Executive Business Curriculum

Courses

This course aims to enhance the leadership effectiveness of students by developing knowledge of what constitutes effective leadership and how to apply leadership concepts and models.

Using Porter's famous "Five Forces" stakeholder framework, students taking this course learn both how successful business executives can apply economic analysis to inform business strategy from both an internal operations and external stakeholder perspective. Internal operations involve the managing labor, equipment, and materials acquisition from suppliers in cost effective ways. External stakeholder perspectives involve consideration of a company's domestic and global industry structure, behavior of its competitors, consumer behavior, as well as broader community influences.

Students will learn how to employ decision-making skills to create a long-term competitive advantage for an organization through operational and technical excellence. Key concepts in this course will include developing a view of organizations as technical and behavioral systems, operations management, quality management, strategies related to IT procurement, deployment, maintenance and security, and the supply chain.

Specific topics will include applied systems theory, process improvement, quality assurance, supply chain management, IT systems development strategies, and issues related to systems security, data security, and data privacy.

This course focuses on the use and reporting of accounting information, with an emphasis on financial statements and how executive decisions can influence these statements. Financial statements, including footnotes and explanatory material, are the primary instruments used by parties external to the enterprise in making judgments about the enterprise.

By understanding how management decisions are reflected in the financial statements, managers will understand how they can influence their judgment.

Students will develop strategic decision making skills by using financial concepts including time value of money, capital budgeting processes, cash flow forecasting and project risk analysis. Topics covered include: capital budgeting, financial statement analysis, capital structure, financial risk analysis.

This course will focus on how successful businesses match their objectives and resources with opportunities in the marketplace by identifying and measuring consumer needs, determining target markets and deciding which products and services to offer.

This course will also address pricing, promotion, and distribution strategies to create competitive advantage in domestic and international markets.

This course centers around the theme that a company achieves sustained success if and only if its managers (1) develop, and revise as needed, an action-oriented strategic plan and (2) implement and execute the plan with some proficiency. Students will develop the strategic thinking skills needed to formulate and execute successful strategies for firms/organizations in a variety of industries and dynamic environments.

Emphasis is given to the contributions of several business disciplines of study, such as marketing, finance and management, to understanding both the internal operations of the organization and the influences of the external environment. This course is integrative and introduces both the theory and practice that enables that integrative process.