultures and social settings, and to encourage self-reflection, understanding of their peers and conducts with flexibility through interaction with students from different countries.
Gain a better understanding of the distinctive features of digital technology and social manifestations in the digital age.
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| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Xiaobai Shen
Tel: (0131 6)50 3819
Email: Xiaobai.Shen@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Miss Fionna Ogilvie
Tel: (0131 6)51 3028
Email: Fionna.Ogilvie@ed.ac.uk |
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