Business Administration

This course is part of the Laurea Magistrale degree program and is intended for advanced level students. Enrollment is by permission of the instructor. This course explores market design, auctions, negotiation strategies, and behavioral economics with a focus on real-world applications and practical experiments. Students gain insights into how markets function, learn negotiation techniques, and analyze human behavior in economic decision-making through hands-on experiments and class discussions. At the course completion, they are able to confront real-world business challenges with confidence and insight, armed with a robust skill set that combines theory, practice, and the science of human behavior.

Students learn about different auction types, their theoretical foundations, and practical implementations. Negotiations, another crucial component of market interactions, involve discussions to reach mutually acceptable agreements. The course covers various negotiation techniques and strategies to improve outcomes. Understanding market design, auctions, and negotiations is crucial for ensuring efficient and fair resource allocation, making strategic business decisions, and developing effective negotiation skills. Behavioral economics provides insights into human decision-making, helping to predict and influence behavior in market settings. This knowledge is vital for professionals in business and economics, policymakers, and individuals aiming to improve their negotiation skills and influence market dynamics. By the end of the course, students possess a robust skill set combining theory, practical applications, and behavioral insights, enabling them to confidently tackle real-world business challenges.

Topics covered in the lessons include: market design, auction theory, applications of auction theory, negotiation and bargaining, behavioral economics, cognitive biases and heuristics, behavioral economics in market design, real world applications and case studies. Prerequisite Knowledge: To successfully complete this course, students should have a foundational understanding of microeconomics, including concepts such as supply and demand, market equilibrium, and basic game theory. Prior coursework in introductory economics or business studies will help in grasping the more advanced topics covered in market design, auctions, and negotiation strategies. Additionally, an interest in behavioral economics and a willingness to engage in hands-on experiments and class discussions will enhance the learning experience.

This course studies factors that drive entrepreneurs and the entrepreneurial process. The course starts by exploring the process dynamics of entrepreneurial activity.  Then explores the origins of entrepreneurial opportunity, reviewing how entrepreneurs screen and develop the opportunities that they discover, and unravel how entrepreneurs seek to appropriate the returns from their enterprising behavior and benefit from or contribute to entrepreneurial networks and ecosystems. Focus is placed on new venture gestation: the initial stages of the process that may result in a new company to emerge. Throughout the course, explore how entrepreneurs not only rely on generic business management principles, but also how they cope with the uncertainty, risk, scarcity of time, capital and other resources that is inherent to all entrepreneurial venturing. Prerequisites SSC1005 Introduction to Psychology or SSC1029 Sociological Perspectives or SSC1027 Principles of Economics or a first-year undergraduate business course.

Business Simulation Game aims to help students develop management decision-making skills without running real-world risks. Students build teams to run businesses in the computer-simulated competitive market. They make various top management decisions for sequential periods, and the performance is evaluated based on multiple indices. The team that achieves the best overall performance will win the game! Also, top performers will get chance to participate the National Competition.

This course offers a study of supply chain management-- how products get from raw materials into the hands of customers. It discusses concepts of procurement, logistics, inventory control, and distribution strategies from a practical standpoint.

This course offers a study of the multifaceted aspects of conducting business across borders and within diverse cultural, economic, and geopolitical environments. Topics include: global business environments; international market entry strategies; cross-cultural management; global trade; multinational business strategies; international trade and regulatory compliance.

This course examines the topic of branding through the lens of Barcelona. It focuses on how Barcelona strategically crafted its brand identity and global image to become a beacon of innovation and culture. The course includes field trips to iconic landmarks, business, and cultural hubs in the city to complement class topics.

This course equips students with a deep understanding of the key factors that contribute to success when working in Japan-related global organizations. It explores how foreign employees can build trust; influence decision-making, and achieve long-term career goals. By analyzing working styles through established frameworks, the class gains insights into the complexities of Japanese business culture and its evolving landscape. Course goals include developing a deep understanding of Japanese workplace culture; decision-making and communication styles in global organizations; and building effective communication, leadership, and negotiation skills tailored for Japan-related global workplaces.

This course focuses on the importance of transforming large volumes of data into relevant information for decision-making and business development for companies and individuals. It offers a study of the basic techniques of preprocessing and visualization of data, working with missing and atypical data, use of dimension reduction techniques, methods of supervised learning in regression and their usefulness in prediction problems, distinguishing between linear and non-linear models, and model selection methods.

Widely used in corporate employee training, the Emotional Intelligence Quotient (EQ), which has been developed since 1990, seeks to understand and improve emotional abilities for leadership in organizations and enhances the effectiveness of career design. This course is designed to deepen students' understanding of how to develop their careers in a diversified society and organizations through lectures with guest speakers who have worked different careers. The program is structured as a practical education program for students to internalize through reality-based learning and exercises a series of employment-related events such as recruitment, training, evaluation, compensation, retirement, and post-employment career, which occur in companies and various social organizations.

 

The course provides an opportunity to complete an applied business project that demonstrates an understanding of key concepts, tools, and trends in strategy, while drawing on knowledge from individual majors. It emphasizes critical and creative thinking to evaluate academic and market sources and to propose solutions to real-world business problems. The course also develops professional skills through practice in delivering presentations and writing business-quality reports.