Business Administration

This course provides students with a deep understanding of how firms develop and sustain a competitive edge. By engaging with real-world case studies, students learn the key concepts and theories in the field, and how they can be used to interpret and evaluate business situations. Paying special attention to the factors that explain why some firms perform better, students understand the drivers of competitive advantage both in the short and long term.

This course offers a basic introduction to business administration including broad areas within this topic such as: firm strategy; financial management; organization and human resource management; production management; marketing decisions.

This course explores customer values and buying behavior from an innovative perspective. It also analyzes the development of the industry and the evolution of competition in marketing, as well as corporate social responsibility and sustainable development of an enterprise. Through the course, students learn to make scientific and creative marketing strategies to maintain and develop customer relations and their resources.

This course takes a holistic approach in defining the critical issues facing a firm by thinking critically, strategically and creatively. In doing so, students assume the role of a CEO through individual and team assignments, and learn to identify and critically analyze complex managerial challenges and opportunities and solve business problems in novel ways. The overarching theme of strategy literature is: Why are some firms more successful than others? In doing so, this course considers the following three fundamental questions: (1) Where do firms compete?; (2) What unique values do they bring to the markets?, and (3) What determines sustainable profitability? This course discusses these questions in the context of organization, its strategy, and its external environment. 

This course examines the distinctive character of innovation in the public services; the ways in which different sectors participate in public service innovation and facilitate social change; and the challenges and opportunities for organizations to enable and drive innovation and change to improve public outcomes. 

This course provides an introduction to the most important aspects of corporate finance. The objective is to acquire the essential skills necessary to actively deal with the corporate finance activities of an internationally operating firm. The course explores both investing and financing decisions, focusing on their role in the creation of shareholder value. The course covers four main parts. The first part covered is the value of a firm, including financial instruments, valuation concepts, and decision rules. The second part is risk and return, including theory, empirical evidence, and applications to capital budgeting. The third part of the course is financing decisions and market efficiency. The fourth part of the course is payout policy, capital structure, and valuation. Topics covered include: finance and the financial manager; valuing bonds and common stocks; NPV and investment decisions; risk, return and the opportunity cost of capital; capital budgeting and risk; efficient markets and behavioral finance; payout policy, debt policy, and capital structure; financing and valuation. Students attending this course should be familiar with the basics of mathematics, statistics, financial mathematics, accounting, and financial markets and institutions. In particular, students should have reasonable knowledge of the basics in financial mathematics such as the time value of money, annuities, and perpetuities; basics in statistics such as probabilities, variances/covariances, and ordinary least squares; basics in accounting such as being able to read information contained in balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements.