Listed below are some sample electives offered.
Economics and Political Science
Entrepreneurship and Family Enterprise
Technology & Operations Management
Business Law
Every business manager should be aware of the legal environment in which their business operates. This course will introduce you to the legal environment by discussing such topics as contract law, agency law, partnership law, corporate law, securities law, antitrust law, bankruptcy law, intellectual property law and other important legal issues. The course will be useful for MBA students who intend to become general managers, advisors to senior managers, board members, or board advisors such as investment bankers and consultants.
Financial Statement Analysis
The primary objective of this elective is the development of a framework for linking value creation to firms' financial statements. The course will broadly focus on: tools for analysing a firm's financial statements, accounting analysis, and valuation. You will be asked to complete a valuation study during the course, providing an opportunity to carry out the analysis process in a "real world" situation, and to use the tools and concepts discussed during the various sessions in an integrated manner.
Go to Area Website
Go to Faculty Page
Models of Strategic Planning
This course will show you how to approach decision making in a wide array of business settings with the help of spreadsheet models. This decision technology has enabled many companies to improve their routine activities, but also identify long-run decision opportunities and sometimes rethink the whole of their activities. In the modeling approach, we seek to describe the essential structure of a decision problem in terms of objectives, decision variables, uncertainties, outcomes, choice criteria, and feasibility.
Management Decision Making
This course focuses on the psychology of decision making. If you are like most people, you rely heavily on intuition in making decisions and as you will discover in class, there are many advantages to this. However, while intuition often serves us well, there are many decision traps that we tend to fall into on a repeated basis. This course will identify the traps. In addition to improving your own decision making, it will also teach you a great deal about how other people make decisions. Through a number of class exercises & activities and through your participation in our "decision playground," a simple market in which you must make decisions in the face of (often tremendous) uncertainty, you will need to make decisions, and to see (and feel) yourself fall into the traps we discussed in class. On this course you will experience the kind of uncertainty that you will face every day as a manager.
Go to Area Website
Go to Faculty Page
Economics and Management In Developing Countries
This course is intended to provide future managers, expecting to work in or with developing countries, with an understanding of their current economic reality and future prospects of these nations. The course will concentrate on the relationship between corporate management and the economic and social development of developing countries. Along with an introduction to the problems of economic development, it also addresses the role of the private sector (including corporations and NGO's) in promoting development from the bottom-up and fighting poverty.
Strategies for Asia Pacific
The key obstacle to capitalising on the opportunities in Asia Pacific is a lack of familiarity with Asian markets and appropriate managerial responses. Specifically, outside managers often do not understand how these markets work, how to formulate entry strategies, or how to manage people and operations under conditions that are very different from those found especially in the West. The objective of this course is to give you an edge over the competition by helping you understand how different Asian markets function, giving you frameworks to prepare for successful market entry, and to help you comprehend and avoid the key sources of friction non-Asians face when managing Asian operations.
Advanced Game Theory
This class shows you how to use game theory to give an analytic treatment of business problems. The target audience is students who were intrigued by the game theory presented in the core class and would like to gain a deeper understanding of such analytic methods. We will touch on issues such as: Is being her always good? How can you affect your rival's actions? How can you signal your quality/talent to potential employers? We will include applications to financial markets and the financial crisis. In this course, you will practice thinking strategically, which will help you because this is what you have to do every day.
Go to Area Website
Go to Faculty Page
Realising Entrepreneurial Potential
If you think that someday you would like to buy a company for yourself and will be involved in the acquisition process as a private equity professional, an investment banker or a consultant, this course is for you. Using cases and class discussion, you will learn how to find a company, acquire it, manage it, add value to it, turn it around and ultimately sell it. Class discussions will be enhanced by examples from real business situations and guests will bring cases to life with added insight. The course involves a project whereby participants will search for a suitable company to buy, analyse the opportunity, value it, develop a business plan and seek backing through a final presentation to a panel of seasoned private equity professionals.
Social Entrepreneurship & Innovation
In this course, we will explore the drivers of strategic and operational challenges specific to the field of social entrepreneurship. This course has a particular focus on enterprises whose businesses concentrate on improving the lives of people living at the bottom of the wealth pyramid in emerging markets. This course will be built around a field trip to an emerging market economy. During the field trip we will engage with not-for-profit and for-profit institutions and enterprises with a social mission or 'bottom of the pyramid' strategy. By taking this course, you will also acquire a h4 practical insight into the dynamics of planning, implementing and scaling social enterprises. At the end of this course, you will be equipped to address some of the key practical issues that would confront someone who wishes to establish or contribute to the development of a social enterprise initiative.
