Business Administration, Executive Master (XMBA)

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2016 10 Week Session
Leadership Communication is a workshop in the fundamentals of public speaking in today's business environment. Through prepared and impromptu speeches aimed at moving others to action, peer coaching, and lectures, students will sharpen their authentic and persuasive communication skills, develop critical listening skills, improve abilities to give, receive, and apply feedback, and gain confidence as public speakers.
Leadership Communication: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2006 10 Week Session
The objective of this core course is to make students critical consumers of statistical analysis using available software packages. Key concepts include interpretation of regression analysis, model formation and testing, and diagnostic checking.
Data and Decisions: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024, Summer 2016 10 Week Session, Summer 2005 10 Week Session
Microeconomic analysis theorizes how to identify the best choice out of a set of available alternatives. This course presents key topics from microeconomic theory and applies them to businesses and other organizations. This course applies economic principles to key management decisions within organizations. It provides guidance to increase value creation. Economics provides a fundamentally unique way of thinking about problems, issues and decisions that managers face in each of the functional areas of their organization. This course focuses on the importance of incentives as determinants of human behavior and performance, and emphasizes the consideration of costs and benefits as an efficient method for reaching economic decisions.

Economics for Business Decision Making: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Spring 2014
This core course addresses the determination of economic concepts and financial practices at work in the global economic environment. Topics include long-run productivity and growth, short-run economic fluctuations in both closed and open economies, exchange rates and the balance of payments, the natural rate of unemployment, and the causes and consequences of inflation. The instructor will draw examples from a number of countries and a variety of economies to illustrate theoretical concepts.
Macroeconomics in the Global Economy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024
This course examines accounting measurements for general-purpose financial reports. An objective of the course is to provide not only a working knowledge but also a clear understanding of the contents of published financial statements.
Financial Accounting: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2014
This core course examines the wide menu of available assets, the institutional structure of U.S. and international financial markets, and the market mechanisms for trading securities. Topics include discounting, capital budgeting, historical behavior of asset returns, and diversification and portfolio theory. The course will also provide introductions to asset pricing theory for primary and derivative assets and to the principles governing corporate financial arrangements and contracting.
Introduction to Finance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024, Spring 2014, Spring 2012
This core course provides students with an understanding of the basic issues involved in managing a manufacturing-based business and introduces them to the tools that are available to deal with these issues. Students will also learn pertinent fundamental concepts in management science that are applicable to other functional areas.
Operations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024, Fall 2014, Fall 2013
This core course surveys knowledge about behavior of organizations and in organizations. The course will include study of the issues of individual behavior, group functioning, and the actions of organizations in their environments, and analysis from a number of theoretical perspectives of such problems as work motivation, task design, leadership, communication, organizational design, and innovation. The class will explore the implications for the management of organizations through examples, cases, and exercises.
LEADING PEOPLE: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2014
This core course provides an overview of the marketing system and the marketing concept, buyer behavior, market research, segmentation, marketing decision-making, marketing structures, and evaluation of marketing performance in the economy and society.
Marketing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024, Spring 2014, Spring 2012
This is a core course designed to introduce managers to the processes involved in industry and market analysis, the development of a business strategy, competitive positioning, planning, and the implementation of an integrated business program. Students will consider competing strategies as companies aim to achieve their own goals and objectives, often at the expense of their rivals, from the perspective of a general, enterprise-level manager charged with overall responsibility for a company's performance in a variety of competitive and corporate contexts.
Strategic Leadership: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024

Game Theory: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Business strategy and public issues in energy and environmental markets. Topics include development and effect of organized spot, futures, and derivative energy markets; political economy of regulation and deregulation; climate change and environmental policies related to energy production and use; cartels, market power and competition policy; pricing of exhaustible resources; competitiveness of alternative energy sources; and transportation and storage of energy commodities.
Energy and Environmental Markets: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Advanced study in the field of economic analysis and policy. Topics will vary from year to year and will be announced at the beginning of each semester.
Topics in Economic Analysis and Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024
This course will study the principles underlying alternative financial arrangements and contracts and their application to corporate financial management. In particular, it will examine the impact of incentive, moral hazard, and principal-agent problems, that arise as a consequence of asymmetric information, government intervention, managerial incentives and taxes, on financial decisions regarding capital budgeting, dividend policy, capital structure and mergers.
Corporate Finance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Fall 2012
Survey of the day-to-day practices and techniques used in change of control transaction. Topics include valuation, financing, deal structuring, tax and accounting considerations, agreements, closing documents, practices used in management buyouts, divestitures, hostile takeovers, and takeover defenses. Also covers distinctions in technology M&A, detecting corruption in cross border transaction attempts, and betting on deals through risk arbitrage. Blend of lecture, case study, and guest lectures.
