Business Administration

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. This course focuses on the main data mining methods used in knowledge discovery in business employing internal and external data. With an emphasis on data analysis and on the use of a software, special attention is devoted to techniques that help to single out the relationships of interdependence and patterns in business and market research phenomena. Students learn, hands-on, how to organize and analyze market research data. In particular, at the end of the course students are able to: independently run a complete data mining process (from data pre-processing to the interpretation of obtained results); choose the best suited statistical methodology for the problem at hand; to critically interpret empirical results.

The course content is divided as follows:

1. INTRODUCTION: data-analytic thinking, overview of Data Mining, from business problems to Data Mining tasks, the Data Mining process; real-world business challenges.

2. DATA EXPLORATION AND PREPARATION: data objects and attributes type, data matrices and their transformations, data cleaning.

3. STATISTICAL AND DATA MINING SOFTWARE: introduction to SAS; SAS LAB tutorial on data organization  and data preprocessing using real datasets.

4. MULTIDIMENSIONAL DATA ANALYSIS & DIMENSIONALITY REDUCTION: Principal component analysis and its variants (e.g., PCA of ranks); Multiple Correspondence Analysis - categorical pattern detection. Theory and practice with SAS.

5. PROXIMITY MEASURES: distance and similarity for mixed data.

6. CLUSTERING: hierarchical, partitional and hybrid clustering. Understanding the Results of Clustering.

7. PROFILING: deriving typical behavioral segments. 

8. CO-OCCURRENCES AND ASSOCIATIONS: Finding items that go together. Theory and application of main association rules algorithms in SAS.

9. Data Mining SCORING: Theory and practice.

10. Causal ML and Advanced Lab:  causal inference fundamentals; application of causal ML algorithms in the context of business analytics for decision support; evaluate a marketing campaign using causal ML in SAS; targeting and interpreting causal results.

This course examines the core theories and concepts of managing human behavior in organizations. It covers a variety of theories and concepts to provide a foundational understanding of the attributes of individual behavior in organizations, including personality, motivation, decision-making, as well as interpersonal behaviors, including teamwork, power and influence, leadership, and communication. 

Designed for STEM students, this course systematically cultivates career planning capabilities. Beginning with self-assessment, students develop core competencies in time management, leadership, and teamwork through occupational exploration, goal-setting exercises, and decision-making training – enhanced by field visits, alumni panels, and workplace simulations. The curriculum focuses on guiding school-to-workplace transition, strengthening career adaptability, and targeted development of innovation literacy. Integrating theoretical instruction with hands-on practice, it empowers personalized career exploration and planning.

This course addresses the definition of business models and the understanding on how to identify and build existing and innovative business models. The objectives of the course are for students to understand the fundamentals of business models, recognize the strategic importance of business models, identify and differentiate various types of business models, analyze hybrid business models, and examine the relationship between business models and industry lifecycles. 

This course examines capital budgeting techniques, the capital structure decision, the distribution decision and corporate risk management at an advanced level. Topics include: the Modigliani-Miller theorems, the impact of taxes under a classical tax system, the impact of taxes under an imputation tax system, corporate acquisitions and restructuring, hybrid securities as a source of finance, techniques in raising capital.

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. By the end of this course students are able to: master all the necessary tools and knowledge to interpret modern phenomena relative to international economics evolution; understand the role of optimal currency areas and the most important theories on exchange-rate determination.

This course provides all necessary tools and knowledge to interpret modern phenomena relative to international economics evolution. The focus of the course is on monetary aspects of international economics. In particular, we study the role of optimal currency areas and the most important theories on exchange-rate determination. Moreover, attention is devoted to the analysis of balance of payment crisis as a mechanism derived from the internal economic policy contradiction of a given country. Therefore, what is going to be the optimal exchange-rate regime? How an inadequate choice about exchange-rate regime will translate into a Balance of Payment Crisis?

This course develops an appreciation of both theoretical and practical conceptions of public relations. Although examples are drawn primarily from Swedish, UK, and US experience, students are invited to consider public relations in a broader transnational and global context. Emphasis is placed on understanding the changing nature of the discipline, including those driven by the increasing importance of digital platforms and channels. The course develops the student’s ability to consider public relations as a strategic activity and builds familiarity with the public relations toolkit. The range of tactical devices employed for delivering organizational messages and engaging with a range of stakeholder groups. This includes developing techniques for measuring and evaluating the effectiveness of such activity. As well as critically examining the reality of what is sometimes described as the “professional project” students are encouraged to consider ethical issues surrounding public relations activity, including power imbalances and tensions around truth, persuasion, authenticity, transparency and legitimacy.

This course provides an overview of the accounting techniques used by managers in the areas of planning, directing, controlling, and decision-making. Students learn cost concepts, product costing systems, budgeting, and performance evaluation tools such as the balanced scorecard. The course emphasizes developing analytical skills to interpret and apply cost accounting information for effective management decisions.

The primary objective of this course is to build the foundation of cost and managerial accounting, which provides information that is essential for management’s strategic planning and decisions. Unlike financial accounting, which is intended for external parties, cost and managerial accounting is primarily designed for internal management and staff. Therefore, this course is designed to help you (1) develop the necessary skills and knowledge to prepare reports essential for management decisions and (2) understand the usefulness and limitations of cost and managerial accounting information.

The course is designed to introduce students to the latest developments in behavioral finance and to broaden their understanding of modern finance. Behavioral finance introduces psychological insights and more realistic assumptions to guide and advance the theory of financial markets. We will examine how behavioral finance complements traditional paradigms and study trading behavior, asset price dynamics, and corporate financial decisions in a behavioral context.