ACADEMICS - MBA Curriculum
Coursework includes the areas of finance and economics, local and global issues, organizational management, and leadership ethics. Courses include:
Leadership: Ethics, Service and Transformation
Accounting for Business Managers
Organizational Development
Quantitative Decision-Making for Managers
Strategic Technology
Managerial Economics
Marketing Management
Management Consulting Project
Managerial Finance
Business and Professional Ethics
Communication Issues in Management
Managing in a Global Environment
Strategic Management
Leadership: Ethics, Service and Transformation
This course will provide learners with well-rounded, comprehensive leadership skills that will enhance personal and organizational effectiveness. Leadership skills and abilities have long been viewed as important contributors to success in personal and professional spheres. Topics include: leadership strategy, critical and distinctive functions and skills of management and leadership, relationship building, servant leadership, leadership communication, and self-awareness and discovery of leadership styles, traits, and abilities.
Accounting for Business Managers
Concepts of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) for preparing financial statements. Students learn to analyze income statements, balance sheets, and annual reports, and to budget using projected sales, fixed and variable expenses, breakeven calculation, and capital budgeting.
Organizational Development
Theory and application of organizational development (OD) theory and practice within organizations. Topics include strategies and tactics for developing human resources to support organizational change (such as total quality management), team building, collaboration with other teams, training, the impact of diversity, and evaluation of OD strategies. Students learn to operate as internal or external agents of change.
Quantitative Decision-Making for Managers
Extracting actionable information from data, interpreting data in tables and graphs, interpreting statistical significance, evaluating survey data, using data mining with large databases, and using simulation and modeling in business decisions.
Strategic Technology
Making strategic technology decisions most favorable to organization and culture, interaction with customers and suppliers, and future growth of the organization. Students come to understand the impact of the Internet and electronic commerce on the traditional business model, the effect on employees, and the ethical and societal results of given technology choices.
Managerial Economics
The objective of this course is to help business students become architects and leaders of business strategy rather than simply middle managers following the lead of others. Topics include: markets and organizations, demand and cost functions, demand and supply analysis, game theory and the economics of strategy, pricing incentives, evaluation, regulation, incentive conflicts and contracts, and ethics and the organizational architecture. Students develop critical thinking skills and a framework of analyzing business decisions.
Marketing Management
Applying marketing theory and practice to real-life marketing situations. Topics include market segmentation, targeting, positioning, distribution of goods and services, the relationship between price and demand, brand management, and marketing plans and strategy. Students gain hands-on experience with marketing in cross-functional organization strategies.
Management Consulting Project
Working as pro bono management consultants, project teams develop business solutions and implementation plans for Minnesota-based businesses and community organizations. Students build expertise in leadership, project management, strategic and tactical planning, and management communication as they research, analyze, and develop multi-functional business recommendations. Consulting engagements conclude with a formal Plan Presentation to the client and faculty advisor.
Managerial Finance
Understanding the foundations of financial management including markets, institutions, interest rates, risk and return, and the time value of money. Topics include: security valuation, corporate valuation, strategic investment and financing decisions, working capital management, mergers and acquisitions, derivatives, bankruptcy, and multinational implications.
Business and Professional Ethics
This course uses case studies and readings to understand ethical theories and their application in the business world, the relationship between the moral and the legal, and whether ethical business practices are profitable business practices.
Communication Issues in Management
An ethnographic approach to communication in the workplace including how physical settings, communication channels, institutional goals, institutional culture, and the roles of participants shape communication. Students use case studies and their own workplace experiences to examine effectiveness, ideologies and biases, network theory, persuasive appeals, and communication of institutional values.
Managing in a Global Environment
Explores the reasons, conditions, processes, and challenges of internationalization from an enterprise perspective. The foci of the course are international trade theory and institutional governance of international trade/monetary policy, and the differences in political/economic/ socio-cultural systems and their implications for international business.
Strategic Management
Organizations that survive over time generally meet customer needs more effectively than the customer’s alternatives. These organizations adapt to a constantly changing environment, usually coordinating change in a variety of different functional areas. Strategy matches the organization’s capabilities to its market position, facilitates resource allocation, and provides guidance for decision-making. This course is integrative of all subject matter in the MBA program, and adopts the perspective of senior management.
