Undergraduate Course: Innovation in China: from an emerging economy to global power (BUST10154)
Course Outline
| School | Business School |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | China is now home to the fastest development of digital innovations offering a rapidly changing array of internet and mobile technology-based services across a wide range of activities from e-commerce, fintech, music, literature and film creative culture to sharing economies. Digital innovation has been transforming the country in the last decade. Once a backwater, later dismissed as copycats and now poised to challenge the world, China and its rise has engendered great fears and hostile sentiments. These developments demand rigorous study, understanding and critical evaluation.
This course will require you to engage with a range of radical, disruptive and often controversial digital developments, including, for example, WeChat, TikTok, Social Credit during the Coronavirus epidemic.
The central objectives of the course are to train you to critically evaluate often controversial cases, through case-study research and group discussion, and how they may be perceived differently from different perspectives.
After completion of the course, you are expected to be able to engage with various disciplinary conceptual and analytical frameworks available in the literature, and apply them selectively to undertake a study of the phenomenon of digital business innovation in the Chinese context. |
| Course description |
This course will equip you with analytical frameworks to explore China's rise from an emerging economy to challenging for world leadership in innovation and to critically evaluate some controversial and disruptive innovative services that are arising under the dominant social norms and business models in the developed world. The course will centre around case study research and group discussion, which will encourage you to engage with various theoretical frameworks and different perspectives in these developments. The objectives of the course are to encourage you to:
- Understand intertwined and dynamic relations between innovation and the social and technological contexts in which they emerge and in turn, become embedded and transform.
- Engage with various conceptual and analytical frameworks derived from a range of cognate disciplines, including business, political economy, philosophy, culture and social studies of technology.
- Develop an understanding of distinctive features of China's social structure and governance, cultural tradition and the ongoing transformation of the business environment
- Critically evaluate challenging issues/events/matters from diverse positions, and in particular, to engage with internal and external perceptions of developments in China.
Case materials will be provided to students for engaging with the emerging challenges.
Part I Introduction of conspicuous cases, for example, WeChat, TikTok, Huawei, during the US-China trade war and innovative business experimentations in the areas of fintech, mobility and renewable energy (it may change annually), and an overview of the current innovation and the traditional and institutional contexts in China.
Part II Introduction of multiple conceptual and analytical frameworks for understanding
Part III Case material will encompass various innovations, such as internet financial services to SMicroEs, mobile technology ecosystem from 3G to 5G, integrated online literature, music &film creative culture services, electric car and charging networks, bicycle-sharing schemes, etc. Case analyses will adopt conceptual and analytical frameworks, for example, to examine the social and technical elements underlying China's mobile apps for COVID 19 track tracing and the relationship between the innovation and the embedding cultural and social contexts in China, to explore different social-technical features of track-tracing technologies developed and employed in other countries across the world during the COVID 19 pandemic.
Student learning experience:
1. To 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.
2. To recognise a value system different from students own and be familiar with the diversity of the world we are living in.
3. To dialogue and exchange perspectives and views with peer students brought up in different cultures and educational backgrounds and to learn by self-awareness and reflection.
4. To practise useful skills for researching, analysing, oral and written presentation and team working.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | Business Honours entry |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students must have at least 4 Business/Management courses at grade B or above. We will only consider University/College level courses. |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: None |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Lecture Hours 20,
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 5,
Feedback/Feedforward Hours 2,
Formative Assessment Hours 2,
Revision Session Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
165 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
100 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Individual case study analysis 2500 words (70%)«br /»
Individual report and reflection of the group work on the case study 750 words (30%) |
| Feedback |
Formative: Group reports reflecting on the group discussion of case study and analysis to be submitted mid-semester. The feedback will be given to each group thereafter.
Summative:
1) Individual case analysis and 2) individual reflection on the group work (discussions in groups during the course) of the case study and analysis. The feedback will be given at the end of the course
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| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Critically identify 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.
- Analyse 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.
- Discuss and evaluate 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
Key journals:
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 |
1. Meaningful Interpersonal Interaction
- understand how to manage and sustain successful individual and group relationships in order to achieve positive and responsible outcomes, in a range of virtual and face-to-face environments
2. Appropriate Communication
- convey meaning and message through a wide range of communication tools, including digital technology and social media; to understand how to use these tools to communicate in ways that sustain positive and responsible relationships
3. Understand and Make Effective Use of Data
- critically evaluate and present digital and other sources, research methods, data and information; discern their limitations, accuracy, validity, reliability and suitability; and apply responsibly in a wide variety of organisational contexts
4. Academic Excellence
- demonstrate a thorough knowledge and understanding of contemporary organisational disciplines; comprehend the role of business within the contemporary world; and critically evaluate and synthesise primary and secondary research and sources of evidence in order to make, and present, well-informed and transparent organisation-related decisions which have a positive global impact
5. Intellectual Curiosity
- identify, define and analyse theoretical and applied business and management problems, and develop approaches, informed by an understanding of appropriate quantitative and/or qualitative techniques, to explore and solve them responsibly
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| Keywords | Geopolitical competitiveness,China and the globalised world,digital information network phenomena |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Xiaobai Shen
Tel: (0131 6)50 3819
Email: Xiaobai.Shen@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Nikki Kohly
Tel: (0131 6)50 3825
Email: Nikki.Kohly@ed.ac.uk |
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