Business Administration

This course goes beyond the fundamentals of marketing emphasizing the concepts, theories, and techniques applied to the “Made in Italy” phenomenon, emblematic of superlative quality. The course explores three key areas: 1) Basis of communication, public relations, and marketing; 2) “Made in Italy”: concept, its evolution and what means for Italy from economic and social point of view; and 3) marketing and advertising approaches of Italian companies pursuing “Made in Italy”. A focus is on the industries of food and cuisine, fashion, and other areas of design. The course explores the appeal of “Made in Italy” as a global brand and the marketing of “Italian Style” throughout the world. Since a flow of expertise across time and disciplines seems to distinguish “Made in Italy,” the course aims to give a way to connect the latter to patterns of continuity and change in Italian society and to examine how the "Made in Italy" phenomenon has impacted the country. An additional concentration is on the business aspect of the label, in particular, on marketing, branding, and consumer behavior seen from both an Italian and international perspective.

This course focuses on the main theoretical and empirical tools to create, develop, and implement a business project in a digital economy.

This course examines principles of marketing with an emphasis on decision making. The core concepts include defining customer needs; analyzing markets; target marketing; planning and techniques; and marketing mix strategies. Specific attention is placed on strategic management principles that are pertinent to the marketing management process.

This course presents the basic principles of market research to provide understanding of the basic content and basic characteristics of market research in marketing communication activities, and lays a good foundation for further learning the marketing theory and skills of advertising and public relations. The course also discusses the relationship between the various links of market research and the inherent rules of those activities; the general situation and latest developments of domestic and international market survey activities and theories, and the reality, theory and experience of domestic and international market surveys; and the link between theory and practice and the basic principles and methods of preliminary investigation, planning and effect measurement of marketing communication activities.

This course offers a study of knowledge management, defined as the systematic, explicit, and deliberate acquisition, storage, and application of organizational knowledge, aimed at maximizing organizations' return on knowledge assets. The course discusses topics including the acquisition, selection, generation, internalization, and externalization of knowledge; how knowledge can be used effectively in specific environments; the role of information technology; and the challenges associated with the implementation of knowledge management. The course focuses on a fundamental question, “how can we manage knowledge?” The course addresses this question through the use of academic and business press readings and a diverse set of company cases. Students are evaluated by their participation and a written exam.

This course is a study of human resources management and its effect on organizational success. It reviews the principles of human resource management, the management of employees for competitive advantage, and the policies of recruitment, retention, and motivation of human resources. Topics of study include: primary functions of the HR department; internal and external alignment; workforce segmentation; job design and job description; workforce planning; recruitment and selection; training and development; performance appraisal; compensation; career incentives; and international human resource management. NOTE: This course is the same as BUS A 105, but taught in English.

The course provides the technical skills for implementing financial models with Excel including array, financial, and statistical functions. Students are equipped with the basic operational tools to understand financial markets and employ the modelling abilities developed via sample applications to build their own models. Coursework mainly focuses on functions already embedded in the worksheet as well as on procedures designed to solve specific problems. The course concentrates on the application of several theoretical models for financial valuation, optimal portfolio choice, and performance evaluation. Topics covered include: mean-variance portfolio choice, efficient frontier with and without short selling constraints, and parameter uncertainty; bonds: duration, convexity, immunization, and the term structure of interest rates; stocks: CAPM, beta estimation, and the security market line; introduction to APT and multifactor models; binomial model, lognormal distribution, and Black-Scholes model; and event study and style analysis. The course requires students have an intermediate knowledge of Excel as a prerequisite.

This course focuses on organization theories, with the aim of strengthening the analytical skills of the participants and enabling them to assess peoples' behavior in work environments, organizations’ forms and structures and the root causes of their performance. This is a highly useful skill to cultivate for a wide variety of managerial roles and positions (marketing, operations, HR, finance & accounting, etc.). It is indispensable for working in a start-up or in a family business, for managing a company, consulting, auditing, and even investment banking. This course includes a Group Field Project (GFP) with the aim of giving the opportunity to apply theory to reality and, in particular, to real organizations. Each group will find an interesting company or other type of organization and analyze it from an organizational frame, using the concepts and the models that are presented during the course.