Course Descriptions

First Year Courses

Business Communications

This course provides practical, usable, relevant skill practice and personalized feedback on oral presentations and written communications critical to professional success. Emphasis on planning, organization, delivery, clarity, and conciseness. Special attention given to methods used by leaders to create credible, persuasive messages that engage and involve audiences.  

Management of Organizations

The course begins with a brief overview of the course and an examination of organizational strategy. Next, we look at teams in organizations and some phenomena that occur as teams make decisions. We follow with an examination of how and why people react to organizational change and identify opportunities for enhancing the effective implementation of change. Two topics of critical importance to organizations in dynamic environments—organizational resizing and organizational sustainability—are explored next. This is followed by an examination of the less fortunate situation of organizations in crisis and decline. A brief introduction to the theories that provide direction for motivating organizational members effectively is provided next, along with a simulation that applies this knowledge and students’ work experience. Next, interpersonal conflict in organizations is examined, followed by exploration of critical globalization issues and the importance of culture to an organization. The course finishes with time devoted to corporate governance.

Contemporary Topics: Negotiations

Managers spend a substantial portion of their time (20 percent, according to one study) and energy negotiating and resolving conflicts with superiors, coworkers, subordinates, customers, competitors and suppliers. The bargaining, negotiation, and conflict resolution skills of managers in these situations can have an important impact on the outcomes received by ALL parties. Poorly conducted negotiations can reduce the value of settlements both to the individual manager and other parties, or result in no settlement at all.

The two primary goals of this contemporary topics course are: first, to provide students with an understanding of theory and concepts of the bargaining process and outcomes. These theories are both normative (how negotiations should occur), drawing from economics and decision theory, and descriptive (how negotiations actually occur), drawing from behavioral decision theory. Second, this course intends to provide students with the opportunity to apply theoretical concepts and develop bargaining skills through in class examples and discussion, and, most prominently, negotiating exercises and cases. Together, knowledge of and experience with negotiation and conflict resolution will be enhanced.

Managerial Choices in Corporate Financial Reporting

The course will provide students with an overview of choices available to managers in reporting corporate performance in financial statements. Topics include revenue recognition, inventory accounting, cash flow reporting, accounting for acquisitions, accounting for liabilities, disclosure issues, international differences in financial reporting, and financial statement analysis.

Economic Analysis for Managers

Managers regularly make choices, many of which are difficult. Economics logic often offers powerful and elegant insights into making those choices. A fundamental working knowledge of the firm's economic environment can improve both day-to-day managerial decision making and long-term strategic planning. The purpose of this course is to develop basic microeconomic concepts and apply them to issues of particular relevance to senior managers.  

Anchoring Sustainability: The Business Strategy Simulation

In the simulation, teams are formed which represent companies that produce products, and individual team members take on roles within their companies. Each team makes a product and runs their company in the context of life-like conditions such as time pressures, budgetary constraints, unpredictable stakeholder interventions, changing market conditions and limited information. At the end of the decision cycle, participants sell their product in a dynamic market that allows companies to take market share from one another, and to record their decisions that result in P&L, Balance Sheet and Environmental reports.

The intent of a simulation is to shorten the feedback loop so that you actually see the future and experience what works in a four-hour cycle or a progressive combination of cycles. Then it’s not a matter of explaining to your CFO, CEO, or CXO how good something could be, but explaining what has actually been tested. The simulation is about testing the plausible and theoretical to determine what is true and useful and profitable. The simulation is a micro-world where it is possible to practice/rehearse and to experience what works and what doesn’t within a variety of business conditions

Marketing Management

An introduction to the elements of marketing management, with particular focus on new product, pricing, distribution, and promotion decisions. The use of customer and competitive analysis as input to strategy decisions will be emphasized. Selected case studies from a variety of industry contexts will be used.

Ethical Decision Making in Business Workshop, Part 1

The course is designed as a workshop in which students take a broad look at various ways in which ethical decision making can affect their role in their workplace. The areas of discussion will be broken into four areas of discussion. First, the class will look at an overview of personal and corporate decision making. Second, we’ll read varying views on what the responsibility of a business should be and the rules that apply. Next, we’ll explore some common dilemmas posed within the day-to-day work life in a corporation. And finally, the discussion will turn to the importance of corporate ethical leadership and the effectiveness of corporate codes or values statements.