Business Planning Workshop
This course will help you learn the intricacies of writing a coherent, convincing and fundable business plan. It is ideal if you are hoping to pursue a career in entrepreneurship and or venture capital. This course, therefore, is not conceived as an academic exercise. It is intended for immediate or prospective entrepreneurs as well as for managers of start-up companies and is a very hands-on course where you will be expected to work in teams. On this course you will acquire the basic skills to recognise which ideas could be developed into a fundable business plan by knowing what the critical success factors are. Since it offers you the opportunity to gain some important know-how in understanding what early stage investors look for, it is also useful for those of you considering careers in venture capital.
Your First Hundred Days
This elective is intended to provide a taste of what it is like to assume managerial control of a company you and your team of fellow managers have just bought. After a preliminary session during which you will sign all the contracts, covenants etc. associated with your acquisition, the course really gets under way as you walk into your new company to take over the reins. It will then take you through a series of events and crises reflecting what you might well experience in the real world. Your mission, along with your management team colleagues, will vary according to the event. Sometimes you will simply have to state what you as a management team propose to do. At other times, you will actually have to go and do it. Above all, your mission is to react to each situation in such a way as to ensure that the buyout will be successful in the long term.
Private Equity
Even though the course was originally motivated by the phenomenal growth of the private equity industry over the past two decades, the recent financial turmoil has given it additional relevance: Will the private equity industry become a role model for the "new" financial markets of tomorrow or will it face dramatic changes as well? The course attempts to provide a balanced overview of the private equity landscape and covers the entire spectrum from early to late stage investing, with a focus on recent developments and industry specific discussions. Using mainly the case method, it addresses the mechanisms and principles of private equity deals that are common across the various private equity types and highlights the most important differences.
Go to Area Website
Go to Faculty Page
Applied Corporate Finance
The purpose of this course is to apply the theory of finance to solve a set of case studies. Its main theme is the creation of shareholder value. Topics covered include capital budgeting, valuation, the cost of capital, new issues, mergers and takeovers, dividend policy, leveraged buy-outs, and applications of option pricing to corporate finance.
Credit Risk
This elective covers the basics of credit and credit derivative markets: understanding the properties of corporate credit risk; the different ways of assessing and pricing corporate credit risk; using credit default swaps to hedge and trade corporate credit risk; pricing credit default swaps; the basics of collateralised debt obligations and structured credit. The focus throughout will be on current and recent events in credit markets. In particular, we will examine the origins of the subprime crisis, discuss how it unfolded and its implications. The course will be a blend of lectures and current cases.
Value Creation in Corporate Restructuring
This course is designed to provide you with both an understanding of the tools used to assess the value created in different corporate events and to delve further into the management challenges and value drivers in corporate restructuring. Specifically, it will cover a variety of value creation techniques involving restructuring and reorganisation for both healthy and distressed corporations, including implementation of Value-Based Management, share repurchases and leveraged transactions. The emphasis will be on understanding these restructuring tools, the reasons behind their potential success or failure and how to implement these schemes to maximise shareholder value.
Go to Area Website
Go to Faculty Page
Brand Management
The course begins with an examination of the role of brand management within the firm and the relation of brand management to product management, marketing and competitive strategy, and corporate strategy. You will learn how brand value is measured, how brands cope with competitive and environmental threats and opportunities and how brand assets are managed for the long term. This course is designed to help general managers operating in a branded industry learn the tools and rules of brand marketing or for people interested in a career as marketing manager or consultant in the field of marketing. The course consists of a rich mix of topical case discussions, conceptual lecture-discussions and a hands-on project.
Market Driving Strategies
The objective of this elective is to further enhance your expertise in evaluating and formulating strategic marketing decisions. It looks in greater detail at the different challenges that firms face in their quest for achieving and sustaining market leadership and profitable growth in competitive, fast-changing, global markets. The course uses a mixture of cases, discussions, lectures and readings to provide integrated concepts and hands-on problem solving. Most importantly, you will have the opportunity to apply the material from the course as well as the knowledge, concepts and tools from your core courses by developing and implementing a growth strategy for your own business using the Markstrat business simulation.
