Management (MGMT-UB)

In this course you will attain an understanding of the key factors that contribute to organizational success and the role that managers play in helping their organizations become more successful. The better that you understand these issues, the more effective you will be in your future careers. More specifically, the course will explore how organizational leaders develop winning strategies, and then design their organization in a way that aligns structures, social relationships, tasks, human resource practices, and people to achieve those strategies. In exploring these issues, you will identify the challenges that organizational leaders and managers face as they try to make good decisions in the face of a constantly evolving industry environment, competing goals and agendas, and an increasingly diverse and global workforce.

This course focuses on the strategic and organizational challenges facing the multinational firm. Types of questions addressed in the course include: (1) What are the sources of competitive advantage in a global context? (2) What differentiates a global from a domestic industry? (3) How does/should a multinational operate in these different environments?

This course combines skill building though experiential exercises and an understanding of the underlying theory to help you learn how to be an effective manager and team member in today’s technology-enabled team context. Topics include issues such as managing collaboration in and across teams, motivating effort, performance, social judgment, and cross-cultural issues. Students learn how organizations can improve their effectiveness through better management of people and how individual managers can be more effective in working with and leading others.

The success of firms, managers and individual contributors depends on their ability to identify innovative products, processes, or both. Research has shown that managing innovation requires a learning mindset attuned to new experiences, entrepreneurial thinking and pragmatic leadership. Some of the specific questions we will consider are: How is design thinking impacting our understanding of strategy and organization design? What roles do the project, middle and senior management play in the innovation process? How do you decide which ideas are worth pursuing? How do firms choose among multiple attractive innovation projects? What are the best ways to protect a firm’s intellectual property?

This course emphasizes the need to look outward to the environment and inward to a firm’s resources and capabilities and operating policies. It describes a firm’s strategy as the formulation of “competitive strategy”, “corporate strategy,” and “organizational strategy.” Competitive strategy involves identifying structurally attractive industries and developing the most attractive position within that industry - where attractiveness is driven by absolute conditions combined with the resources and capabilities the firm brings to that position. Businesses create value by operating in positions within industries that, by virtue of the characteristics of industry, the position, and the firm, are defensible from the encroachment of competitors and deterioration of the environment as a whole. Corporate strategy focuses on the management and understanding of multi-product, multi-location, and multi-business firms. Organizational strategy involves developing policies within each functional area of the business unit that are integrative and consistent with the firm’s plan for creating value.

Increasing self-awareness and openness to feedback are important first steps in leading today’s business for tomorrow’s results. Many companies bestow a management title on key talent and expect appropriate behavior to follow, but that is not the most effective way to develop future business leaders. In this course you will focus primarily on the practical aspects of managing. While based on solid research, the course stresses a hands-on approach to improving students’ management skills. Each session focuses on developing (1) personal skills: self-awareness, managing stress, solving problems, and creativity; (2) interpersonal skills: coaching, counseling, supportive communication, gaining power and influence, motivating self and others, and managing conflict; and (3) group skills: empowering, delegating, and building effective teams.

Due to changing demographics, increasing global business, technological innovations and the most recent pandemic, the composition of the workforce of today and in the future will be much more diverse. In this course, we will examine the business challenges and opportunities that arise in leading diverse organizations. New faces, differing points of view, life experiences, and cultural values will be seen as attributes that help our social, economic, and government organizations achieve their goals and objectives.

Managing change is a central concern for today’s managers. Managing change is also the primary focus of the management consulting industry. To effectively manage change you will need a solid understanding of what change is about, what are its critical aspects, and how one can lead change initiatives in a disciplined and successful way. Case analysis and applied projects are the major vehicles for learning in this course. Note: This course is particularly relevant for students who plan to pursue careers as general managers or management consultants

Effective negotiation and consensus-building skills are essential for success in almost any work life domain—whether your goal is to be an entrepreneur, film producer, business manager, or political leader. In this course, students study how people reach agreement and develop an analytical approach for reaching more effective agreements in organizational settings. The course draws from research in psychology and economics to provide academic content, while making use of role-playing exercises and experiential learning to emphasize key applied lessons.

