Business Administration

Social Entrepreneurship is a rapidly growing area in Ireland and internationally, as businesses can no longer operate in isolation from social, environmental and political challenges.  When considering climate change trends, economic inequality, and political instability, arguably, those challenges, are existential and urgent. This course develops a critical awareness of major issues, opportunities, and problems associated with social entrepreneurship in Ireland and internationally. Students examine the theoretical underpinnings of social entrepreneurship and social venture development and analyze patterns of social entrepreneurial behavior. Students work with theory, cases, and their own social entrepreneurial projects to identify how social entrepreneurship can respond to and even drive social-economic-political change.

The course develops a sufficient understanding of fundamental financial accounting concepts, terminology, and techniques in order to comprehend typical corporate financial statements provided in annual reports and apply accounting knowledge to business decision-making. 

This course explores the concept of global sustainability including limitations and challenges, economic growth and technology, globalization and fragmentation of production processes, population and inequalities, and national and international economic and political instruments.

This course focuses on the challenging task of organic growth and is intended to train future CEOs in specific skills to navigate and grow their enterprises into the future. Growth is the only thing that all types of firms -- start-ups, small, medium, large, family-businesses, non-profits -- have in common, but how they go about achieving growth could be very different. There are only two ways to grow an enterprise: M&A and Organic. Given a lot of resources and money, anyone can go buy another company. However, with organic growth—to create something from nothing and scale it—is much more difficult.

This is a survey course on operations management in manufacturing and service organizations. Operations management mainly deals with the processes of value creation and delivery for customer satisfaction, and plays a key role in sustaining competitive advantage in dynamic marketplaces. This course covers various strategic and tactical decisions in the field of operations management, and introduces basics of supply chain management. 

This course introduces students to the key findings and theories concerning how people think, feel, and behave in organizations. It is equally relevant to students wishing to gain an understanding of business psychology at the university level as it is to students keen on developing hands-on skills that can be applied in organizational settings. The course focuses on topics such as motivation, negotiations, group and network dynamics, social status, influence, and individual personality. The course features interactive lectures, research exercises, and experiential activities, including individual negotiations, group problem-solving, and using data analysis to make strategic business decisions.

As innovation is now the most important driver of competitive success, practitioners and scholars have raced to understand the nature and the process of innovation. This course provides a strategic framework for managing innovation. Specifically, attention is paid to the dynamics of innovation, formulation and implementation of technological innovation strategy, and the contexts in which innovation contributes to competitive advantage are highlighted. Texts: Melissa Schilling (2010) Strategic Management of Technological Innovation; Harvard Business School cases; and various articles. Assessment: group presentation (HBR articles) (10%); group presentation (term project) (25%), case write-ups (15%), class participation (10%), midterm and final exams (40%).