Business Administration

This course aims at providing strategic framework and practical knowledge for future entrepreneurs who explore new business opportunities through creating a venture or acquiring a job position at existing firms. By the end of the course, students should be able to have a clear understanding of how to develop raw ideas to product, service, or business concepts through the process of identifying, refining, and screening opportunities, and should be well poised to take the next steps to designing and successfully launching a new product, service, or business. To shed light on entrepreneurship from the perspective of ideation, project management, and valuation, this course incorporates both top-down theories of resources to bottom-up simulations.  

Neuroeconomics, sometimes also known as Decision Neuroscience, is an emerging field combining insights from economics, psychology, and neuroscience to understand how (healthy) humans make decisions and how these are related to underlying cognitive and neural processes. The ultimate goal of Neuroeconomics is to integrate knowledge from the different parent disciplines to answer the fundamental question of how our brain makes us decide. This course provides an introduction to Neuroeconomics by discussing examples showing the limitations of viewing decision-making merely through the lens of the traditional fields of economics, psychology, and neuroscience. The course reviews various methods used in Neuroeconomics research for measuring and influencing brain activity. An important part of the course is devoted to learning the foundations and models of Neuroeconomics such as the basics of neuroscience. Seminal and recent studies in Neuroeconomics are read, discussed, and critically evaluated. This interdisciplinary and challenging course consists of lectures and group work. It uses formal concepts from economics and neuroscience. Prerequisites include sufficient quantitative skills and basic knowledge of microeconomics.

This course introduces concepts and theories related to the international business environment and constructs strategies to compete with others and to work with people from different backgrounds. The course reviews renowned analysis tools developed to help managerial decisions for multinational firms.

To improve understanding of the theories, concepts, and analysis tools, the course features real world case studies (mostly Harvard Business cases) and team discussions. 

This course offers an introduction to management accounting. Topics include: income statement types; pricing decisions; budgets; job and process costing; activity-based costing and department costing.

The course provides future marketers with a fundamental understanding of digital marketing tools and techniques and helps them to become proficient in digital marketing practice. Practical assignment include the development of a digital marketing plan for a hypothetical company by formulating a digital marketing strategy, including the planning of campaigns.

Data analytics addresses methods for collecting, managing, interpreting, and visualizing large datasets. An understanding of basic statistical reasoning is an essential requirement across professional spaces such as an economist, as is the ability to manipulate data using specialized computer software. This course introduces rigorous statistical data analysis and provides training in the use of MATLAB, which is an excellent tool for understanding basic statistical calculations. The course lays out the perceptual and cognitive foundation of how practitioners understand and perceive stories, data graphics, and, ultimately, visual storytelling. In this London-based module, the students take advantage of studying in one of the world’s great financial capitals as well as top destinations for overseas students. The course introduces broad classes of techniques and tools for analyzing and visualizing data at scale while teaching the scientific process of transforming data into insights for making better business decisions. It emphasizes how to combine computation and visualization to perform effective analysis and storytelling. The course covers methods from each side and hybrid ones that combine the best of both worlds.

This course provides a foundation knowledge and understanding of the principles and practices of financial reporting and of the role of accounting information within its broader economic, social, and organizational context. It offers broad coverage of the core financial statements presented and considers the capacity for accounting information to develop in response to changing economic and social needs. 

The course deals with basic issues in finance, such as risk diversification and asset pricing, capital structure, investment valuation, market efficiency, dividend policy, and the use of derivatives. Prerequisites include BENC2004 or an understanding of the following finance concepts: Types of securities (stocks, bonds) and their returns; the concept of risk diversification and efficient frontiers, and principles of the time value of money. Exchange students need to have taken at least one introductory finance course.

This course discusses the evolution of industry, the production of goods through the transformation of raw materials or materials that have already undergone one or more transformations and the exploitation of energy sources. It focuses specifically on “Industry 4.0,” which refers to digital technological innovations. Additionally, the course covers lean management and its associated tools and methods. 

This course draws from sociological, anthropological, and psychological theory to provide a contemporary view of consumer behavior that moves beyond predominant behaviorist approaches to the subject area.  Students are introduced to research methods for studying consumer behavior, while also putting these methods into action to examine their own consuming behavior and others'.  They consider the multi-sensory nature of consumption, asking themselves why sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell are so important in understanding how and why people consume.