Go to Area Website
Go to Faculty Page
Psychological Issues in Management
The course is designed to provide you with concepts and competencies to help you throughout your managerial career. The concepts will include both time-tested ideas and very recent findings, putting you at the cutting edge of management thinking. But learning the lessons intellectually is the easy part, you will also have the chance to practice and experiment with these ideas. Through class exercises, videotaped exercises, interactive assignments and cases, you will have the opportunity to turn the concepts into competencies. The course will develop your repertoire of skills in four areas: individual effectiveness, emotional intelligence, leadership effectiveness one-on-one, and team leadership.
Negotiations
The course will highlight the components of an effective negotiation and teach you to analyse your own behaviour in negotiations. The course will be largely experiential, providing you with the opportunity to develop your skills by participating in negotiations and integrating your experiences with the principles presented in the assigned readings and course discussions. This course is designed to foster learning through doing, to explore your own talents, skills, shortcomings, and strengths as a negotiator.
Communication & Leadership
This elective explores the relationship between effective leadership and effective communication. The framework is built upon understanding 'communication intelligence' for leaders as they connect people, ideas and actions in the business environment. The classes involve multiple learning formats - lectures; cases; practical exercises; interactive learning (including video); and performance. In addition to the underlying academic content, the course will also allow you to build a personal "tool-kit" of techniques for effective communication directly relevant to your future business career and leadership development.
Go to Area Website
Go to Faculty Page
Industrial & Competitive Analysis
The course examines how firms obtain and sustain superior returns through the development and implementation of competitive strategies. It focuses on strategies that develop and exploit two sources of superior returns: unique value-creating resources and capabilities and powerful positions in markets and supply chains. The objective is to develop your strategic analysis skills to guide future strategic decisions. Most case studies in this course involve firms facing important strategic decisions in contexts of substantial uncertainty. The course presents principles and tools for balancing strategic opportunities and risks. The course is recommended for people wanting to pursue careers requiring the analysis and formulation of strategic directions for companies or the assessment of long-term profit opportunities within an industry.
Global Strategy & Management
Companies need to manage the tension between two opposing forces in cross border strategy. On the one hand, as globalisation has increased over time, strategic opportunities and challenges are no longer isolated within national borders. On the other hand, important differences still persist across countries, both in terms of local market opportunities and in terms of locational advantages/disadvantages for competing globally. Recognising this tension, the course will focus on the geographic element of a company's strategy. We will study multinational corporations (MNCs) in the context of both developed markets and emerging economies. Our emphasis will be on understanding strategic issues that managers of MNCs face, and on applying tools and frameworks that help address these issues.
China Strategy
This is a course in collaboration with Chinese executives and foreign expatriates to provide first-hand experience and insights about competitive strategy and business practice in China. This course will help you understand how Chinese businesses think, behave and grow and why multinationals develop, adjust, and change their strategies and practices for China. This course will be of great interest to future global business leaders, management consultants, venture capitalists, and entrepreneurs who like to (or have to) develop business in China, assist Chinese firms to excel in national or global battles, or develop multinationals' competitive strategy for China.
Blue Ocean Strategy Simulation
On this elective you will learn the key concepts of Blue Ocean Strategy formulation and implementation in a highly interactive and intellectually stimulating format. Instead of competing head-to-head, you will learn to reconstruct market boundaries and unlock new demand. Understanding how to go beyond competing in existing market space to creating blue oceans is critical for leaders in consulting, strategy and business development, and entrepreneurship.
Go to Area Website
Go to Faculty Page
Strategies for Product and Service Development
Product Development is central to the firm and Strategies for Product and Service Development is about making innovation happen in a firm. At some point in your career, you will need to deal with product and service development challenges. This course will prepare you to identify and tackle such managerial challenges. You will learn how to effectively integrate strategy, marketing, design, and manufacturing decisions not only by discussing state-of-the-art frameworks/tools for effective product development in large organisations but also by developing a new product or service idea in a course project.
Competitive Supply Chains
This course gives an overview of the issues of Supply Chain management in a wide variety of industries such as groceries, style goods, consumer electronics and services. The impact of shifts from traditional channels through to E-commerce will be emphasised and examined. New initiatives that have been introduced to address these new challenges, such as Vendor Managed Inventory (VMI), Variety Postponement, Cross Docking, Real Options Contracts and Quick Response will be studied and applied both in class and in assignments. Supporting software, such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Supply Chain tools, will also be discussed.
Go to Area Website
Go to Faculty Page
