Course Descriptions

CORE Course: The course objective is to offer today's managers effective tools to use comparatively when considering alternative strategies and making decisions. This class is the equivalent of an insiders' perspective to keeping an entity competitive. Traditional cost behavior concepts, cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis and product costing are updated with real world examples and decision cases. New measures for relevant costs and reflective performance reports are prepared with reporting alternatives by segment and transfer pricing. In this era of global competition, continuous improvement, process reengineering and employee empowerment, decision-makers at all levels within the organization can benefit from special tools. This course will provide valuable references for comparative decision-making on multiple levels.

CORE Course: This course is designed to help students better formulate, analyze, and communicate ideas about unstructured business problems, some of which involve multiple functional areas of business (marketing, operations, finance, etc.). A central premise of this course is that critical thinking and communication skills are best learned through repeated cycles of practice, feedback from instructors and peers, reflection prompted by that feedback, and more practice. Students completing the course will demonstrate writing that emphasizes grammar, composition, and rhetoric, as well as mastery of APA citation.

This course focuses on advanced forecasting techniques that are widely used in industry. Firms need to make predictions about future events. Common examples include predicting future demand for a product or asset valuation. Forecasts can be used in a variety of ways such as planning production, determining budgets, allocating resources, hiring staff and employees, etc.

CORE Course - This purpose of this course is to learn to integrate and apply economic and financial principles to decision-making situations. These situations will be presented in the form of case studies and problems in the text. In addition, we will be discussing current issues in finance such as mergers, IPO's, sovereign debt crises, financial markets and institutions, etc. The course emphasizes financial decision-making within the firm using case studies as the primary activity. Topics include financial goals and strategy, financial analysis and forecasting, capital budgeting, capital structure decisions, dividend policy and firm valuation.

CORE Course: This course explores challenges facing modern corporations in organizing activities that span multiple national boundaries and cultures. The course examines the inner workings of International Business from a strategic point of view, including the various challenges of operating in a global environment (cultural, economic, operational, and legal). From expansion of operations to foreign nations to successfully managing overseas operations, it is imperative that students have a better understanding of the micro and macro factors that make management of international businesses distinct from domestic businesses. Through experimental learning, case analysis, and individual and group projects, this course will provide students with an understanding of the process of cross-cultural management and the challenges that they face while working in multicultural environments. Core competencies include self-awareness, managing ambiguity and uncertainty, managing intergroup conflict, and cross-cultural communication.

CORE Course: Prerequisites: Completion of other MBA core classes or in term of graduation. This core course deals with the concept of strategy, in that we will discuss how to identify and choose a superior competitive position, how to analyze a strategic situation, and finally how to create the organizational context to make the chosen strategy work. This course has two major objectives: 1) to explore conceptual frameworks and models which will assist you in analyzing competitive and strategic dilemmas and gain insight into strategic management, 2) to help you acquire practical experience in dealing with strategic issues by extensive case analysis of organizations that are currently operating in the business environment.

CORE Course: This course will help students examine leadership and influence issues that managers face. We will achieve this by engaging students in a variety of activities designed to enhance their understanding of the leadership challenges that confront today's business professionals. The focus of this course will be on leading up, down, and across the organization, recognizing that leadership is not limited to managers. Students will examine various theoretical constructs as a means of becoming more aware of their own leadership styles. In addition, the course will include components on developing individual leadership skills through guest business speakers, cases, readings, projects, and simulations. Among other topics, case studies and group projects will focus on characteristics of effective leaders, power and influence strategies, crisis management, organizational politics and leadership assessment.

CORE Course: Organizational Behavior is devoted to understanding individuals and groups within an organizational context. The field focuses on attributes, processes, behaviors, and outcomes within and between individual, interpersonal group, and organizational levels of analysis in which we will analyze the basic and applied concepts and research findings. Topics include motivation, leadership, teamwork, power, change management, organizational culture, decision-making, and ethics.

This course is designed to develop an understanding of the role of marketing in organizations - not as a department, but as an orientation and basis for managing in a market emphasizing the customer in a competitive environment. The role of integrated marketing management is to help companies better understand customer preferences, link that knowledge to designing appropriate products and services for selected customers, and determine appropriate methods to communicate, to capture, and to deliver value. Successful firms are those that pursue objectives, employ resources, and invest in the future of an organization to consistently satisfy the needs of customers better than competitors. These ideas apply to both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.

This course is designed to introduce IT service systems in a variety of enterprise and service industry settings. The basic IT service methods and the economics of IT service systems will be discussed in the context of delivering customer services value by understanding how to align the delivery of business services with the appropriate technologies. Students will learn about the management of service systems from the basic IT infrastructures and service principles, through case studies which will facilitate the understanding of IT service system design, operations, and management. The reading materials and lectures will integrate IT system concepts, operational strategies, practical experience, and organizational issues.

This course introduces the key concepts and techniques in supply chain management (SCM) that enables firms to better coordinate material and information flows, and non-material activities associated with logistical and marketing processes that occur within and across organizations.

The course discusses and reviews major supply chain challenges and relevant decision-making tools used in the industry. Case studies are used to explore the impact that the supply chain perspective has on business today. Students will manage competing firms in an action-learning simulation. The course teaches planning and execution of supply chains with software such as SAP's, ERP(R3) and Advanced Planning and Optimization (APO).

This course focuses on the transportation and distribution activities that support demand fulfillment. The course also discusses the models and techniques for the analysis of logistics systems as well as the strategic financial outcomes influenced by the logistics decisions.

Basic concepts and processes in purchasing, sourcing and contract management are introduced in this course. Focus is on the proactive and planned analysis of supply markets and the selection of suppliers, with the objective of delivering solutions to meet pre-determined and agreed upon organizational needs.

This course is an introduction financial accounting, including accounting standards, financial statements, and accounting for Healthcare Organizations. The purpose of this course is to familiarize students with financial accounting concepts, terms, and how to prepare and interpret financial statements from a managerial perspective.

This course serves as an introduction to the human resource function within organizations. Designed for those students with limited or no knowledge of human resource management, the course surveys contemporary practices in job analysis, staffing, training, compensation, performance appraisal, health/safety/security, and labor/employee relations.

The purpose of this course is to provide the training health care professionals need to improve the quality of care and service inefficiencies at their organization through projects delivered on time and within budget. At the end of this course, students should be able to develop, execute, and control a basic project plan and develop the capability of supporting business objectives linked to measures of success for a single project. Also the course covers the disciple of project management from a perspective of the healthcare environment by examining the traditional phases of project management: Initiation, Planning, Execution, Control (Change Movement), and Closeout.

This course will offer students the skills and knowledge of negotiation, multi-dimensional problem solving, and meta-leadership as well as conflict analysis, management, intervention and resolution. Through a review of the literature, exercises, and discussion, students will examine the field and explore its application to complex, multi-professional public health and health care settings and issues.