The NYC Entrepreneurship Experience is your chance to learn entrepreneurship by working directly with the founders of early stage startups. In the classroom you will learn the leading approaches to navigating uncertainty—grounded in entrepreneurship theory. Outside of the classroom you will apply these practices by working directly with your classmates on supporting your startup on a strategically important project. As part of a student team, you will first identify and scope a meaningful project or set of projects that you can contribute to the startup. After agreeing on a project with startup founders, you will immerse yourself in projects which can range from supporting the launch of a new product line, to providing strategic analysis of the competitive landscape, to providing an in depth understanding of the customer. This class is not structured like a typical lecture based course and thus will require you to spend more time outside of class, conducting research, analysis, and work effectively within a team. To support you along the way, you will receive mentorship from a network of successful entrepreneurs at critical points in your engagement and be required to provide interim individual and group progress reports. The course concludes with you presenting your work back to the startup founders and hearing directly from them how your work may impact their work going forward. A core aspect of this experience is gaining from analysis, action, and reflection cycle, where you will use reflections throughout the course to support long-term generalized knowledge and insights you can apply your own future ventures or other entrepreneurial environments.

Politics is not a dirty word! You just need to learn how to play good politics and keep out bad politics. By the same logic, power by itself does not necessarily corrupt though absolute power may corrupt absolutely. In other words, this course is about how to conquer the world, or at least survive the corporate jungle, without losing your soul. Even if you don’t want to play politics, good or bad, you need the skills from this course to ensure that you don’t become a victim of politics. By the end of this course you will (1) be able to have not only a conceptual understanding of what power is within an organizational context but a practical grasp of what the actual sources of power are; and (2) will have gained substantial insight into how best to harness your political skills for effective management of your career path.

This course offers a framework for understanding the entrepreneurial process and exposes students to challenges, problems, and issues faced by entrepreneurs who start new businesses. Case studies are the principal teaching method, supplemented by lectures, business cases, and guest speakers. Students learn to identify and evaluate business opportunities, develop a business concept and assess and obtain the required resources, and manage the growth of new ventures.

Independent study provides an opportunity for a select group of upperclassmen each year to work one-on-one with a faculty member on a topic selected by the student and approved by the supervising faculty member. Each student is expected to spend as much time on the independent study as would be spent on a regular course, and the topic selected may not replicate an existing course. An information sheet with important guidelines about Independent Study is available at stern.nyu.edu/portal-partners/current-students/undergraduate/resources-policies/forms.

Investigates the nature, functions, and responsibilities of the management of organizations. Develops an analytical approach to the identification, structuring, analysis, and solution of organizational problems. Introduces the student to organizational policies and structures, functional areas, and production processes (including resource allocation, measurement and evaluation, and control), leadership style, and organizational adaptation and evolution. Teaching methodologies include lectures, case analysis, and class discussion.

Course Description: The course explores the origins for the emerging of a vibrant technological entrepreneurial ecosystem in Israel. The course adopts five type of lenses to explain the remarkable burst in Hi-Tech startups in Israel during the last 25 years. These five lenses are: 1) The availability of suitable factors of production through the Israeli Defense Forces, the Israeli Academia and immigration; 2) The emergence of related and supporting industries often located in designated geographical clusters; 3) Adverse local demand conditions; 4) Specific strategies, structures and corporate cultures; and 5) the role of the Israeli government in seeding the conditions for the emergence of complementary financial sources, as well as creating supportive tax and intellectual property rights systems. The course will go on to explore recent trends in the development of the Israeli Hi-tech industry, highlight possible constraints for its continued growth. Finally, the course draws wider conclusions as to the required conditions for seeding and nurturing similar technological entrepreneurial ecosystems in other countries around the world.