Business Administration

Semiconductors are vital to nearly every aspect of modern life. Semiconductor integrated circuits (ICs, chips) and materials play a crucial role in industries such as communication, information technology, transportation, healthcare, defense, aerospace, and consumer electronics. The COVID-19 global pandemic in the last few years triggered an unprecedented surge in demand for semiconductor products. However, factory shutdowns and city lock-downs disrupted the global semiconductor supply chain, and as a result, a severe shortage in semiconductor chips occurred. It halted automobile production and caused a significant delivery delay of electronic products necessary for our daily life during the pandemic. This chip shortage crisis exposed the vulnerability of the global supply chain. 

This intensive course provides an introduction to the semiconductor industry in Taiwan and Asia. The course provides an overview of the industry; develops a fundamental understanding of its supply chain and key players, and explores the impacts of the Creating Helpful Incentives to Prodcue Semiconductors (CHIPS) Acts of the U.S. and geopolitical factors.
 

This course covers general concepts about auditing, auditing standards, major components of assurance services and audit profession, Code of Ethics for auditors, audit quality management, audit planning, errors and fraud, assessment of audit risks and related audit strategies, materiality, tests of financial reporting controls, audit sampling, tests of control and substantive tests of major cycles and accounts, critical applications of a questioning mindset and evaluations of reasonable alternatives to reach well-reasoned conclusions and to form an opinion in the auditor's report. Prerequisite: Intermediate Accounting 1 and 2.

This course reviews international contextual influences and strategic factors that shape organizations and managerial practices across different cultural settings, and highlights cases concerning China, Japan and Korea (CJK).  

The course develops skills in reviewing and determining methods for critiquing and recommending solutions for businesses through case studies.  By the end of the course, participants are expected to: 

1. Know the relationship between strategic and structural aspects of comparative international business organizations; 

2. Analyze and identify the various socio-economic and cultural influences on international organization issues; and, 

3. Demonstrate an understanding and ability to apply concepts and find solutions to issues identified. 

This is an integrative and interdisciplinary course, which takes a general management perspective. It views the firm as a whole, and examines how policies in each functional area (such as accounting, economics, finance, marketing, and organizational behavior) are integrated into an overall competitive strategy. The course develops a general management point of view. This point of view is the best vantage point for making decisions that lead to sustainable business performance. The key strategic business decisions of concern involve determining organizational purpose to evolving opportunities, creating competitive advantages, choosing competitive strategies, securing and defending sustainable market positions, and allocating critical resources over long periods. Decisions such as these can only be made effectively by viewing a firm holistically, and over the long term. 

This course introduces the main kinds of derivatives, with an emphasis on pricing and hedging issues, and on how investors and corporations can use these instruments in practice. The main contents of the course are: introduction to financial derivatives; forwards, futures, and swaps (institutional apsects, pricing, hedging); options (institutional aspects, pricing, hedging); and basics of credit risk and credit derivatives. Prerequisites: a solid understanding of financial economics; familiarity with the mathematics of interest rates (discounting/compounding, equivalence of rates at different maturities), with basic statistics (expected values, standard deviation and variance, ordinary least squares), and calculus (limits, differentials, differentiation, Taylor expansions, partial differentiation, optimization, basic integration). 

This course introduces students to the fundamental concepts, principles, and techniques of financial accounting and reporting for students who are not specialists in accounting. It takes a conceptual and practical approach which emphasizes general principles and methods in order to allow these concepts to be applied to specific problems and issues in accounting and the wider business/social environment. The course assumes no background knowledge in accounting.

This course covers the world of luxury fashion from a brand management perspective. Topics include the nature of luxury, brand promise, and brand engagement. The course also discusses how global market dynamics, digital transformation, and customer expectation shifts shape the future of luxury fashion.  

Students gain a deep understanding of how luxury fashion brands differentiate themselves from mass market brands as well as strategic brand management skills. 

This course introduces key concepts of the service-dominant logic of business on an international scale. Focusing on themes such as co-production, service leadership, and service competition, the course familiarize students with current academic theories, while frequent guest speakers emphasize how these are applied in practice across the private, public, and Third sector, and across developed and emerging countries. The course is an essential asset for anyone planning a career in service industries, with relevance for consulting, retail, healthcare, hospitality, the arts, or financial services. The course also introduces the role of services in development, drawing from global case studies.