Core Course (COR1-GB)

Strategy seeks to answer the core question of why some firms sustain high returns while others earn moderate to low returns. We will cover concepts and frameworks for identifying environmental and firm level factors that help explain the performance of a business. The material covered in this course builds on microeconomic theory, with the goal of developing the students' analytical reasoning skills. Additionally, we look at actual cases, sometimes in hindsight and sometimes in real time, and analyze real world problems and opportunities. In practice, strategy is messy and complicated. This course offers the student a lens that improves analytical reasoning skills rather than a tool that "cracks cases". With diligent class preparation, students will be able to describe business situations in a more comprehensive, logical and structured way.

In short, Leadership provides frameworks to ANALYZE behavior in organizations and tools and opportunities (and reasons) to ACT on what you learn. A student’s ability to analyze organizations, and willingness to skillfully act within them, help answer a number of questions: Why do some talented MBAs succeed, while others, equally talented, flounder? Why do some people in leadership positions prove effective, while others do not? Why do some people become leaders and others do not? Why do some organizations thrive while others get in their own way? LiO tackles these questions. This course will help you recognize the key factors that contribute to organizational success, and the role you can play in helping yourself and your organizations be successful. You will develop skills to effectively analyze and navigate your current and future organizational lives, using your past, current, and potential work experiences as key learning material. The course is based on the premise that, regardless of your position within an organization, leadership opportunities and challenges present themselves every day and that it is to your advantage to recognize and make the most of these opportunities. You have to ACT in order to learn and grow, and this class and your time as an MBA student is the opportunity to do that – leaders are not made by passive observation! It is also based on the premise that effective leadership requires an in-depth understanding of both yourself and how organizations work, and an in-depth understanding of how to work with and through other people. By the end of the course, I expect that you will be more knowledgeable about how organizations work (or don’t work), and will be more conscious of others, yourself, and the impact of your own (in)actions.

This course provides an overview of the economic analysis of firms, industries and markets. The overriding constraint is the scarcity of resources that actors face. We examine the rationales for decisions by individual buyers and sellers, as well as how these decisions are aggregated through markets. Among other things, we explore the forms that competition can take, the role of industry structure and the influence of government policies. The latter part of the course will also very briefly look at some broader macroeconomic issues (economic growth, unemployment, inflation, interest rates and the business cycle). The course is intended to provide the participants with tools and conceptual frameworks that they can use to better understand and analyze business decision-making and the market and government-policy environment within which businesses operate. In addition, the course develops analytical tools and logic that are useful in the study of strategy, finance, marketing, and other business areas. Some of the key concepts we will introduce include opportunity cost (which costs matter), economic incentives (and how firms and individuals respond to them), optimizing choices when faced by scarcity, strategic behavior (how to predict and respond to your rivals’ decisions), market power (the impact of buyer or seller concentration), externalities (when economic activities impact 3rd parties), asymmetric information (what happens when economic actors know something others do not), and the basics of macroeconomics (a brief look at national indicators and economic trends).

Firms and Markets

The basic objective of this course is to provide the MBA student with a strong fundamental understanding of statistics and its applications. Students will learn statistical applications utilizing real world examples and exercises from various fields. This course will survey the topics of inferential statistics, linear regression and their applications.

This course provides an introduction to the principles of financial accounting. In doing so, it covers the preparation and use of financial accounting reports in an economic business environment. When you have completed this course, you should understand: (1) how to read, prepare and analyze financial accounting statements and related documents, (2) how to use those reports to make business decisions, and (3) how business transactions affect those financial statements. Achievement of these goals requires an understanding of the basic principles that underlie accrual accounting, as well as an appreciation of the amount of judgment required in applying these principles. An understanding of financial accounting is essential to anyone who will use financial information as an input to economic decision-making. Specific objectives include: 1. Recognizing accounting’s role in business and government; 2. Identifying the basic financial statements, their interrelationships and the information they provide to decision makers; 3. Understanding basic vocabulary, definitions, measurement methods, and double-entry procedures associated with accounting and financial management; 4. Understanding the difference between cash flow and accrual accounting; and 5. Becoming familiar with common analytical methods to measure business financial performance.

