Business Administration

This course provides an overview of modern financial markets and instruments and introduces the fundamentals of valuation and financial theories that help understand asset prices and investments.  The course covers money markets; capital markets; fixed income securities; derivatives; portfolio theory; the Capital Asset Pricing model; the Arbitrage Pricing Model, and market efficiency. 

This course provides students with a grounding in classical and cutting-edge interdisciplinary social scientific theories of work and empirical developments in the study of how people and organizations relate. It helps students develop a strong set of critical analytical and conceptual frameworks and applies them to a series of contemporary issues in the organization of work, labor markets, and economic life. Critical social theories are used as a means by which commonplace understandings of work can be unpicked and unpacked to better capture and represent the experience of changing workplaces and careers. Applying different theoretical and conceptual frameworks in different empirical contexts, the course focuses specifically on the varied range of forms and locations in which work takes place, including work inside and outside the home, the gig economy, health and social care, the digital economy, migrant labor, and unemployment as they are experienced in social-psychological terms across lines of class, ethnicity, age, and gender.

The motivation behind this course ensures that students, regardless of their background, can comprehend economic knowledge through real-life examples they have directly experienced or encountered in the media. Additionally, the course aids students in formulating rigorous logic and enhancing communication skills through the analysis of various case studies, both individually and in groups. The opportunity to share thoughts with peers further contributes to their development. Overall, the course provides principles and frameworks that assist in making better decisions in various aspects of life.  

This course introduces topics relevant for understanding the modern framework for evaluating investment opportunities. It combines key elements of managerial accounting and finance, as well as modern portfolio and asset pricing theory. The course discusses how to apply the core tool of analytic finance to assess the value of company projects, including those undertaken by start‐ups, and how to analyze financial market conditions to recommend investment strategies. The course discusses topics including key accounting metrics and applying these metrics to evaluate the performance of a company; identity and interpretation techniques to value cash flows from investing in firm projects; developing equity valuation frameworks that link stock prices to firm cash flows and risk; deriving optimal allocation rules for investing in portfolios with one or two risky assets; identifying optimal portfolio allocation rules for many risky assets, such as stocks, commodities, real estate, and bonds; combining the optimal allocation rules with index models to identify the degree of diversification in an optimal portfolio; hypothesizing and deriving a linear relation between risk and expected returns; define factors that determine bond prices; and synthesizing bond pricing relations with no‐arbitrage equilibrium models of spot and forward rates.

Understanding consumption and consumer behavior is an essential part of the marketing process and key to the long-term success of any organization. This course focuses on the processes through which individuals or groups acquire, use, and dispose of products, services, or experiences. This course explores a range of approaches to consumption and consumer behavior, encouraging students to critically evaluate their relative merits. Accordingly, insights are drawn from a range of disciplines including psychology and economics, science and technology studies, sociology, cultural theory, and anthropology. In addition to exploring the significance of consumer behavior for commercial organizations, the course demonstrates how consumption is positioned as both a problem for and solution to a number of contemporary social and policy challenges.

This course surveys current developments in curating art, examining expanded definitions of curating (in museums and independently post-2020); and the evolving local, global, and digital landscapes for curatorial work and activity today.
With a project-oriented focus, this course equips students with the contextual knowledge as well as the entrepreneurial skill to plan, develop, and deliver a curatorial project as well as situate it in a rapidly changing landscape. Topics include (but are not limited to) the curator as auteur, facilitator, mediator, and project manager as well as contemporary curatorial approaches and research methodology. Project-based learning throughout the course examines: initiating and defining curatorial projects; sourcing artworks in private collections for object-based exhibitions; building connections and relationships with contemporary artists; expanding exhibition formats and sites for curating (including "pop-ups"); writing curatorial statements and press releases; working in a sustainable and accessible way; fundraising and budgeting; marketing and publicity; and working with digital networks and platforms.

This course stimulates critical thinking and personal development rather than providing clear-cut management recipes. The course covers management myths and realities, paradox thinking, organizational design, teams, learning, leadership, and corporate social responsibility.

A war of ideas is being waged within the private sector. Efforts to obfuscate the truth collide with attempts to reveal the reality beyond the headlines. Long-Term Capital Management, Enron, Lehman, names of former so-called “high-flyers” now reduced to grim labels that serve to remind the wary of how quickly the elite can fall from grace. This course focuses on the interplay of truth and fiction in the business world and the critical thinking skills needed to unravel this twisted web.

This class is built in two “halves." During the first half of the course, the class will be exposed to many forms of analytical style used in the social studies and the field of history in particular—to (a) better understand both the language and terminology used in discussions of the subject matter and (b) improve their critical thinking skills. By using these analytical tools, the second half of the course focuses on case studies to see the interplay of fact and fiction on both the floor of investment banks and in the real estate markets of the US. 

This course examines the fundamentals of accounting theory and the conceptual framework that underlies financial reporting in Canada, and the procedures currently used in accounting for assets, revenues, and expenses. 

The course introduces engineers and technologists to some of the techniques of foresight and scenario planning, including some of the many reasons why those techniques can fail. It is to give a rounded and nuanced view of the business environment into which technologies are introduced and some of the associated governance issues. This advanced course covers complex topics which are not suited to students with no prior knowledge of subjects related to the field.