Business Administration

The course will introduce you to concepts and techniques related to the design, planning, control, and improvement of supply chains and supply chain operations. More specifically, the course attempts to:

• Make you conversant in the language of supply chain management and expand your confidence in these areas.
• Allow you to see the role of supply chain management in the overall strategy and performance of the firm by providing a conceptual, strategic view of supply chain design and operations.
• Analyze the underlying issues and trade-offs between the sourcing of raw materials, manufacturing, storage, transportation of products, and the services required to fulfill customer expectations and the metrics of the firm.
• Provide you with quantitative and qualitative tools to identify, analyze, and manage supply chain operations and issues.

Entrepreneurial finance lies at the intersection of finance and entrepreneurship - two vastly different yet interconnected worlds. This course focuses on the study of financing young, innovative, growth-oriented companies, while providing an understanding of the fundraising cycle, from the inception of an entrepreneurial idea to investors' exit. The course also explores the variety of investors that can finance entrepreneurial companies and what motivates them, how they invest, and what support they can provide.  The course is designed specifically for students from diverse backgrounds, focusing on providing essential background and foundational knowledge about entrepreneurial finance. 

Brands are at the core of the business success and financial power of the world’s most successful international companies. The critical importance of building and effectively managing strong global brands has never been as pressing as today, as the other sources of lasting competitive advantage in the market erode rapidly or collapse (incl. access to technological, manufacturing or financial resources). While almost any new product or technology can be replicated rapidly and cheaply by competition, a well-established brand and its relationships with the consumers cannot, which makes it a source of lasting and highly resilient competitive advantage for the long-term financial success of the business. As such, this course features course lectures and in-class discussions covering case studies and simulation tools. Presentations, readings, projects, and a computer-based international marketing simulation game, Country Manager, are utilized in this course. The simulation entails selecting a new Asia market for entry, establishing a brand presence in that market, and expanding into additional foreign markets.  

This course introduces basic corporate finance principles and applies an analytical framework to examine important financial decisions faced by financial managers. We analyze how well-crafted decisions can generate lasting values impact. Course topics include: net present value and capital budgeting; valuing bonds; valuing stocks; financing investment; company valuation; mergers and acquisitions; Initial public offerings; options and dynamic hedging; and corporate governance. 

The course takes its starting point in the recurrent discussion on how to manage risks and build security to avoid crises in organizations. The course provides the tools to understand risk management, taking into account perspectives from the social sciences, business administration, and the humanities.

This course examines key concepts and debates in contemporary international business, covering a range of topics including a critical deconstruction of the term globalization; the national and supranational alignment and divergence of political, economic, and legal systems; the complexities and nuances of international trade, including import, export, and countertrade, It includes foreign direct investment patterns and strategies; international finance and accounting; organizational structures for international businesses; market entry; global production; and, global complications in human resource management.

The course aims to develop "T-shaped" characters who can develop the depth of expertise in a single field (one's major as represented by the vertical bar of the T shape) while acquiring the ability to communicate and collaborate with others from different disciplines (the horizontal bar of the T) to address challenges. The ability to connect horizontally is "Design Thinking", which is the bridge between creativity and innovation, combining divergent and convergent modes of problem discovery and problem solving to integrate user-experience, technology tools, and business models to create values. 

This course examines social media marketing from three perspectives—principles, applications and strategies. Social media and network theory, popular social media strategies, and data analytic tools will be introduced.