Strategic Cost Management

This course is designed to provide the student with an in-depth understanding of the role of management accounting information in the support of key strategic management issues and processes. Specifically, the course first starts with an in-depth presentation and understanding of Balanced Scorecard Reporting and the manner in which it supports strategic decision making. Next, we move downstream in the value chain and utilize activity-based costing to deal with strategic issues around customer mix and product distribution. Finally, we move upstream in the value chain to address important strategic issues of supplier relations, product design, and speed of product development. Again, all of these critical management issues are informed by managerial accounting information in the form of activity based costing.

Corporate Finance

The financial analysis of corporate decisions. The course develops the standard discounted cash flow framework, which is consistent with shareholder value maximization and Economic Value Added. This framework yields the techniques for analyzing both capital investment decisions and financing decisions. Emphasis is placed on an intuitive understanding of these techniques and their practical limitations. 

Current Economic Environment

The purpose of this module is to develop a simple model of the United States economy that can be used to analyze the current economic environment. First we review the goals and implementation of monetary and fiscal policy, the problems associated with inflation, and the methods for measuring the overall performance of the economy. Next, we develop a simple model of the U.S. economy and apply it to provide a brief overview of U.S. economic performance over the past 30 years. We then focus on current issues, including the surplus, social security, and the extraordinary recent economic robustness. The intent is to provide a basic framework to interpret analysis of current and future movements in interest rates, inflation, growth and unemployment.

Corporate Governance & the Audit Committee

This course addresses the important governance elements that support sound internal control and quality financial reporting with an emphasis on financial reporting, regulatory (Sarbanes-Oxley) compliance, the new COSO model on Enterprise Risk Management, and performance of control reviews in a cost efficient manor. As companies' financial reporting and control functions are undergoing significant change in response to regulatory and other environmental challenges, the audit committee of the board of directors is a key component of effective corporate governance. Topics in this course include, audit committees-rising to the challenge with an effective information system; external audit responsibilities and evaluating the quality of external audits; risk management practices, including review of new COSO model with the objective of developing effective internal controls and monitoring processes; utilizing the internal audit function to improve corporate governance; Principles vs. Rules-Based Accounting and what you should know to ask the right questions; restatement of earnings and how to avoid them; and evolution of "best practices" for audit committee members.

Strategic Issues in Innovation

This model introduces varying approaches to strategy focusing especially on dynamic strategies, as the organization deliberately anticipates and makes use of repeated change under varying conditions of uncertainty. Organizational learning, including both knowledge creating and deployment, plays a crucial role. Technological evolution is a key context, although not the only, where firms use dynamic strategies, providing the main context for the work on dynamic strategies. Segments of the mini-module offers a chance to develop competencies to create specific dynamic strategies, deepen the framework for identifying types of opportunities and broaden the knowledge of contemporary technological change. The sessions build on each other, considering different approaches to uncertainty and learning strategies related to technology.

 

Second Year Courses

 

Global Strategy Simulation

Global Tycoon is a computer-based competition conducted during the first week of class. Students and their teams “purchase” and operate a company over 3-1/2 days or 2-1/2 years in simulation time. Teams prepare in advance of the first week of classes by researching the resource web site; using the demo software and reading the software help system (especially the portion that talks about team members’ functional roles); talking with teammates to decide who will fill each role; and becoming familiar with the software and the competing companies.

Leadership and Motivation

This course is about managing people in organizations, and is designed for training future leaders. Based on research in organizational behavior and social psychology, the course focuses on studying motivational and leadership practices that have been proven to work in impacting individual and group performance in organizations. The main goals of the course are to: (a) discuss the science behind these practices, (b) demonstrate how they could be used to better understand, predict, and manage employee behavior at work, and (c) assess students’ motivation and leadership styles through psychometric scales.

Advanced Corporate Financial Management

This course examines in detail the basic decisions made by financial decision-makers. There is an emphasis on the formulation and implementation of financial solutions to corporate problems and opportunities. Topics include valuation models, options, corporate control, and mergers and acquisitions. The course will consist primarily of case discussions and analyses.