This course provides an overview of the economic analysis of firms, industries and markets. The overriding constraint is the scarcity of resources that actors face. We examine the rationales for decisions by individual buyers and sellers, as well as how these decisions are aggregated through markets. Among other things, we explore the forms that competition can take, the role of industry structure and the influence of government policies. The course is intended to provide the participants with tools and conceptual frameworks that they can use to better understand and analyze business decision-making and the market and government-policy environment within which businesses operate. In addition, the course develops analytical tools and logic that are useful in the study of strategy, finance, marketing, and other business areas. Some of the key concepts we will introduce include: -opportunity cost (which costs matter) -economic incentives (and how firms and individuals respond to them) -optimizing choices when faced by scarcity -strategic behavior (how to predict and respond to your rivals’ decisions) -market power (the impact of buyer or seller concentration) -externalities (when economic activities impact 3rd parties) -asymmetric information (what happens when economic actors know something others do not)

This course provides a foundation for understanding the operations of a firm. Our objective by the end of the course is to provide you with the analytical skills and managerial insights necessary to critically analyze a firm's operations decisions and practices. Such knowledge is important for careers in a variety of areas, including general management, entrepreneurship, investment banking (e.g. business restructurings, mergers and acquisitions), venture capital (e.g. evaluating new business plans) and management consulting (business restructuring improvement).

This course introduces the basic concepts of probability and statistics. We will study the concepts of population and sample, discuss the difference between population parameters and sample statistics, and draw inferences from known sample statistics to usually unknown population parameters. We will study discrete distributions along with their means and standard deviations, paying particular attention to the binomial distribution. We will also study continuous distributions and their probability density functions, paying special attention to the most central of the continuous distributions—the normal distribution. The Central Limit Theorem will be introduced and confidence intervals and statistical tests will be discussed.

The first half of this course focuses on the design of organizations and how managers can make organizations more effective. The second half of the course examines how an organization can maximize the performance of its members. Students learn how to analyze individual performance issues in the context of complex organizations and how to manage change processes.

This course provides an overview of the economic analysis of firms, industries and markets. The overriding constraint is the scarcity of resources that actors face. We examine the rationales for decisions by individual buyers and sellers, as well as how these decisions are aggregated through markets. Among other things, we explore the forms that competition can take, the role of industry structure and the influence of government policies.

The purpose of this course is to provide a survey of probability and statistics which is applicable to decision making in a business environment. The course stresses applications; the technical aspects underlying the applied methods used will be presented intuitively.

Organizations of all types face significant challenges. These include the difficulty of coping with highly dynamic business environments the complexity of managing global enterprises how to shape a healthy corporate culture managing politics and conflict between individuals and organizational units motivating a highly mobile and ever changing workforce managing and harnessing intellectual capital and so on. Such challenges and how organizational leaders can deal with them are the subject of this course. The course has two major components. The first is "macro" in nature. It focuses on organizational level issues such as how an organization should be designed to best achieve its goals and how culture and control affect organizational dynamics. The second part is more "micro" in nature. It focuses on employee-related challenges such as how to get things done in politically sensitive environments evaluate and reward people and manage teams. The macro component is concerned with overall organizational performance while the micro component is concerned with managing individual and group effectiveness. And leadership is the linking pin that connects these two.This course will introduce you to central theories and frameworks in management and organizational behavior and will help you to understand how to apply those theories and frameworks to understand and address organizational challenges and problems. An understanding of organizations and their management is important for anyone who plans to work within an organization as career success hinges on one's ability to accurately read and respond to the organizational context within which one operates. The course will also give you an opportunity to reflect on the skills that are required for being a better manager and leader.

This course provides insight into how markets work. The first part of the course starts with the study of decision making by consumers and firms and concludes with a fundamental result in economics a set of conditions under which markets function efficiently. The second part of the course focuses on situations when for one reason or another markets don't work efficiently. The emphasis is on strategic behavior as modeled by game theory.

This course is designed to achieve an understanding of fundamental notions of data presentation and data analysis and to use statistical thinking in the context of business problems. The course deals with modern methods of data exploration designed to reveal unusual or problematic aspects of databases.

Accounting reports are an important means of communication with investors. This course focuses on the development analysis and use of these reports. It provides an understanding of what these reports contain, what assumptions and concepts accountants use to prepare them, and why they use those assumptions and concepts. The course uses simple examples to provide students with a clear understanding of accounting concepts. It stresses the ability to apply these concepts to real world cases which by their very nature are complex and ambiguous. In addition to text oriented materials, the classes also include cases so that students can discuss applications of basic concepts actual financial reports and articles from newspapers. In addition to traditional introductory topics, other topics may include mergers and acquisitions, purchase and pooling, free cash flow, and financial statement analysis.

