Business Administration

As industries worldwide transition toward sustainable practices, this course provides an introduction to the intersection of sustainability and Industry 4.0. It focuses on the design and development of innovative products and services with the tools to link emerging technologies with ecological responsibility. By combining theoretical foundations with hands-on project work, the course equips students to understand how emerging technologies — including digital modeling, artificial intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), renewable energy, and advanced materials — can be leveraged to address pressing environmental and societal challenges. The course centers on Sustainable Prototype Challenge, in which students working in teams design a forward-looking product or service concepts. Through intensive assignments and workshops, participants apply principles of sustainable development, user-centered design, and technology-driven workflows to create a coherent final project. Deliverables include both a project prospectus and demonstrative materials (e.g., diagrams, mock-ups, or digital prototypes) that communicate the innovation’s environmental, functional, and social contributions, as well as feasibility. Students reinforce their learning through lectures, group critiques, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The course actively integrates perspectives from engineering, business, and design, preparing students to work across disciplines. In addition to gaining technical and creative skills, participants strengthen critical thinking, problem-solving, and communication abilities that are transferable to professional contexts.

This course examines how marketing campaigns are designed, conceptualized and executed digitally. Particular attention is given to techniques unique to digital technologies and the networked nature of social media platforms. Their applications to marketing strategy specifically to do with brand building, target audiences, public relations and communications are covered with an aim to equip students to understand the digital consumer journey.

This course explores the dynamic intersections of influencer marketing and artificial intelligence (AI), equipping students with the insights and skills to navigate these critical aspects of modern marketing. Through this course, students gain an in-depth understanding of influencer culture within both traditional and digital marketing landscapes. Key topics include the role of influencers in digital marketing, strategies for brand-influencer partnerships, online community building, and content creation that resonates across platforms. Students will analyze various types of creative and strategic content, developing the skills to create impactful marketing campaigns.

The course covers the connection between international corporate taxation and sustainability within the frameworks of law, economics, and politics. The course topics include a range of relevant perspectives in an engaging narrative, including political challenges related to tax and sustainability (e.g. initiatives from governments and international organizations) as well as corporate challenges (e.g. how to align corporate strategies with sustainable strategies, and how to communicate tax behavior to interested parties). This is a digital, distance course consisting of a large number of video lectures, quizzes, and the writing of an individual paper.

This course teaches how to manage companies responsibly, taking into consideration the national and international civil, mercantile, tax, intellectual property, labor, and human rights statutory framework.

This highly interactive course explores the fundamentals and nuances of negotiation across a variety of business and intercultural contexts. Students will learn to negotiate effectively through a combination of theory, experiential learning, and real-world cases. The course combines classical models with modern perspectives on behavioral science, cross-cultural dynamics, and power asymmetries. Special emphasis will be placed on negotiation ethics, emotional intelligence, persuasion, and gender in negotiation.

Students will actively participate in role-plays, simulations, and negotiation challenges, with regular reflection and peer feedback. We will also examine high-profile negotiation cases from Spain, the US, and international business (e.g., labor disputes, sports contracts, peace processes). By the end of the course, students will have a toolbox of strategies and a greater self-awareness of their negotiation style.

This course examines the risks to which information systems are exposed and explores preventive measures and corrective actions to address them. Based on the principle that security is everyone’s responsibility, the course takes a managerial rather than a technical approach, as risks to information system security are not limited to the technological risks of IT platforms or networks. They encompass risks related to the company’s organizational structure, work methods, legal and regulatory constraints, personnel, partners, and so on. The course provides the necessary knowledge of methods and tools to actively contribute to various aspects of information system security. Real-world business cases supplement and concretely illustrate the concepts studied. Mastering the terminology specific to information system security is a key objective of the course.

The course is an intermediate finance course that builds upon students' existing knowledge to explore fundamental financial theories underpinning crucial corporate finance decisions. Students address pivotal financial questions such as: How should your business raise capital, and for what purpose? Should capital be sourced through debt or equity investors, and how much debt is optimal? What returns must you generate for your shareholders, and should dividends be distributed? Is it preferable to purchase assets or lease them? What are your business’s short-term cash flow requirements, and how will these needs be financed? These essential questions regularly confront business leaders worldwide. Throughout this ten-week course, students will discover that while some solutions emerge clearly from established financial theories, others rely heavily on strategic judgment due to inherent business uncertainties. 

This course equips students with a various set of analytical skills, computational tools, and research methodologies essential for producing high-quality research in Finance, Management, and Economics. It emphasizes the principles and practices required to conduct rigorous and impactful research, focusing on methods and real-world applications. Unlike traditional courses that provide a broad overview of knowledge, this course dives deeper into selected advanced topics, prioritizing research design and practical implementation. The curriculum introduces cutting-edge methodologies, including but not limited to: Macroeconomics, Continuous-time dynamic contracting problems, Computational methods in economics, Game theory applications in Finance, Causal machine learning, and Regression discontinuity and kink design. A key focus of the course is on the practical application of these methodologies and the development of skills necessary for writing academic research papers. Students receive guidance on crafting a high-quality term paper and are required to use LaTeX for their submissions. By the end of the course, students have the tools and knowledge to conduct empirical research independently and the ability to write and present a scientific paper to a professional standard.

This intermediate business course links the elements of strategic management with value creation by adapting an organizational structure to respond rapidly to changes in the relevant environment of any organization. The class will analyze organizational design components and the impact technology can have on them, using work optimization tools and orientation towards process quality and continuous improvement. 

No prior knowledge is required for this course.