Mergers and Acquisitions: A Focus on Creating Value: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024
This course introduces the world of operational and strategic turnarounds of troubled and underperforming businesses. It focuses on the leadership practices that work in fixing flawed enterprises, from underperforming businesses to those on the brink of a death spiral. Most time in the course is spent learning how to more effectively lead companies that are underperforming or in trouble. The course is taught by cases, with the view that the best way to learn leadership is by taking the perspective of business leaders facing crises that demand new direction. Since a rescue plan only works if it is embraced, students take various roles in the cases, including bosses, subordinates, boards and lenders.
Turnarounds: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024
This is a course about financing new entrepreneurial ventures, emphasizing those that have the possibility of creating a national or international impact or both. It will take two perspectives--the entrepreneur's and the investor's--and it will place a special focus on the venture capital process, including how they are formed and managed, accessing the public markets, mergers, and strategic alliances.
New Venture Finance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Advanced study in the field of finance. Topics will vary from year to year and will be announced at the beginning of each semester.
Topics in Finance: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Advanced study in the field of manufacturing and operations. Topics will vary from year to year and will be announced at the beginning of each semester.
Topics in Operations and Information Technology Management: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024, Summer 2014 10 Week Session
A study of the negotiations process, including negotiations among buyers and sellers, managers and subordinates, company units, companies and organizational agencies, and management and labor. Both two-party and multi-party relations are covered. Course work includes readings, lectures, and discussion of case material and simulations of real negotiations. A key focus of this course is the role of third parties in resolving disputes.
Managerial Negotiations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course aims to improve the quality of decisions people make. Students learn to be aware of, and to avoid, common inferential errors and systematic biases in decision making. There are many decision traps that we tend to repeatedly fall into. These traps relate to how we think about risk and probability, how we learn from experience, and how we make choices. Upon completion, students will have internalized the basic principles of decision making and will be able to avoid falling into these traps. The course additionally aims to create a deeper understanding of the psychology of decision making, which can create an advantage in negotiations and other interactions through gaining an awareness of the predictable mistakes of others.
Decision Making: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course will provide students with a sense of "political intelligence." After taking this course, students will be able to: (1) diagnose the true distribution of power in organizations, (2) identify strategie for building sources of power, (3) develop techniques for influencing others, (4) understand the role of power in building cooperation and leading change in organizations, and (5) make sense of others' attempts to influence them. These skills are essential for effective and satisfying career building.
Power and Politics in Organizations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024
In this advanced elective course, students analyze recent literature and developments related to such topics as organization development, environmental determinants of organization structure and decision-making behavior, management of professionals, management in temporary structures, cross-cultural studies of management organizations, and industrial relation systems and practices.
Leadership: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Analysis of recent literature and developments related to such topics as organization development, environmental determinants of organization structure and decision-making behavior, management of professionals and management in temporary structures, cross-cultural studies of management organizations, and industrial relations.
Special Topics in the Management of Organizations: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024
Advanced study in the field of Marketing. Topics will vary from year to year and will be announced at the beginning of each semester.
Special Topics in Marketing: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Topics vary by semester at discretion of instructor and by student demand. Topical areas include: business and professional ethics and the role of corporate social responsibility in the mixed economy; managing the external affairs of the corporation, including community, government, media and stakeholder relations; technology policy, research and development and the effects of government regulation of business on technological innovation and adoption.
Special Topics in Business and Public Policy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
We are in the midst of a digital transformation that is changing how industries work and how we will live and work. Responding to this massive change requires that we learn approaches to framing and solving problems different from the analytical approaches most of us have learned and practiced in our careers. Enter design thinking. Designers have long practiced immersion in ambiguous situations, imagining and conceptualizing alternative futures, and learning through experimentation and failure. This course teaches students new ways of collecting data to characterize a problem space, enabling them to frame and reframe problems, generate a range of possible solutions, and then gather feedback to assess those solutions.
Applied Innovation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2024, Summer 2014 10 Week Session, Spring 2014
Advanced study in the fields of innovation and design. Topics will vary from year to year and will be announced at the beginning of each semester.
Topics in Innovation and Design: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
This course focuses on the art and science of coaching including theory and practice. The curriculum will cover theory and practice for three aspects of the coaching process – knowledge-based (information and skills), motivation-based (inspiration and passion), and strategy-based (communication and integration). The curriculum will focus on primary coaching skills, tools, processes and behaviors that a coach uses. In addition, participants will learn facilitation skills as the preferred methodology in achieving successful coaching programs. Course participants will have the opportunity to utilize this material in practice coaching sessions with supervision and feedback from peers and the instructor.
Leader as Coach: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
The objective of this course is to help students become better leaders by strengthening their ability to build trust-based relationships with others such as direct reports, supervisors, peers and customers. The course draws appropriate links back to Leadership Communications and forward to Applied Innovation. Students will (i) debrief their experience of putting learning from Leadership Communications into action in their workplace; (ii) practice various approaches to honing their empathy, including the use of insightful questions rather than assertions as the basis for a dialogue with others; and (iii) learn a simple peer coaching model that they will use in between face-to-face sessions with their classmates.