Principles of Financial Accounting

In this course, we will develop a broad approach for evaluating the prospects for firm profits. We will look at many firms across a broad range of markets. We will spend some time on managerial and behavioral issues and/or institutional details – but keep in mind that the more granular we get, the more the information applies only in restrictive scenarios. We will derive the principles we apply mainly from microeconomic theory. As such, potential answers to questions posed in class will be subjected to the rigor of economic analysis to test their validity and applicability. It is important to recognize upfront that strategy is “messy” throughout. A clean linear approach would deliver the false promise that this material works like a tool. This material is a lens that improves your analytical reasoning skills – you will be able to describe business situations in a more comprehensive, logical, and structured way. Strategic analysis is ambiguous, and to present it any other way is disingenuous.

This course provides students with the concepts and tools required to devise business strategies to gain competitive advantage at the product market level. It also shows how to apply the rules of competitive advantage to a range of economic markets in the United States and globally where the business environment is increasingly turbulent. The course explains how to formulate a business strategy, how to analyze competitive markets and how to define each firm's strategic situation. It focuses on how to create superior value for customers and capture enough value to create increasing profit for your firm. Students learn how successful firms develop superior resources products operations human competencies, organizational teams, procurement technology finances and business alliances to gain and sustain competitive advantage in a dynamic economic environment.

In this course students learn how to develop skills needed to manage the multibusiness enterprise for the creation of corporate advantage To create value through corporate strategy managers must command a number of critical competencies They must be able to create a vision that targets multiple businesses objectives including achieving sustainable corporate growth in profits This course requires integrating skills at developing and deploying corporate resources and capabilities to apply analytical tools and perspectives to changing industries and multibusiness markets and to design organizational structures systems and process that achieve shortterm and longterm corporate strength and profit growth Students learn how to manage the interpersonal dynamics of strategy decision making and how to communicate effectively their visions ands strategies to internal and external stakeholders of the corporation A considerable part of corporate strategy today focuses on managing merger integration Alliances internal growth and global networks which involves increasing cooption and creating various combinations of both multiple business collaborations to expand new markets and also pursuing simultaneous competitive goals to ensure the survival and growth of the firm

This course supports your success as an effective communicator, innovator and leader in an age that demands immediacy and transparency. Translating your ideas into successful efforts requires a communication discipline in writing and speaking that will persuade multiple audiences from diverse cultural, intellectual and professional backgrounds. In short you need to communicate effectively with those who will fund and follow your leadership. To achieve these goals, you will learn how to: • develop a communication strategy appropriate to a defined situation • analyze an audience to be effectively persuasive • structure a message to achieve maximum impact for the listener/reader • deliver effective prepared and impromptu presentations • enhance personal awareness and build productive relationships in teams • select and use appropriate media to match your communication intent • prepare professionally written documents that meet the SEC Guidelines for Plain English Work will be required both individually and in teams.

In Accounting 1, students learn about the four basic financial statements — their preparation and the rules of debit and credit. This course revisits those accounting topics in greater depth and from the perspective of a financial statement user. In so doing, we place particular emphasis on managerial discretion and the potential for earnings manipulation. That is, managers can use the flexibility afforded by accounting rules to allow their company’s financial statements to better communicate the underlying economics of the firm. Or, managers can potentially exploit the rules in order to manipulate earnings opportunistically. Understanding where accounting rules afford discretion helps stakeholders form opinions about the quality of the financial statements and the extent to which they appropriately reflect the underlying economic value of the entity. Along the way, we look at some “good” examples — and some “horrible” warnings — using the documents public companies file with the SEC as well as examining shareholder lawsuits where investors allege wrongdoing by companies (and often their accountants). When you have completed this course, you should understand: (1) how to use financial accounting statements and related documents to make business decisions, and (2) how business transactions affect those financial statements. Achievement of these goals requires an understanding of the basic principles that underlie accrual accounting, taught in Accounting 1, as well as an appreciation of the amount of judgment required in applying these principles. Ultimately, knowing when and how managers have discretion over the application of accounting rules (and examining when they might have incentive or ability to abuse that discretion) helps you be a better-informed investor, customer, lender or other stakeholder in the economy. Indeed, an understanding of financial accounting is essential to anyone who will use financial information as in input to economic decision-making.

As the core marketing course in the program, Marketing is designed to provide students with an understanding of the basic concepts of marketing management and experience in making marketing decisions in uncertain environments. Specifically, the course will cover issues relating to developing marketing strategy and planning marketing tactics. This treatment will be largely from a practical perspective with the emphasis being on managerial decision-making. After successfully completing this course, students will have learned the following: • An understanding of the central concepts of marketing. • How to develop a marketing strategy. • How the elements of the marketing mix work to implement the marketing strategy. • How to identify and address the key decisions facing marketing managers and marketing decision makers. • An appreciation of how digital technology has changed marketing and affects decision making.

