University of Commerce Luigi Bocconi

This course focuses on organization theories, with the aim of strengthening the analytical skills of the participants and enabling them to assess peoples' behavior in work environments, organizations’ forms and structures and the root causes of their performance. This is a highly useful skill to cultivate for a wide variety of managerial roles and positions (marketing, operations, HR, finance & accounting, etc.). It is indispensable for working in a start-up or in a family business, for managing a company, consulting, auditing, and even investment banking. This course includes a Group Field Project (GFP) with the aim of giving the opportunity to apply theory to reality and, in particular, to real organizations. Each group will find an interesting company or other type of organization and analyze it from an organizational frame, using the concepts and the models that are presented during the course. 

This course explores human rights as embedded in specific historical circumstances, and looks at their codification in international law as the product of heated political debates. The first part of the course examines the topic from a historical perspective. Students trace the genealogy of the concept paying particular attention to its continuity or discontinuity with respect to the notion of natural law, and focus on the birth of the “human rights regime.” The second part of the course involves the examination of specific case studies. In the third and final part of the course students look at critical readings of human rights as possibly an instrument for “Western hegemony,” or as inadequate in other ways.

This course focuses on understanding how the interconnected world economy and the global economy emerged historically and how globalization transformed economies and societies around the world. The course learns that globalization has not been a one-way street and that modern history witnessed periods of both increasing and diminishing globalization. The course provides students with the tools for understanding economic and social change in a historical and global perspective. The teaching material helps students develop critical thinking and narrative skills. The course examines how the global economy emerged in the past and how globalization transformed macro regions of the world. The first part of the course traces the connection between western expansion and the rise of the global economy from the 16th to 19th centuries and explains what factors - social, cultural, and technological - limited early globalization. The course studies how growing prosperity in Europe compared with the development of other world regions. The second part of the course discusses globalization and deglobalization in the industrial age and the shifts of global economic power they brought about. The course discusses modern economic history in a global context and focuses mainly on non-European regions. 

Why are some countries rich while others are poor? Since the publication of the WEALTH OF NATIONS by Adam Smith, the sources of global inequality have been a key subject in economics. As Robert Lucas has famously claimed, once we start thinking about them, "it is hard to think about anything else." This makes the study of economic growth and development over the long run relevant for economics and the social sciences alike. Economic history introduces tools and methods of describing and analyzing growth and development and it develops critical thinking by demonstrating both the potential and limitations of economic theory in explaining economic change in the real world. The course consists of an overview of Western economic development from the early modern period, ca. 1500, to the present. The course focuses on the drivers of industrialization and of increased prosperity in the Western world and on the historical origins of the disparity in the wealth of nations today. The course is organized in two parts. The first part discusses the drivers of long-run development: the commercial, agricultural, and industrial revolutions, the role of institutions, and the origins of globalization. The second part illustrates the impact of major shocks on economic development in the 20th century: the World Wars, the Great Depression, and the challenges of the new globalization since the 1970s.

The course offers a panoramic view of the evolution of economic ideas from classical political economy to the recent developments in macroeconomic and microeconomic theory. The first part of the course reviews the Great Crisis and classical political economy and the early history of microeconomics such as the Marginal Revolution, the Ordinal Revolution, and the birth of game theory. The second part of the course reviews Keynesianism, monetarism, and new classical macroeconomics and beyond with a focus on macroeconomics before Keynes, the Great Depression and Keynesianism, the Great Inflation, and the Great Crisis and clashing approaches. The third part of the course reviews the recent history of microeconomics, the axiomatization of utility theory, the theory of risky decisions, and the rise of behavioral economics. Previous exposure to first-year undergraduate macroeconomic and microeconomic courses is necessary and compulsory as a prerequisite.

The aim of the course is to equip participants with toolkits to develop strategies for managerial problems in the context of marketing communications. The different modules of the program introduce the participants to the theoretical models, methods and techniques with the aim to: 1) develop a communication strategy; 2) effectively and synergistically manage the various tools of the communication mix; and 3) monitor and measure the performance of the initiatives developed. In addition to the traditional marketing communication channels, the course also introduces  the emerging online marketing communication channels to deal with changing media consumption habits of consumers. Although the course addresses marketing communication from a managerial perspective, it also offers students critical tools for evaluating the ethical aspects of communication and its undesirable consequences on individuals and society. Finally, the course covers the contribution of communication to corporate social responsibility and cause-related marketing initiatives and to the non-profit world.

The course focuses on the long-term economic development of Western societies, exploring the factors leading to the pre-eminence that they acquired over other world areas. Concepts and theories from the social sciences are used as a starting point for understanding the development of real economies in their complex social, political, and cultural contexts. Although the course focuses on the West (Europe and northern America), the developments which took place elsewhere are also considered. The introductory part of the course focuses on the preindustrial period, and introduces the theoretical framework of the "Great Divergence" (leading to the pre-eminence of the West over the East) and "Little Divergence" (leading to the pre-eminence of northern over southern Europe) to understand the emergence of key economic and political hierarchies between different world areas. The Industrial Revolution which took place in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries constitutes the core of the course. The paths to industrialization and modernization followed by other world areas are also explored. The final part of the course covers the period going from the so-called "first Globalization" (1870-1914) until today. The course discusses fundamental knowledge about the long-term economic and social developments that gave origin to the contemporary globalized and highly-interconnected (but also highly unequal) world.

This course explores the decisions that executives in the creative industries have to make in order to carve competitive positioning and ensure long-term sustainability for their companies. The schedule is organized into four modules with the goal to help students develop an analytic toolkit for understanding strategic issues and hone their ability to structure complex business problems and make decisions in lack of complete information. The modules are: 1) formulation of competitive strategy for a given business of a firm (how to play in relation to the external and internal environments and the changes both constantly undergo); 2) developing an understanding on how multi-business firms determine the scope of their activities (where to play in terms of product/customer segments, geographies and value chains); 3) operations management and its strategic centrality to cope with constant changes in customer preferences, networks of supply and demand, and developments in technology; and 4) analyzing strategic decisions that are specific of and key to current competitive landscapes in the creative fields. The ultimate objective of the course is to provide students with a coherent theoretical framework useful to the stimulation and development of their strategic decision-making in different situations. Prerequisite: students should be familiar with the fundamentals of management and microeconomics.