Building Trust-Based Relationships: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024
The objective of Building Trust-based Relationships is to help students become better leaders by strengthening their ability to build trust with others such as direct reports, line managers or customers.
By the end of this course, students can expect to have gained:
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A better understanding of how to build trust
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Greater self-awareness of their own ability to build trust with others
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Tangible tools and techniques to build trust-based relationships with others
In the first three of six classes spanning the Fall and Spring Semesters, we administer a self- and 360- trust assessment, introduce students to the Trust Equation and deep dive into active listening and asking enlightening questions, two pillars of building trust with others.
Building Trust-Based Relationships: Part I: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024
The objective of Building Trust-based Relationships is to help students become better leaders by strengthening their ability to build trust with others such as direct reports, line managers or customers.
By the end of this course, students can expect to have gained:
●
A better understanding of how to build trust
●
Greater self-awareness of their own ability to build trust with others
●
Tangible tools and techniques to build trust-based relationships with others
In the final three of six classes spanning the Fall and Spring Semesters, we deep dive into the topics of empathy, courageous conversations (how to authentically express needs) and coaching, all of which are connected to the Trust Equation.
Building Trust-Based Relationships: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2012, Summer 2011 10 Week Session
This course will provide the student with specialized knowledge in some area of managerial communications. Topics include multimedia business presentations, personal leadership development, diversity management, and making meetings work. Topics will vary from semester to semester.
Topics in Managerial Communications: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Advanced study in the field of Social Sector Leadership. Topics will vary from year to year and will be announced at the beginning of each semester.
Topics in Social Sector Leadership: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024
Individually supervised study of subjects not available to the student in the regular schedule, approved by faculty adviser as appropriate for the student's program.
Individual Supervised Study for Graduate Students: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Summer 2010 10 Week Session, Summer 2008 10 Week Session, Summer 2006 10 Week Session
The development of creative marketing strategies for new ventures, as well as the resolution of specific marketing problems in smaller companies which provide innovative goods and services. Emphasis is on decision making under conditions of weak data, inadequate resources, emerging markets, and rapidly changing environments.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024
This course intends to help students apply the skills of applied innovation in a loosely-structured, open-ended project. Students will learn advanced techniques in the innovation process and apply it to a project of their choice. The course is loosely structured and includes a lot of coaching time with faculty, as well as feedback and critique time with peers. The course largely follows the innovation cycle — observe and notice, frame and reframe, imagine and design, and make and test — but does so nonlinearly.
Advanced Innovation: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Spring 2024
This course combines high-impact visits with founders/CEOs and targeted case studies on entrepreneurship. Founder visits provide perspectives on current events in Silicon Valley, as well as opportunities to engage with entrepreneurs on a deeply personal level. Founders will present an overview of their company, followed by a Q&A session. Case studies will focus on the role of experimentation and uncertainty in successful businesses, and will draw on frameworks in strategy, finance, and negotiation.
Entrepreneurship and Innovation Immersion: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Prior to 2007
Students learn about the key strategic choices that shape whether companies deliver real value to stakeholders. They are taught to organize the strategic choices into four different strategy “playbooks” that they can use to systematically consider alternate strategies for a startup, and the core elements needed to make these strategies work: Intellectual Property Strategy, Disruptive Strategy, Value Chain Strategy, and Architectural Strategy. Students must (a) analyze cases, thinking systematically through what they would do if they were a founder or early-employee in the protagonists’ shoes; (b) engage in class discussions, treating the classroom as a laboratory; and (c) formulate a real strategic plan for a final strategy assignment.
Entrepreneurial Strategy: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Spring 2024
Advanced study in the field of entrepreneurship. Topics will vary from year to year and will be announced at the beginning of each semester.
Special Topics in Entrepreneurship: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2025, Fall 2024, Summer 2024
Advanced study in various fields of business administration. Topics will vary from year to year and will be announced at the beginning of each semester.
Special Topics in Business Administration: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Spring 2012, Spring 2011, Spring 2010
Course will focus on the challenges, opportunities, and risks of doing business in emerging market economies. The course is designed to enhance students' ability to start, manage, lead, and invest in companies operating in emerging markets and to respond to new competitors from emerging markets. Emerging markets are home to nearly 80% of the world's population and are expected to account for half of global GDP growth over the next 25 years.
International Business: Read More [+]

Terms offered: Fall 2024
The U.S. federal government plays an important role in business. This course explores the federal government's operations and policy deliberations in the executive, legislative, and judicial/regulatory domains. Specific topics include voting rights policy, social media regulation, and race in an era of polarization. In addition to lectures by the instructor, there will be a large number of guest speakers from a wide range of policy and political perspectives. Students will write a persuasive paper and engage in a policy debate as a final group project.
Business and Public Policy Immersion: Read More [+]