This course builds on the foundation established in Strategy I, extending the study to consider how firms find and execute profitable growth. We will explore why firms may diversify into a range of businesses, why firms may choose to vertically integrate by producing key inputs for their final products, and how the governance of such multi-business firms is handled by senior leadership. While the underlying analytical perspective of Strategy I is a key component of this course, we also add concepts and frameworks to help you analyze and understand large or diversified, multi-business organizations.

We use the tools of international macroeconomics to explore the economic environment facing firms operating around the globe. Central issues include the role of economic policy and institutions in the performance of firms and nations; economic indicators and forecasting; employment and unemployment; interest rates, inflation, and monetary policy; global trade in goods and capital; foreign exchange rates; and emerging market crises. These issues are considered from the perspectives of both firms and countries.

In this course we discuss Operations as a mindset focused on execution - on the ability to get things done. Since this ability is a key to maintaining competitive edge in today’s ever-changing business environment, Operations is relevant to anyone at any function of the business and at any level of the organization. The basic premise is that of managing processes, rather than individual tasks or events. This class will examine processes systematically throughout their life cycle from design to execution to continuous improvement. It will equip the students with a set of process-focused skills such as how to analyze a process, how to measure its performance, how to allocate available resources, and how to set up a process improvement program.

This course is a rigorous, quantitative introduction to financial market structure and financial asset valuation. The main topics of the course are arbitrage, portfolio selection, equilibrium asset pricing (CAPM), fixed income securities and derivative pricing. You are expected to understand valuation formulas and be able to apply them to new problems. The appropriate tools necessary for solving these problems will be developed at each stage and practiced in the homework assignments. The models we will cover have immediate applications and implications for real-world financial decisions. Every effort will be made to relate the course material to current financial news. To take this course, students must be comfortable with statistics, linear algebra, calculus, and microeconomics.

In this course, students will develop an understanding of how leading companies in many sectors are embedding sustainability in their core business strategy and using it to drive innovation; operational efficiency; employee, supplier and customer loyalty; competitive advantage and value to society. They will 1) become familiar with the key environmental and social issues affecting business today, 2) explore the innovations developed by corporate leaders in pursuit of sustainability, 3) become familiar with the latest consumer insight research on sustainability and 4) begin to develop some of the skills required for leading in this new social and political environment (e.g. multi-stakeholder management). This course is multi-disciplinary, and seeks to integrate across the functions of the firm to arrive at an effective firm-wide leadership sensibility.

This course deals with the fundamental aspects of measuring and modeling relationships between variables via correlation and regression analysis. Students will learn to build and interpret simple and multiple linear regression models that use information from one or more variables to generate predictions. Methods to detect outliers and also check model assumptions will be discussed, as well as business implications of incorrect modelling.

This course studies two related issues. The first is how to gain an advantage against competitors in the complex and dynamic global marketplace. Core business strategy themes include how to analyze the business environment, assess resources and capabilities, and choose competitive strategies. The second issue is how to create corporate value through configuring and coordinating multi-business activities. Core corporate strategy themes include analyzing scale and scope, evaluating corporate competencies, managing the multi-business corporation, and choosing corporate strategies.

This course explores the international macroeconomic and monetary environment within which businesses operate. It provides the concepts, relationships, and frameworks that can be used to better understand the performance of national economies and the interplay among national economies and financial markets. It examines the fundamental determinants of long-term economic growth, linkages among countries through trade, exchange rates, and the balance of payments, business cycles and recessions, inflation and deflation, and the effects of governments’ macroeconomic policies.

This core course will explain the financial language used in businesses and discuss the pros and cons of financial metrics used to evaluate the feasibility and success of business ventures. The course will use real cases to explain how the choice of business strategy and its execution is reflected in financial statements. It will also teach you how to crystallize your business ideas into financial plans.

This course provides an overview of marketing, focusing on essential skills needed by successful managers in all business functions. Topics include how individual and organizational consumers make decisions; segmenting markets and estimating customer economic value; positioning the firm's offering; effective marketing research; new product development; pricing strategies; communicating with consumers and estimating advertising's effectiveness; and managing relationships with sales force and intermediary partners. The course emphasizes how marketing combines qualitative and quantitative analysis, also teaching how to work in environments with considerable uncertainty. It uses a combination of lectures and case analysis, involving both individual and group projects.

This rigorous quantitative course introduces the structure of markets and the valuation of financial assets-including stocks, bonds, futures, forwards, options, and swaps. Principles of modern portfolio theory are developed to explain the concepts of risk- adjusted returns, beta risk measures, and efficient portfolio selection within a mean-variance framework. Fixed income analytics, including yield-to-maturity, duration, and forward rates, are applied to topics like the analysis of yield curves and bond arbitrage models. Illustrations in the course are drawn from both domestic and international financial markets. Although this is an introductory course, by the end students are expected to understand the underlying analytical framework for modern finance as well as to know how to apply basic valuation formulas to standard financial instruments.

