Business Administration

The Foundations phase of the MBA program marks the beginning of the graduate-level journey and helps prepare students from a wide range of diverse academic and professional backgrounds to succeed at Emory & Henry and in the workplace. During Foundations, students will get to know more about graduate-level concepts, methods of instruction (e.g. Chase Method), and expectations while acquiring valuable skills and tools that they will use repeatedly during the yearlong MBA program. This course is consistent with the Executive Education Rising Manager Program offered in 2022. 

In particular, the Foundations Leadership course places special emphasis on developing a "System's Thinking Mindset" and a "Leading Through Diversity and Innovation Mindset" as well as developing Entrepreneurial and Problem-Solving methods for Leadership. Through the use of dynamic simulations, team building activities, case studies, role plays, and lectures. Foundations Leadership helps students understand, apply and diagnose competencies and skills in a repeatable development process that they can continue to build on during their MBA. 

The Foundations phase of the MBA program marks the beginning of the graduate-level journey and helps prepare students from a wide range of diverse academic and professional backgrounds to succeed at Emory & Henry and in the workplace. During Foundations, students will get to know more about graduate-level concepts, methods of instruction (e.g. Case Method), and expectations while acquiring valuable skills and tools that they will use repeatedly during the yearlong MBA program. This course is consistent with the Executive Education Rising Manager Program offered in 2022. 

In particular, the Advanced Management Concepts course takes the first steps towards building requisite student capabilities. The course lays a firm foundation for the completion of the MBA program and beyond. The brief course is fundamentally diagnostic and demonstrates graduate-level business analysis, first through an introduction to business cases, and next through an introduction to business cases, and next through an introduction to business decision-making and strategy. The centerpiece of the course is a final team assignment that will reveal student strengths and development needs as business leaders. 

This course - part of the Immersion Period" at the beginning phase of the MBA - is designed to prepare learners to succeed in a diverse, team-based business education. 

During this course, students will build relationships with classmates and acquire valuable skills and tools that they will use throughout the year-long program. Emphasis will be placed on "Systems Thinking", "Leading Innovation & Diversity", "Creative Problem-Solving" and an "Entrepreneurial Midset" while enhancing students' ability to lead others in a way that unleashes the extraordinary capabilities of individuals and diverse teams. The course addresses the inner workings of leadership and identifies the fundamental issues that make or break exceptional leaders. In particular, the course asserts that leadership is about healthy expressions of civic leadership and community support. Toward that aim, it focuses on two major characteristics of great leadership: the ability to bring one's personal sense of community to challenging situations and the ability to create conditions where diverse people collaborate effectively in achieving shared outcomes. These two themes interweave to form the fabric of leadership and organizational excellence. 

This course is an accelerated introduction to concepts and practices of financial and managerial accounting for managers. The financial part of the course will deal with the recognition, measurement, and reporting of a firm's economic transactions with a focus on procedures applied in accounting for business combinations and consolidated financial statements, along with segment and interim reporting. 

The managerial part of the course will focus on the use of accounting information to measure, analyze, and report economic events for internal decision-making purposes. Students will learn about cost behavior, cost-volume-profit analysis, and activity-based costing. 

This course is an accelerated examination of the flow and management of capital in an organization - with particular discussion to the metrics used to understand and manage risk, as well as sustain shareholder/stakeholder value. 

Through case discussions and applied learning material, this course helps students develop the knowledge, skills, critical thinking abilities, and behaviors required of any manager, not only those specialized in finance. Although the main focus of this course is for profit-seeking firms, much of what is learned has applicability for organizations in the not-for-profit and governmental sectors as well. The course will raise ethical issues where appropriate. 

The objective of this course is for participants to gain an understanding of how the utilization of statistics, technology, and computational techniques can lead to better decisions by managers and entrepreneurs. The course introduces various statistical methods with applied and case-based instruction. 

