The course deals with the role of managers in learning organisations, the planning function, organising function, leading function, the management of misbehaviour and workplace ethics.

This course emphasises a synthesis of economic theory, decision sciences and various fields of business administration studies. It examines how they interact with each other as a firm attempts to reach optimal managerial decisions in the face of constraints. How managerial decisions are actually made in the real world is given a special emphasis. The course will increase decision-making effectiveness by expanding and sharpening the analytical framework used by managers to make decisions.

The course aims to shape the participants’ attitudes in two directions, towards oneself and towards others, by deepening self-awareness of one’s own strengths and weaknesses; developing the capacity to stay out of one’s comfort zone, where the learning impact is the greatest; and by developing the capacity to pursue the right mission in the face of failure, despair and conflicting demands; and to create followership.

To achieve these goals students will be exposed to a set of exercises, role-plays and case discussions that will help them better understand their own and others’ cognitive constraints, psychological needs and other behavioural drivers; help them establish proper support networks to sustain them when out of their comfort zone; make them manage cognitive biases and emotion attachments effectively when pursuing change; foster  clarity and “impactfulness” in their communications; and make them aware of different sorts of barriers when pursuing their collective visions and business opportunities. 

The purpose of the course is to introduce the main accounting concepts, overview the main accounting categories, introduce cost management and the importance of strategic management accounting in the contemporary company. Traditional as well as contemporary accounting principles are discussed and best practices are presented.

The course is an extensive intermediate-level first corporate finance course. It is designed to initially give in-depth knowledge of financial fundamentals. Knowledge is then extended to the main strategic financial and investment decisions (capital budgeting, capital structure, dividend policy and working capital policy) and respective operating decisions. The third part of the course builds on analytical models and the logic learned in the first two parts. It is devoted to developing all the skills needed for problem-solving in respective areas of corporate finance through the use of comprehensive guided cases.

The aim of this course is to increase your understanding of people-related processes as well as to apply techniques and tools which contribute to building a modern firm’s competitive advantage through people. The main objectives of this course are to:

• Understand the link between human resource management and individual, group and company performance.
• Develop strategic HRM thinking.
• Analyse critical decisions and processes in human resource management.
• Improve managerial decision-making capabilities with regard to HRM issues in a modern international company.

The course is designed to give the knowledge and skills relevant to strategic marketing decision-making. Therefore, our main objective is to provide a deeper understanding of the issues that encompass the nature and scope of strategic marketing in the international business environment, focusing on the complexity of customers and competitors, product  and service development and integration of marketing in all areas of business decision-making (e.g. from investigating product-market opportunities, discovering consumer needs, analysing competitors, determining competitive advantage, forecasting the results of strategies, allocating resources and predicting environmental changes so as to be proactive in the marketplace). The course is integrated with the Business Data Analysis course which covers methodologies and data analysis. A framework for developing a marketing strategy will be presented and applied in various situations throughout the course.

This course aims to develop students’ abilities to design and implement methodologically sound and practically relevant empirical business research. It is designed to give students a solid foundation for working on individual and group research projects and the ability to be informed users of research results presented and/or published by others (e.g. fellow researchers and research institutions, governments, the press).

A skills seminar will be held in collaboration with Microsoft Corporation and be strongly applied to your practical work, especially while dealing with project work.

The course focuses on global and European institutional and macroeconomic development, integrates the view on international finance, its regional and global impact and analyses trends and risks of institutional development for a company’s international business.

The purpose of the course is to familiarise students with the characteristics of the firm’s external (i.e. economic environment, government and institutions) and internal environments (interactions with various firm constituencies).

The course examines business processes within the context of supply chain management by combining analytical techniques and giving relevant managerial insights. The course deals with the following topics: the process view of an organisation, process flow analysis, managing variability in processes, inventory management, co-ordinated product and supply chain design, the value of information and supply chain co-ordination.

The purpose of this course is to make participants think and act like designers when solving business problems through immersion in a first-hand design experience – that is, while working on an applied consultancy project for a company. In particular, participants will design a solution set for a given company at two levels: first, they will come up with novel products/services through a deep dive into the customer experience created by an existing products/services and by the creative reframing of a product’s value for users; second, they will incorporate novel products/services created in the first stage in an effective business model designed to drive the distinctive competitive advantage of the company over time.

To meet these goals, participants will:

• Develop a capacity to work in diverse teams.
• Develop a capacity to empathise with users and other stakeholders.
• Develop a capacity to observe and reflect the product’s
• Learn a technique for visualising product/service value.
• Develop capabilities of brainstorming and reframing a given concept.
• Learn how to elicit sincere feedback from users and incorporate it in proposed solutions (products/service, business models).
• Learn the business process mapping technique in order to visualise and detect the interplay among critical design elements and key stakeholders.

Developing a personal business project.

The aim of the course is to teach students how to use and critically evaluate concepts in the field of strategic management, link the acquired knowledge with current practical problems (leading to the preparation of a high-quality practical project) and enable them to undertake further professional work in the strategic management field.

The purpose of the course is to enhance ethically proper and impactful leadership in global, multicultural settings packed with a diversity of interpretations, interests as well as filled with anxiety and fear with regard to the future. 

To achieve this, students will be exposed to the power of story-telling and sense-making when faced with the conflicting demands and interests of power-holders, ambiguity and fear regarding the future and filled with doubts concerning the effectiveness of one’s own actions. Next, through a set of exercises the course aims to uncover assumptions and beliefs about the effectiveness of leadership as conditioned by the Western centric philosophical doctrine developed through their family upbringing, Western-centric education, culture and religion. In relation to the effectiveness of leader-centric leadership practices, students will be exposed to other leadership practices developed through the centuries around the globe. Extending and deepening leadership knowledge and skills with leadership wisdom originating from different cultures and societies will help students better lead people and businesses in global, multicultural contexts.  Finally and most importantly, they will explore the role of trust, morality, ethics, responsibility and conviction in leadership action.

Communication skills and negotiations.

• Peers and influence, impactful speech-making, interpersonal communication (a working lab with a practitioner/professional).
• Psychological aspects of communications, exchanges of emotions and suppression, interpersonal dynamics and conflict resolution (a working lab with a clinical psychiatrist, not a psychologist; the use of transactional analysis).
• Fundamentals of negotiations (know your BATNA!).
• Different topics of negotiations: negotiating a salary, negotiations related to sustainability issues.
• A special emphasis on negotiations in cross-cultural settings.

Developing a personal business project Continuing work from Module D.