This course provides an overview of the main ideas, concepts and tools of analysis used in modern corporate finance, and their practical applications. We analyze the core financial decisions made by firms – the investment decision and the financing decision – and their impact on the value of the firm in the financial market. Topics that will be covered are: time value of money, introduction to valuation and the discounted cash flow (DCF) framework, valuation of stocks and bonds, financial planning and cash flow forecasting, corporate investments and capital budgeting, risk and return and portfolio theory, introduction to options, capital structure and financial policy, and corporate restructurings.

This course assumes no prior knowledge of accounting. The objective of this course is to introduce you to the concepts of financial reporting, the language of business, and its underlying assumptions and help you develop into an informed user of financial statement information. We will focus on understanding the mapping between underlying economic events and financial statements. We will discuss the role of the various institutions involved in the reporting process, the incentives that firms may face in making financial reporting decisions and the discretion that the firms have in financial reporting decisions. By understanding the environment in which financial reporting takes place you will be in a better position to evaluate critically the disclosures made by firms in published financial statements.

This introductory finance course provides an overview of the main ideas and tools of analysis used in modern finance. We analyze the core financial decisions made by firms – the investment decision and the financing decision – and their impact on the value of the firm in the financial market. A large emphasis will be placed on how the theoretical concepts can be applied in practice. Topics that will be covered are: time value of money, introduction to valuation and the discounted cash flow (DCF) framework, financial planning and cash flow forecasting, corporate investments and capital budgeting, risk and return and portfolio theory, and capital structure and financial policy.

This course studies two related issues. The first is how to gain advantage against competitors in the complex and dynamic global marketplace. Core business strategy themes include how to analyze the business environment, assess resources and capabilities, and choose competitive strategies. The second issue is how to create corporate value through configuring and coordinating multi-business activities. Core corporate strategy themes include analyzing scale and scope, evaluating corporate competencies, managing the multi-business corporation, and choosing corporate strategies.

Foundations of Corporate Finance analyzes the most significant financial decisions facing corporate managers The major topics include investment valuation capital budgeting capital structure and dividend policy and mergers and acquisitions There will be emphasis on both developing the tools and mindset of the financial practitioner as well as examining specific applications in the form of examples and several case discussions

We use the tools of international macroeconomics to explore the economic environment facing firms operating around the globe. Central issues include the role of economic policy and institutions in the performance of firms and nations economic indicators and forecasting employment and unemployment interest rates.

This course provides an overall view of marketing in a customer-driven firm focusing on essential marketing skills needed by successful managers in all business functions Topics include how individual and organizational consumers make decisions, segment markets, estimate the economic value of customers to the firm, position the firms offering effective marketing research, new product development and pricing strategies, communicate with consumers, estimate advertisings effectiveness, and manage relationships with sales force and distribution partners. The course also studies how firms must coordinate these different elements of the marketing mix to ensure that all marketing activities collectively forge a coherent strategy. The importance of combining qualitative and quantitative concepts in effective marketing analysis is also examined. The course uses a combination of lectures class discussions and case analysis Marketing is a core course and assumes no prior knowledge of marketing. However, there are certain concepts from Firms Markets that students should have mastered including price elasticity of demand, price discrimination, marginal cost, marginal revenue, efficient scale for production capacity, diminishing returns utility functions, and utility curves.

This is a quantitative course introducing the fundamental principles of asset valuation within the framework of modern portfolio theory. The key analytical concepts are present value option, value risk-diversification and arbitrage. These tools are used to value stocks, bonds, options and other derivatives with applications to the structure of financial markets portfolio selection and risk management.

This course serves as an introduction to operations viewed from the perspective of the general manager rather than from that of the operations specialist The coverage is very selective the course concentrates on a small number of themes from the areas of operations management and information technology that have emerged as the central building blocks of world-class operations It also presents a sample of key tools and techniques that have proven extremely useful The topics covered are equally relevant to the manufacturing and service sectors.

This introductory finance course provides an overview of the main ideas and tools of analysis used in modern finance. We analyze the core financial decisions made by firms - the investment decision and the financing decision - and their impact on the value of the firm in the financial market. A large emphasis will be placed on how the theoretical concepts can be applied in practice. Topics that will be covered are: time value of money, introduction to valuation and the discounted cash flow (DCF) framework, financial planning and cash flow forecasting, corporate investments and capital budgeting, risk and return and portfolio theory, and capital structure and financial policy.