First-Year Curriculum

General managers require a sophisticated understanding of what one can — and cannot — infer from data and how to use those inferences to make good decisions. Our courses in data analysis provide the analytical tools/techniques for using data to make appropriate inferences and good decisions.

One of the hardest parts of being a leader is handling disagreements about values. The skills required to do this are increasingly important in polarized societies where there is pressure for businesses and organizations to have a sense of purpose and “do the right thing.” We discuss the human psychology that drives conflicts over values as well as the philosophical frameworks that have guided people for millennia. We provide strategies, based on rigorous research from psychology and the behavioral sciences, for implementing your values in your life and your organization. The goal is not only to make you a more effective manager, but also to prepare you to grapple with questions about the role of business in society.

Finance I covers the foundations of finance with an emphasis on applications that are vital for corporate managers, including the major financial decisions made by corporate managers, providing the necessary concepts and tools to assess the value of a business or investment opportunity. Topics include criteria for making investment decisions, valuation of financial assets and liabilities, relationships between risk and return, and capital structure choice.

Business leaders must read, understand, and use corporate financial statements.This course will develop your understanding of how economic activities map into financial statement information and will enhance your ability to critically evaluate this information to better understand the firm’s financial performance, economic condition, and strategic position. All three levels (base, accelerated, and advanced) focus on users — rather than the preparers — of financial statements. The base-level and accelerated courses in this area are broad courses in how financial accounting information is produced and used. The advanced level course skips the more introductory materials and covers more advanced topics, including international accounting standards and other global financial reporting issues. This course is most appropriate for students with a stronger background in accounting.

Consider the question: “Why would someone follow you?” This is a course in which you consider what kind of leader you want to be, what kind of leader you are, and how to align your leadership behavior with your leadership goals. You will have an opportunity to lead a squad and in doing so to discover your strengths and challenges as a leader. You will receive feedback about your approach to leadership and you will have the opportunity to try out new skills and tools. Students will be placed into five- to six person squads and the majority of class time will be spent in these squads. Your squad will meet to work on basic leadership challenges, including managing conflict and assessing a team’s progress. There will be the opportunity for feedback so you can achieve a deeper understanding of the impact of your behavior on others. The squads will do role-play cases and group exercises designed to help you think more deeply about the dynamics in your group and to allow you to practice and experiment with new ways of leading. The quarter culminates with the Executive Challenge, which engages alumni judges in role-plays that test your ability to lead effectively.

Managing Groups and Teams introduces you to the key determinants of group performance and highlights some of the common pitfalls associated with working in teams. Topics include setting team culture, fostering creativity and coordination, making group decisions, having influence, and dealing with a variety of personalities. You will participate in a number of exercises to illustrate principles of teamwork and to give you practice not only in diagnosing team problems but also in taking action to improve team performance.

The discipline of microeconomics is the foundation of much of what you study in business school and is a tool of analysis of specific market and non-market interactions. The base-level course provides you with the essential frameworks and concepts to study market equilibrium, firm and consumer behavior, and competitive interactions through the lens of microeconomics. The advanced applications options apply the frameworks to specific contexts, such as auctions, price discrimination, and business strategy.

Using examples motivated by a variety of business settings ranging from advertising to online platforms, healthcare, finance, supply chain management, transportation or pricing optimization, the core course in Optimization and Simulation Modeling (OSM) aims to provide a roadmap to answer relevant business questions using data analytics and AI.The goal of the course is to develop or advance students’ analytical skills and elucidate the role of prescriptive analytics and AI as an aid in managerial decision making. The topics are taught in an experiential fashion, with class time mainly devoted to short modeling exercises focusing on specific applications followed by a classroom discussion.

Building on the discipline of social psychology, this course equips students to recognize and combat common organizational problems and build skills to address them effectively. Our curriculum involves a blend of case studies, experiential exercises, in-class discussion, and real-world examples The course delves into key leadership challenges, namely decision making, motivation, conflict, cooperation, social networking, and communication. By learning more about these topics, Organizational Behavior prepares students to navigate common organizational challenges and make better decisions around hiring, motivating, and communicating with teammates and employees.

Designed to be the natural follow-up to the Finance I courses, Finance II includes courses that will develop and extend standard tools and techniques of financial analysis and apply these skills to a wide range of issues related to valuation of cash flows and control and capital structure.

Knowledge of technology (computing, networks, software applications, etc.) is a prerequisite for a successful manager. Understanding the implications of technology for management, strategy, and organization is even more important. So rather than just look at a snapshot of the current status of different technologies, the information management courses focus on management issues, such as: How do information technologies create value? How do you implement them? How do they affect the structure of competition?

This course gives students the background they need to understand the broad movements in the global economy. Key topics include long-run economic growth, technological change, wage inequality, international trade, interest rates, inflation, exchange rates, and monetary policy. By the end of the course, students should be able to read and understand the discussions of economic issues in The Economist, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, or publications of the Congressional Budget Office.

To evaluate business strategies and outcomes, you must understand the many ways that firms account for, control, and manage costs. Courses in this area explore alternative costing methods and how the resulting cost information can be used in making decisions around such topics as compensating talent and measuring performance.

Our marketing courses introduce you to the substantive and procedural aspects of marketing management. You’ll learn about analyzing the needs and wants of potential customers and about creating and delivering goods and services profitably.

Our operations courses address managerial issues arising in the operations of both manufacturing and service industries. You will learn about the challenges and issues confronting operations managers and gain language, conceptual models, and analytical techniques that are broadly applicable in confronting those challenges.

These courses examine fundamental issues of general management and leadership within an organization. You will learn about setting an organization’s strategic direction, aligning structure to implement strategy, and leading individuals within the firm. You will master concepts, frameworks, and tools to assess an industry and a firm’s competitive environment and to craft alternatives. You will study the interplay among formal structure, informal networks, and culture in shaping organizational performance. By integrating leadership theory, the lessons of practical application, and your own experience, you will develop skills and capabilities essential to leading others. And you’ll gain a better understanding of your own leadership preferences, strengths, and weaknesses.

Business leaders must increasingly engage in strategy beyond markets, interacting with politicians, bureaucrats, voters, and others who help set the rules of the game. These players can make your product illegal, force you to change your business model, or force your competitors to change theirs. Be they at Uber or Chevron, CEOs of many major companies report spending a majority of their time engaging with these non-market issues even though managers rarely gain exposure to them earlier in their careers. This area will prepare you to strategically interact with these important constituents, organizations, and institutions outside of markets.