Business Administration

This course provides students with in-depth learning on managing multinational corporations across various product, business, and geographic markets. Specifically, the course focuses on three central issues that are critical to the successful formulation of corporate strategy: (1) the decisions on which businesses bring resources together inside the company and how they could create value, (2) how the company can grow in different settings through acquisitions, partnerships, or internal development, and (3) how the company manages its business portfolio. Overall, this course highlights the criticality of making decisions about the right pathways to firm growth. It provides theoretical frameworks and guiding principles for analyzing practical problems at the corporate or group level as experienced by managers.

This multidisciplinary course relates basic economic thinking to the real economy, covering the historical developments of economic institutions in the US and Japan as well as global strategies of Japanese corporations such as DeNA, Mercari, Suntory, Uniqlo, Seven Eleven and JR East, etc. The course also introduces related topics of FinTech and economic analysis of Law.. 

The course links share prices or returns to accounting items from the income statement and the balance sheet and in doing so effectively advises standard setters and regulators regarding the value-relevance of accounting information, especially bottom-line earnings and book value of equity. It also advises about the value-relevance of management (performance related) narratives, which often complement the disclosure of the audited income statement and balance sheet. Unlike classical financial statement analysis this course does not attempt to value individual companies. Instead, it analyses large sample evidence generated from regression analysis. It is important to note from the very beginning that this course is based to a large extent on journal articles. The main journals of interest in this course are Accounting Review, Journal of Accounting & Economics, Review of Accounting Studies, European Accounting Review (EAR), and Accounting & Business Research (ABR). This course is unusual in the sense that it is based on journal articles not a textbook.

This course provides a systematic introduction of concepts, theories and practices, with a focus on handling conflict and negotiation. The course content is composed of two intimately related parts. The beginning introduces the nature and types of conflict, mechanism of conflict escalation and de-escalation, and conflict resolution styles. The rest of the class sessions discuss the characteristics of interest-based negotiation and negotiation strategies. Specifically, the course teaches strategies to avoid various cognitive biases in conflict situations and negotiation, the building blocks of negotiation, the difference of distributive versus value-creating negotiation approaches, the strategies of achieving integrative outcomes, building trust and controlling emotions, utilizing power and persuasion, the importance of non-verbal communication in gaining information and ethics. Some topics are also covered in the context of cross-cultural negotiation and computer-mediated negotiation to cater to the need of today’s international business environment. 

This course gives students an understanding of the key topics and contemporary debates in work and employment relations. Students engage with key concepts and theoretical frameworks in the sociology of work and employment relations. They explore what work means to individuals and the various forms it can take. The course recognizes how employees interact with employers and the conflicts that can arise from these interactions. Students examine relevant trends and developments in the world of work, such as gig work, remote working and the impact of technology on work, as well as the "future of work." This prepares students for the practical challenges of managing complex employment relationships in the workplace.  

This course is inquiry-based, interactive, and hands-on, focusing on how to design effective, human centered generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) applications in business contexts. It is suitable for undergraduate students with no technical background. The course builds AI literacy through simulation games developed by the instructor. The core of the course guides students through real-world applications of GenAI across text, code, image, audio, and video. Students gain practical experience using GenAI tools and applying them to solve business problems. The course includes critical discussions on the implications of GenAI, covering issues such as privacy, algorithmic bias, labor impact, job displacement, and ethical design. It helps students consider not only what GenAI can do, but what it should do. From a career perspective, the course equips students to act as effective consultants for AI applications, organizational change, leadership, digital transformation, and sustainability. 

This course provides opportunities to develop proposals for new products and services, using emerging technologies. The class formulates predictive scenarios for strategic decision making, based on the application of the appropriate statistical models. Students apply representation techniques to generate digital graphic reports that will facilitate decision making, using computer tools and visual techniques. The course also distinguishes financing sources, considering their cost, risk and impact on organizations’ financial structure while identifying market needs by obtaining and analyzing primary and secondary multiplatform information. 

The central theme of the course is distribution channel systems for traditional and modern trade, their roles, management constraints, and integration into the marketing strategy. The content includes analysis of dynamic market factors, design and distribution of channels for effective and efficient management distribution networks, and strategic deployment of multi‐channel marketing and omnichannel decisions to gain competitive advantages. The course also covers the roles, behavior of channel members, dimensions of channel power, management of channel conflict, channel incentive programs, coordination of channel relationships, and trade marketing, developing, controlling, and evaluating a distribution channel in consumer and business markets.

This course provides a systematic introduction to the key concepts and theoretical frameworks of tourism psychology. It focuses on the psychological and behavioral characteristics of tourists, tourism practitioners, and destination residents. By integrating theory with case-based practice, students will gain a deeper understanding of psychological mechanisms in tourism and learn how to apply them in areas such as product development, service enhancement, and organizational management.

The course examines analytical and decision making skills in approaching practical and important social and business issues. In the course, students derive solutions or conclusions that require critical thinking, creativity, quantitative analysis, and common sense. Other course topics include: decision traps, quantitative decision models, statistical reasoning, computer tools, data-analysis techniques, and, more importantly, how these decision analysis concepts and tools can be applied in a broad set of social and business problems.