This course aims to differentiate between qualitative and quantitative analysis, to develop the ability to structure decision-making and to explore the use of statistical and quantitative methods to better balance risks. 

Innovation in Operations requires managers to carefully manage and direct resources such as capital, labor, technology, and information. Rapid and effective communications, as well as leveraging technology are critical factors. 

The course will address strategic issues and analytic tools for innovative operational decision-making. It will address practical, process-based approaches to solving operations problems. Cases, exercises, simulations, and corporate presentations will be used to address concepts in process analysis, quality, supply chain, logistics, control, and integration. The role of the manager and what managers do about processes, cross-functional links, use of information systems and technology, are emphasized. 

The objective of this course is to introduce participants to solid analytical foundations (objective definition, marginal analysis and optimization, elasticity analysis, cost analysis, applied game theory, etc.) that are essential to be able to address key issues in management strategy, marketing strategy, and related fields, in a rigorous way and to make better decisions accordingly. 

This course will also analyze markets and how they work. We will identify and analyze a variety of market structures, ranging from perfect competition to oligopoly (rivalry between a small number of competitors) to monopoly (one dominant firm). Participants will learn how (1) companies address strategic decision-making problems, (2) assess available options (3) address the competitive environment, and (4) engage with theories and concepts like Behavioral Economics, Nudge Theory, and Game Theory. Our ultimate goal is to develop skills for making effective managerial decisions and strategic choices based on the analysis of companies' cost structures and their market conditions. 

The goal of this course is to provide an understanding of graduate research within the business arena. This course is aimed at the business strategist, who is responsible for determining the scope and direction of research activities and who will use the research to inform key business decisions. This could be a manager at a large firm making decisions about a new or established product or an entrepreneur who needs to understand the market for their new venture. The career learning opportunities in the course are:

• To practice skills of systematic problem analysis and to translate management problems into the appropriate research methods.
• To gain a working "hands-on" experience with the process of research from the formulation of the research problem, through the research design, data collection, questionnaire design, sampling plan, data analysis, and expected findings. 
• To learn communication strategies to use the research results to drive strategy within a company. 

This course will focus on how both qualitative and quantitative aspects of research can help managers to address substantive problems. Analysis of cases, practice-based projects, and other assignments will form the basis for exploring how research concepts are applied in real-world situations. 

This course focuses on the role of the manager and the corporation amidst increasing expectations of greater social, civic, and environmental accountability. Today there is a growing expectation that rather than viewing sustainability as risks to be managed - the issues of society and civic innovation present enormous opportunities. This course will undertake the challenge of defining and arriving at an understanding of the meaning, importance, and implications of leading, innovating, and behaving responsibly and what it means in terms of an individual manager's day-to-day decisions in an extremely complex and interconnected global environment. 

Success is no longer achievable by managers applying business practices within a traditional value chain. Today, growth depends upon multiple stakeholders working together as part of an intricate civic web that creates sustainable value for multiple constituents. So, how can managers engage these increasingly powerful stakeholders to co-create value that benefits all?

In order to be sustainably successful, a business must have a clear understanding of where to complete and how to compete. Strategic management is the means by which these decisions are made, implemented, and monitored. It is concerned with how a firm sets its direction and carries out activities, and sets in place policies and objectives to steer the business in this direction. 

In this course, students learn pragmatic ways to analyze and design strategies that help them earn pragmatic ways to analyze and design strategies that help them earn a sustainable competitive advantage in challenging business environments. students learn to identify strategies that will fit a firm (align with its strengths and capabilities internally) and also competitor/environmental forces. 

The questions answered in the course include:

• What is a strategy?
• How does a firm identify what strategy can work for it? (formulating or identifying a strategy)
• How can the business model and overall performance be handled according to the strategy? (Implementation)
• Especially for a business in SWVA, how can profitability be sustained in spite of a changing external/competitive landscape?