International Financial Management for Executives

This course is an application of finance principles to international business decisions with a particular emphasis on the interactions of finance and competitive strategy in a global context. The course starts with an overview of the recent developments in the world economy and financial markets. Then it focuses on the key issues in international financial management: exchange rate behavior and risk management, international tax strategy, cross-border investment decisions, international merger and acquisitions, joint ventures, project finance structuring the corporate finances in the global financial market, evaluation of assets subject to political risk.

Legal Environment of Business

The purpose of this course is to prepare executives to recognize, analyze and respond to legal issues arising in their everyday business lives. This includes familiarizing themselves with "legal jargon" through lectures followed by case analysis, presentations and discussions. We discuss legal process, business organizations, intellectual property, and business torts.

Ethical Decision Making in Business Workshop

The course is designed as a workshop in which students take a broad look at various ways in which ethical decision making can affect their role in their workplace. The areas of discussion will be broken into four areas of discussion. First, the class will look at an overview of personal and corporate decision making. Second, we’ll read varying views on what the responsibility of a business should be and the rules that apply. Next, we’ll explore some common dilemmas posed within the day-to-day work life in a corporation. And finally, the discussion will turn to the importance of corporate ethical leadership and the effectiveness of corporate codes or values statements.

Global Economics for Executives

This is a particularly interesting period in which to study global economics. The U.S. economy, which was widely regarded as a miracle economy of the 1990s, appears to have hit the wall. Although economic growth has again picked up in recent quarters, job growth is lagging in this recovery. Is global competition in the form of international trade and services outsourcing responsible for the sluggish job growth? If so, would it be wise to adopt policies that reduce trade or outsourcing of service tasks by U.S. companies? Is the U.S. trade deficit something that threatens our future prosperity? Will the U.S. repeat its strong performance of the 1990s in the coming decade? What causes fluctuations in exchange rates and how do they impact the profitability of firms? What decisions can firms take to optimize their performance in a world of exchange rate uncertainty? Our goal is to show how economic models can help us understand the consequences of globalization, services outsourcing, and trade imbalances, with an emphasis in the second part of the course on exchange rates.

Global Strategy

The course is concerned with the challenge of managing diversified and diversifying firms in global competitive environments. Cases coupled with readings will provide an understanding of resource identification, mobilization, exploration and exploitation through internal diversification, mergers and acquisitions, and strategic alliances. The course concludes with an executive network assessment of students’ personal resource bases and suggestions for augmenting those networks for personal strategic effectiveness. In project teams, students will also be tasked with developing and recommending a new business and corporate strategy to public company that serves as our class “client.”

Political Risk Assessment for Foreign Investors

This course provides an introduction to political risk assessment for international business and how it is used in the management of foreign investments. The course will cover distinctions between types of political risk and their respective assessment techniques; industry and company efforts to incorporate risk assessment in strategic and operational plans, including examples and case studies; public, private and non- governmental resources for international businesses; and how terrorism and political violence are affecting political risk and global business. The course focuses on what managers need to know about political risk in order to develop appropriate business plans for cross-cultural investment. A sample political risk assessment report and summary will be provided and used for discussion during the program.

International Trip

The EMBA trip will expose students to the challenges, complexities and opportunities of formulating and implementing a strategy in emerging markets. Using the specific context of the trip destination, students will visit companies of varying size, nationality, and industry. Students will meet with the managers responsible for executing the companies' domestic and global strategies as well as gain insights into what life might be like as an expatriate in the particular locations that we visit.

Advanced Topics in Marketing

This course will expose students to the concepts and challenges of the strategic marketing process. The central focus will be on the customer relations management (CRM) theme. Students will be in a position to approach strategic marketing problems with a strong and sound analytical approach. Specifically the course is designed to focus on effectively understanding customers, developing insight-based customer focused strategies on an on-going basis, and developing effective implementation strategies with an emphasis on analyses and results.

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A)

It is estimated that between 50 and 70 percent of acquisitions fail to achieve pre-deal goals, or create substantial value for shareholders. This course provides a structured approach to M&A decision-making. Beginning with strategic issues of acquisitions and divestitures, target identification, financial considerations of valuation, deal structure, and pricing; students then consider subtleties of due diligence and negotiation, and the course concludes with closing and integration considerations. Cases include work on private and public deals, cross-border transactions, and hostiles. Alternatives to acquisition, such as alliances and joint ventures, are also discussed.