University of Commerce Luigi Bocconi

This course builds a comprehensive understanding of what it means to do business in China and with Chinese corporations. The course offers in-depth knowledge of the specific incentives and constraints defined by China’s unique political, economic, and legal business environment. Building on this macro-framework, the course then continues to explore a variety of different kinds of organizations (ranging from state-owned firms to private and foreign firms) and their distinctive characteristics of business management. The course takes a multi-layered, institutional approach that links firm level strategies in a variety of different organizational forms with the embedding macro-environment and coordination mechanisms at the meso-level. The course consists of three modules: 1)The Macro embeddedness of business in China; 2) Market and non-market behavior; 3) Firm strategies. 

Consultants offer their professional advice to client organizations by leveraging their knowhow in the fields of management. Consultants often assist clients in the change process, and in some cases act as key characters in the implementation phase. Today, more than in the past, consultancy has become a viable professional development alternative, typically offered to young students from graduate or undergraduate degrees. The course focuses on the process side of the relationship between clients and consultants. The course also deals with the characteristics of the industry and with some key features of the profession. 

This course discusses insights into sustainable corporate communication in the digital age, and stakeholder relations from a sustainability perspective. The course analyzes and evaluates how business environment and sustainability issues affect corporate communication, how companies engage in the best practice of sustainability and corporate communication, and how companies foster stakeholder trust and relationships. Knowledge from this course may be applied to case studies to understand sustainability and corporate communication in the real life. This course equips students who are interested in ESG with skills on sustainability and corporate communication to help them become future leaders of sustainable sectors, industries or companies. 

This course focuses on the key issues in contemporary international relations., with the goal of learning the concepts and theories of IR useful to making sense of contemporary debates and developments in international politics. Focus is on the study of current events and the recent history that has shaped the international system, with specific attention devoted to foreign policy stances of big powers (the United States, China, and Russia), and to two topical international actors (the European Union and the United Nations). The second part of the course studies big trends and on-going international crises, including the rise of the Global South, the Ukraine War, and the Israel-Hamas conflict. This is followed by exploration of the four "Global challenges": energy security and climate change; migration; Africa's development; and digitalization and cybersecurity. 

This course (1) enhances students’ theoretical understanding of consumers and their decision-making processes and (2) provides students with the basic skills necessary to conduct experiments that allow them to get insights into these processes in a marketing context. The course is structured into three components: (1) the course discusses theories from pertinent literature in behavioral economics, psychology, and marketing that provide an understanding of how consumers make judgments and decisions and the factors influencing them; (2) the course examines how to use experimental research to inform and improve marketing decisions; that is, how to pose relevant research questions, design experiments and interpret the results and (3) students apply the acquired theoretical knowledge and methodological skills hands-on to solve a real-world marketing problems. 

This course provides a psychological foundation for understanding consumer behavior and marketing strategy. The course builds from current psychological theory to understand recent marketing applications. Topics include perception, attention, memory, language, categorization, creativity, social cognition, and personality, and their application to product design, marketing communications, and brand management. Students on this course learn: how the basic principles of psychology constrain and predict consumer perceptions and preferences; how psychological models can be used to develop effective marketing strategies and campaigns. Topics covered in this course include: perception and sensory marketing; perceiving similarity and differentiation; consumer memory; the language of marketing communication; marketing emotions; creative consumption; brand personality; social aspects of consumption. Prerequisites for this course include an introductory marketing course.
 

This course examines how to make decisions in business by leveraging a structured approach based on theorizing about possible future scenarios and implementing data-driven actions. The first part focuses on theoretical aspects of decision-making, while the second part focuses on data-driven analysis and interpretation of data from a business point of view. Through concrete and practical applications, students learn how to diagnose business problems, offer appropriate solutions, and generate innovative opportunities. The course focuses on the best practices that a firm can adopt to make rational decisions, namely: a structured course of action to make more rational decisions; a language to describe decisions and distinguish strategies, scenarios, and outcomes; models and statistical techniques; structured descriptive statistics; linear regression model; applications; and real cases using statistical software (Stata).

This course examines a new topic in modern art each time it is offered. Visit the Bocconi University course catalog for the current course topic. In spring 2023-24, the course focused on the visual representation of the human body in art. The course studies the visual representations of the human body in many guises: aesthetic, political, social, cultural, and erotic among others. It analyses the different strategies that artists deployed to develop rhetorics of the body both physical and emotional. This course proposes a dynamic approach of the body in art considered as a focus of a composition, an object of investigation, a locus of gender and racial understanding, a vehicle for physical and emotional experience, the cornerstone of our creative power and ability.  Students learn to visually and historically analyze works of art from various periods, the human body being the basis of visual representations and an object of aesthetic investigation; understand and be able to deploy in their own words major theoretical approaches used to interpret works of art; discuss the relationships between the real and the represented body through works of art conceived as the occasion, the site, and the condition of a process of historical, social and cultural construction.  The course includes visits to local museums, namely the Pinacoteca di Brera and the Museo Poldi-Pezzoli.

The course covers the basics of corporate finance from a big picture and value enhancing perspective. The course has three main objectives: (1) Develop an understanding of the tools that are used to value investment projects and companies (valuation); (2) Understand the basic issues involved in how firms should raise funds for their investments (financing); (3) Evaluate how investment and financing decisions are related. Emphasis is placed on applying the theoretical framework of corporate finance to real world problems. Prerequisites: Understanding of basic economic and statistical concepts, familiarity with time value of money, financial statements analysis, discounted cash flow analysis, risk-return trade-off, and diversification.

By combining the study of European economic history and the study of the history of economic thought, the course addresses the major economic, industrial, and financial transformations in the Early Modern and Modern periods in relation to their socio-cultural, political, and intellectual contexts. The module on the history of economic thought puts economic theory in historical perspective, by showing the variety of conceptual and interpretative frameworks through which major authors have approached basic economic issues. The course provides direct access to the main sources in the modern history of economic thought by encouraging students to question the very foundations of economic thought, in particular the notions of need, exchange, division of labor, and the market. By drawing attention to the socio-cultural, political, and intellectual contexts in which economic change occurs, the module on economy history does not address the economic transformation of European societies as the history of consecutive technological, industrial, and financial innovations. The course critically analyzes major economic changes in relation to the main political, intellectual, and socio-cultural turning points of modernity. The module examines European history in a global perspective. Overall, the course enhances students’ historical awareness, instills a sense of intellectual curiosity in them, and helps them develop their critical voice.