The core capstone course provides practice implementing the functional concepts and skills presented in earlier courses while engaging with an entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial (counsulting) challenge. Students will be organized into teams to continue to develop team building and team management skills. 

This course is unique in that it is considerably more self-directed than other courses. The faculty's role is to coach students through their experience and to encourage reflection on the integration of business functions and team performance. By the end of the capstone, students will have experienced a unique, hands-on opportunity to engage with an innovative business project and a myriad of challenges. 

This course covers the processes involved in the creation and delivery of customer value and satisfaction through communication, pricing, distribution, and development of products and services. It is designed to give an overview of what marketing is, what marketers do, and the concepts and tools they rely on to achieve their objectives. The course will include the theory and practice involved in the marketing process. 

Key in this process is the understanding of business and consumer markets. The course will look at marketing issues facing both private and non-profit sector organizations. 

The theme of this course is the integration of financial theory and entrepreneurship. The course content is designed for those students interested in being involved with new ventures as an investor, founder, or employee. Students wanting additional perspective on financing decisions of young firms including venture debt, bank debt, corporate VS as well as traditional angel and venture capital investing may also find the course applicable. 

The primary focus of the course is to aid students in making better financial decisions in entrepreneurial and new business settings. The course covers the basic structures and incentives employed in private equity and venture capital, as well as specific issues related to financing, valuing, and monetizing investments in new ventures. Particular emphasis will be placed on methods for funding new businesses, analyzing cash requirements, adaptive valuation techniques where information gaps exist, multi-stage investments, risk-return considerations for undiversified investors, and exit strategies. 

This course builds on courses taught at Standford and Harvard that focus on realizing entrepreneurial potential through the acquisition of businesses. Buying a business is entrepreneurship, even if many have not thought about it and way. In applied class sessions, we will break down the process of organizing search, financing, negotiating a sale, and ultimately running the business. 

Sustainability has been embraced by many organizations as a driver for value creation. Economic prosperity and sound financial statements are constantly interlinked with environmental and social events. Interlinking economic, social, and environmental aspects as part of the decision-making process is the triple bottom line of sustainability. 

This course aims to provide an understanding of the main challenges and opportunities that arise from integrating sustainability into a business strategy as well as leading corporate practices and real cases. 

Leadership principles are multicultural and international, even while the practice of leadership may be affected by local customs and habits. The elective presents a sustainable model of leadership principles and associated behavior for students who aspire to leadership roles in multicultural organizations. The elective asserts that leaders must be ethical and driven by high-end, other-regarding values if they are their teams or organizations are to be successful. 

Project management as a discipline is applicable to business projects of all types and required balancing the demands for time, quality, scope, and cost inherent in any project. This course is designed to provide the project management knowledge necessary for a business executive, manager, consultant, or entrepreneur to successfully initiate, plan and execute projects. It is structured to provide principles, methodology, and practical information through a combination of lectures, assignments, group collaboration, and hands-on exercises. Some of the topics include project, program, and portfolio management; project selection, and project plan development; Work Breakdown Structures, Change Control, Gantt Charts; project and product life-cycle methodologies, communications, and stakeholder management; and management tools. 

This course focuses on various dimensions of entrepreneurship and related business processes. Its aim is to prepare students to effectively manage creativity in the process of recognizing opportunities and converting them into new business ventures. The course provides a comprehensive foundation for additional learning in the context of entrepreneurship, more as a practice than theory. The emphasis throughout the course is on drawing and synthesizing concepts, practices, and techniques from the functional areas of entrepreneurship and management, and implementing them on new business ventures. 

The personal capstone course provides practice implementing the functional concepts and skills presented in all courses via a master's level final project. As opposed to the core capstone where students were organized into teams to continue to develop team building and team management skills, the personal capstone is an individual course where students engage one on one with a faculty mentor. 

The faculty's role is this course is to mentor students one on one through their thesis and to encourage reflection on the integration of business functions, leadership, and curriculum content.