Business Administration

This course provides students with knowledge and tools to analyze and understand marketing practices across national borders. Major topics include an overview of international marketing; cultural and political implications of target market selection; marketing mix planning, and execution issues in a global environment.  

This course provides an introduction to finance. The course starts with a brief discussion of the functions of financial systems, an overview of existing financial assets, financial intermediaries and markets, and an introduction to firm types and firms’ financial statements. The first part of the course deals with the time value of money and its applications: understanding interest rates and valuing bonds. The second part addresses investment decisions by firms and explains the basics of project and firm valuation. The course then introduces the notions of risky assets, risky returns, and risk aversion and highlights the benefits of diversification. It presents the foundations of portfolio theory and the central model of equilibrium asset pricing, the Capital Asset Pricing Model, before highlighting some of their important applications. The last part of the course discusses the efficient market hypothesis and the contending theories of behavioral finance. Basic knowledge of probability and statistics is a prerequisite for the course.

The course Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practices introduces students to a range of topics in the field of entrepreneurship and links both entrepreneurial theory as well as practice. Critical questions like who, why, when, and where start-ups embark on their entrepreneurial journey, are covered during this course. The course seeks to introduce the students to the vast literature about entrepreneurship and business start-ups and it challenges students to connect this literature to actual cases. The course covers aspects like entrepreneurial competences, regional eco-systems, opportunity recognition, appropriation, female and minority entrepreneurship, entrepreneurial success, etc. From a more practical standpoint, it explores how to put together an entrepreneurial team, develop approaches for evaluating the market reception, and discover the value creation potential of one’s venture idea.

This course provides a study of the nature, form, and scope of international business including key concepts and theories. It examines management strategies concerning production, marketing, human resource, and finance in an international context. Other topics include foreign environment and major international business activities, such as exporting, direct investment, licensing, and other contractual arrangements. The course involves hands-on practice with a number of critical skills such as case analysis, class experiential exercises, optional field trip to China, and professional business and dining etiquette workshop. 

The course focuses on the application of techniques in the area of Operations Management. Covered topics include forecasting, material requirements planning, routing, and scheduling of assembly lines. Addressing these topics, several quantitative techniques (mostly heuristics and metaheuristics) that have shown to be successful in these areas are applied to examples and exercises. The course combines cases, exercises, and discussions, facilitated by your tutor and the students themselves. Prerequisites for this course are basic knowledge of the role and scope of operations management within business; advanced mathematical skills; ability to understand quantitative models and concepts and the application of such models and concepts; moderate level of understanding of simulation; moderate level of knowledge concerning linear programming.