Specialisations

International Business

In your first year, you will take the same courses as all other International Business students, ranging from Finance to Accounting to Management of Organisations and Marketing. This gives you a solid footing from which to choose the specialisation Emerging Markets or continue with the regular International Business programme for your second and third years.

Emerging Markets

Most of the world’s economic growth is taking place in emerging economies, including the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) as well as other countries in Asia, Latin America, Africa and Eastern Europe. In this specialisation, you will develop a profound understanding of their economic development and business opportunities associated with their growth. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, you will connect this knowledge with countries’ socio-economic, historical and political context and learn how emerging economies integrate and interact with the global economic community. While the growth of emerging economies creates new markets and business opportunities, they also become pivotal for tackling global challenges. In the Emerging Markets specialisation you will acquire critical knowledge and skills that are needed for making responsible management and policy decisions in these rapidly changing and sometimes fragile economies.

The Emerging Markets specialisation is also offered in the bachelor's programme Economics and Business Economics.

You’ll like this specialisation if you…

want to study international business including the perspectives of rapidly developing countries
like to interact with people from different cultures and backgrounds and be part of a small scale student community
have strong analytical skills and enjoy working in fast-paced environments with a high workload
want to expand the range of potential future career paths by acquiring a profound understanding of the complex relationships between culture, politics and business

What you’ll actually do

work on real-world cases within a culturally diverse and small scale student community, with close contact to academic staff
develop strong analytical skills and use them to understand and solve complex business and economics problems in emerging and developing economies
have first-hand working experience with people from other cultures during a curricular internship in an emerging economy
develop a deep understanding of the way culture and politics shape the business environment in rapidly developing countries
design your own curriculum by choosing the focus of your studies

Matching procedure

This specialisation starts in your second year of the programme. Current 1st year students can find more information about the matching procedure via SBE's Student Intranet.

Your future

Within the Emerging Markets specialisation, you’ll have the freedom to choose many of your courses and design your own path. You will write a MaRBLe thesis and your internship experience will be a strong asset in subsequent educational and professional trajectories. This way, you ensure that you’ll be well prepared for many of the master’s programmes in business and economics at Maastricht University, including:

You’ll also be well positioned to apply to master’s programmes in business and economics at other universities, including research masters and programs that focus on emerging markets, development studies, global studies and international relations.

Career prospects

Our Emerging Markets alumni have been exceptionally successful in finding good placements at academic, private and public sector institutions. The challenging structure of the specialisation is designed to make you an attractive candidate for:

global financial institutions
business and economics consultancies
international development organisations
international (multinational) companies
trade promotion offices and ministries of national governments
market research companies