Subject: EMBA

Term: Fall 2013

EMBA 436: Accounting for Business Executives (100/4908)

Parker, L

This course is an introduction to financial and managerial accounting, rather than a course in introductory accounting. This course is designed for the business professional and is intended to prepare the student to use the information prepared by accountants. It will not dwell in detail on the technical aspects of accounting or bookkeeping. In addition, this course is designed to help the student become an effective user of cost information, from the perspective of parties internal to the firm. This aspect of accounting is a compilation of techniques rather than a set of rules. Since the information is for private use, the goal is to create the most meaningful and useful data for use by managers. Assignments will be designed to develop the student's ability to analyze and interpret accounting data and to more effectively utilize accounting data in day to day business decisions. Finally, this course is intended to strengthen abilities to identify problems and opportunities, to search out and analyze desired information leading to a well-reasoned conclusion, and to perform sensitivity analysis around that conclusion, using financial information.

EMBA 438A: Business Statistics and Quantitative Analysis (100/4909)

Mathur, K

In this course, students study the use of modern quantitative and business statistics to support the executive decision-making process. With the help of computer software, the models examined assist in describing and analyzing problems and suggesting possible managerial actions. The techniques discussed include tools for decision making under uncertainty including regression analysis. This course is part of a two (2) course sequence.

EMBA 441: Leading Change: Self (100/13205)

Smith, M

The primary objective of Leading Change: Self is to learn a method for assessing your knowledge, abilities, values, and interests relevant to leadership and executive management so that you will be able to develop and implement a plan for enhancing your leadership and executive capability throughout your career and life. The enabling objectives are: (a) To systematically identify your current and desired capability (i.e., knowledge, abilities, values, and interests); (b) To develop an individualized learning agenda and plan for the next 3-5 years; and (c) To explore techniques to assist others in doing the same. This course will explore questions, such as: Who are effective leaders? How are they different than mangers? How do they think and act? What makes us want to follow them? How are leaders developed? How can people help others become effective leaders? What type of leader do I want to be? And, what can I do to become that type of leader?

EMBA 443: Supply Chain Management (100/4904)

Vairaktarakis, G

Operations managers, ranging from supervisors to vice presidents, are concerned with the production of goods and services. More specifically, they are responsible for designing, running, controlling and improving the systems that accomplish production. This course is a broad-spectrum course with emphasis on techniques and information that are helpful to the practice of management in general and at any level. We will discuss commonly occurring application problems such as process analysis, inventory control, quality management, just-in-time concepts, etc. The field of operations management was originally concerned with manufacturing systems. But many of the same ideas apply, and the same trade-offs are present, in service organizations like health care, insurance, hotel-management, airlines and government related operations. Several manufacturing and non-manufacturing environments will be discussed explicitly, and the emphasis will be on the fundamentals of the operations function in an organization. Also we will explore the interface of operations management with other functional areas such as marketing, finance, accounting, etc.

EMBA 446: Managing Risk and Real Options (100/4794)

Ritchken, P

The course seeks to help corporate managers understand how financial design can be used to advance the goals and strategies of the firm. In the Finance course, you concentrated almost exclusively on the firm's capital expenditure decision. You studied in great detail the discounted cash flow model, NPV, how you get your cash flows, and how you discount according to risk. Now we move to the other side of the balance sheet to look at how the firm can finance these expenditures. The first part of this class provides the basic building blocks of financial engineering which begins with call and put options. The course focuses on using derivatives (calls and puts) to change a firm's risk profile with respect to equity, interest rate, foreign exchange, credit, and commodity risks. We look at capital structure decisions and securitization issues and discuss what it means to create optimal structures. Almost immediately we will tie this to our financial crisis and obtain an appreciation for financial designs that could be setup so as to enhance firm value, mitigate systemic risks, or accomplish specific sustainable goals in a global economy. The second part of the class is geared towards real options and its relationship to strategic planning. In competitive markets, no one expects to formulate a detailed long-term plan and follow it mindlessly. As soon as we start down the path, we begin learning about business conditions, competitors' actions, and so forth and we need to respond flexibly to what we learn. Unfortunately, the financial tool most widely relied on to estimate the value of strategy, DCF, assumes that we follow a predetermined plan, regardless of how events unfold. A better approach to valuation would incorporate both the uncertainty inherent in business and the active decision making required for strategy to succeed.

EMBA 450: Managerial Marketing (100/4905)

Reddy, M

This course is designed with three overarching objectives. The first is an emphasis on decision making in a broad range of market contexts. The second objective builds on the notion that decision making is dynamic; that is, market situations demand not just one good decision but a series of them as a situation unfolds (providing new and varied information for each subsequent decision). Integrating concepts from a number of the courses that you are taking concurrently into decision-making about markets is a final objective.

EMBA 451: Business Model Design (100/4887)

Chatterjee, S

In most companies the process of designing business models is an ad hoc process and in my opinion an inefficient process. In this course you will learn a systematic but iterative process to do this. We will expose you to some broad categories of business models and internalize the basic logic of how to make money in each of these categories. The first step is to recognize which of these categories is most applicable to your business. The second step is to customize these broad patterns to the specifics of the business at hand. This seems easy because everything is in English and there are no hard formulas to figure out. However, unless you discipline yourself to systematically go through a structured process (there are other equally valid processes than the ones you'll be exposed to) it is very easy to fall into the ad hoc trap. You will internalize this process by applying it over a wide range of business situations that will give you confidence in its applicability to any business opportunity. After the completion of this course you should be quickly able to draw the outline of a business model for any business opportunity that you're considering.

EMBA 464: Legal Environment (100/4907)

Fogarty, T

This course provides a brief overview of the legal system that managers face, with an emphasis on contracts, corporate law, property rights and the modern regulatory apparatus of government. Contracts include full coverage of the Uniform Commercial Code. Corporate law is the capstone of the consideration of other forms of business organizations such as partnerships. Regulatory areas include employment law and environmental law. Property coverage includes modern struggles over intellectual ownership claims (patents, copyrights, etc.).

EMBA 472: Leading Change: The Organization (100/4877)

Fry, R

Participants in this course will be challenged to enhance their leadership capacity by assessing and analyzing the knowledge, abilities, values and interests relevant to executives. The course will also explore the art of reading and understanding organizations in ways that help us imagine, design, and develop organization excellence.

EMBA 478A: Leading Design in Organization (100/4906)

Collopy, F

This course explores the ideas and methods of design as a new approach to management practices that is well suited to the changing environment that organizations face in contemporary culture and the emerging economic environment in the United States and abroad. It is a studio course as well as a seminar, because it is designed around a project that each student brings to the EMBA program, a project that is grounded in the issues and operations of the student's organization or in the kind of organization that the student wishes to explore. In addition to the yearlong project, the course will also include important readings in management and organizational literature that are relevant to the new direction of strategic thinking. Finally, the course will draw on the expertise of other faculty at the Weatherhead School of Management who will be called upon to share their practical expertise and theoretical knowledge in the development and execution of the student's management design project, whether in the area of vision and strategy, new product development of goods and services, operations, organizational design and configuration, or related topics. This is the first part of a two semester course.