Management Practicum


200 Management of Complex Organizations (Residential)
This course presents fundamental concepts, tools, and solutions from strategic management and organization studies as complementary tracks of knowledge to initiate students into the concrete challenges that managers in high performing organizations typically confront. You will begin to identify key issues in the competitive situation of a firm and to understand the implementation challenges to execute on these insights. The course introduces the foundations of strategy and competitive analysis, innovation as a strategic imperative, different frameworks for analyzing and designing organizations, key issues in effective managing and leading, social network analysis, and ethics in practice. You will be introduced to the pedagogical methods of case analysis, group problem solving, and group presentations as a means of developing the skills and strategies associated with effective managerial action. The course is structured as a full-time, in-residence “boot camp” and the pace is intense. The course also provides an opportunity to get to know your fellow students in the program as well as many of the core faculty who will teach the core courses in the first year.
202 Organizational Analysis for Management

This course is designed to increase your skill and effectiveness in analyzing and managing organizations, groups, and individuals. The course material will be useful in motivating others, managing relationships with people, making complex decisions, becoming a leader, managing and cultivating innovation, planning careers, improving team effectiveness, and structuring organizations. The course integrates concepts and theories with the practical realities of managing organizations. Ultimately, the tools and skills developed in this course should equip you to become more effective contributors to organizations that you join by developing your analytic/diagnostic skills. These skills include the ability to diagnose “real life” management situations and offer sound recommendations to improve learning, innovation, and effectiveness. The objective is to expose you to basic ideas, some applications of those ideas, and to give you a framework for organizing your own past experience. You will develop several frames or lenses that you can use to guide your future experiences in organizations. The course does not offer you a recipe of what to do but gives you a set of analytic skills and different ways of thinking that can help you address novel problems in organizations that operate in an information-rich environment.

204A Microeconomics for Management
This course provides the basic tools for analyzing economic decisions of consumers and firms, the determinants and consequences of market structure and issues of market failure. Topics include introduction to demand and supply analysis, production and cost theory, perfect competition, monopoly, imperfect competition, and introductory game theory. A knowledge of algebra and elementary calculus is assumed.

201A Statistics for Management
Methods of statistical inference emphasizing applications to administrative and management decision problems. Topics include classical estimation and hypotheses testing, regression, correlation, analysis of variance, nonparametric methods and statistical probability.

203A Financial Accounting for Management
Nature and purpose of accounting, principal accounting instruments, and valuation problems.

203B Managerial Accounting for Management
Focuses on the needs of the manager rather than the needs of stockholders and others. Introduces the concepts and tools of internal reporting. Emphasis on use of internal accounting reports and analyses for decision making.

205 Marketing Management
This course serves as an introduction to the field of marketing. Objectives include developing familiarity with terms, techniques, and institutions in marketing environment; and acquainting students with the types of decisions made by marketing managers (regarding products, pricing, distribution, promotion, and research), and the factors influencing these decisions.

209A Managerial Finance
Introduces students to financial theory and concepts. The main topics covered are time value of money, valuation of stocks and bonds, capital budgeting, portfolio theory, capital structure choice.

295 Global Business II (International Residential)
Emphasizes and reinforces international perspectives contained in the MBA curriculum by providing a week-long intensive seminar abroad in the second year. Scholars and business people from the host country instruct students in specially designed class sessions and company visits.

201B Management Science
An introduction to computer-based models for decision-making. Topics include optimization (linear programming, integer programming, network flow models) and computer simulation. The course uses spreadsheets extensively, including Excel built-in and add-in packages.

207 Information Technology for Management
Focuses on the links between business strategy and information technology, the organizational implications of the technology, and how to successfully incorporate information technology into organizations.

210 Business Strategy
As the emphasis on bottom-line performance has increased due to external financial market pressures and globalization, managers are increasingly concerned with how to develop and sustain competitive advantage – the basis for superior performance. Strategic management goes to the heart of how managers add value to the firm by focusing on how managers should evaluate and assess their organizations and competitive environments in order to develop a competitive advantage in the marketplace.

The objectives of this course are to provide conceptual frameworks and successful techniques by which to analyze, develop, and implement the competitive strategy of the firm. An understanding of competitive strategy requires an assessment and analysis of the firm’s competitive marketplace and the firm’s stock of resources and capabilities. The course begins with providing frameworks for understanding the dynamics of industry structure, the evolution of this structure, and the pattern of interaction among the competitors in the industry. The course then focuses on an assessment and analysis of the organizational resources and routines that form the basis for firm-specific capabilities. The course if focused on developing a competitive strategy based on the leveraging of firm-specific capabilities in the marketplace.

This course is designed to improve decision-making in a competitive and dynamic environment and thus enable the manager to take action to improve the firm’s competitive position. The approach of the course is practical and problem-oriented. A major part of the course will involve applying concepts, frameworks, analytical techniques, and managerial insights to the strategic issues which real world companies face. In applying strategic analyses to real-world situations, students are placed in the role of key decision makers and asked to address questions regarding their evaluation of the marketplace and organization. One major objective of the course is to improve one’s capacity for strategic thinking and action by developing frameworks by which to assess, evaluate, and respond different business situations through the use of case analysis and discussion.

204B Macroeconomics for Management
This course focuses on the use of macroeconomic analysis to manage the business cycle and other macroeconomic shocks for competitive advantage. Such “business cycle-sensitive” management is explored within the context of all major functional and strategic areas of the modern organization, including marketing, operations management, HRM, merger and acquisition activity, and capital financing and expenditures. Emphasis is on both a mastery of economic indicators and forecasting tools as well as the application of macroeconomic analysis for strategic and tactical planning. A multidisciplinary, integrative, and experiential approach is

296 Executive Leadership (Capstone Residential)
Focuses on the conceptual, practical, and personal dimensions of executive leadership. Past and current leadership theories are addressed. Individual personal assessment and diagnosis.

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