At Smith, our curriculum is based on a strong foundation in each business discipline. Throughout this coursework, we look for interactions, interdependencies, and systemic links between the disciplines and functions of a business. Foundation courses will include:
Accounting for Senior Management
Equips senior managers with the tools to understand, evaluate, analyze, and communicate corporate performance. Our goal is not to turn you into an accountant. Rather, we want you to develop a solid understanding of accounting fundamentals and financial statement information, the ability to evaluate and analyze accounting information for decision making, and the fluency to communicate financial performance to interested parties.
Data Analysis and Decisions
Introduces participants to analytical techniques that establish the optimality of managerial decisions via empirical (“data models”) and logical (“decisions”) means. The course may be viewed as consisting of two integrated parts. In the first part, various methods of analyzing data, including regression analysis are studied. The second part covers models for making optimal decisions in situations characterized by either an absence of uncertainty or where the uncertainty arises from non-competitive sources. Techniques include optimization models, decision trees, and simulation.
Financial Management
Presents the main concepts and analytic methods of modern corporate finance. Students learn about the structure of financial markets, the techniques and language of finance, and the various responsibilities of the corporate financial manager. Topics addressed include objective of creating shareholder value; valuation of corporate securities, including stocks and bonds; risk-return relationship and its implications for finance; financial techniques for evaluating corporate investments; corporate financing alternatives and the design of a company’s capital structure; coordinating investment and financing; and basics of derivatives pricing
Leadership Development
Leadership development is the process of enhancing your skills to influence and organize others to accomplish key goals. It goes beyond knowledge of leadership theories by building skills to inspire and organize people to achieve tangible results. The course approach is consistent with that used by world-class leadership development programs: comprehensive self-assessments, experiential exercises, and individual skill-improvement plans.
Leading and Managing with a Global Mindset
The main objective of this course is to provide managers a sound basis for developing such competencies. Specifically, we will develop an understanding of key cultural differences, and how these differences influence leading and managing individuals, groups, and organizations. The insights raised in this class should enable students to demonstrate keen sensitivity to how to manage teams and communications in general that involve internationally diverse employees and/or customers.
Global Business Environments
Provides managers with the tools necessary to intelligently interpret the national and international economic environment, including the impact of economic policies on the economy and the firm. The course develops basic macroeconomic theory to enable managers to critically evaluate economic forecasts and policy recommendations and then applies these concepts in a series of case studies.
Strategic Management
Explores the set of challenging decisions, tasks, frameworks, and tools involved in strategic management. Focus is on strategy as integrative and oriented to bottom-line performance, dynamic, and evolutionary. Competitive strategy adds the focus of positioning in markets vis a vis other companies trying to serve the same customer, maneuvering dynamically, and finding or creating open niches.
Operations Management
A firm has the opportunity to create competitive advantage through proficient management of its operations. To do so, the firm must first recognize and establish the strategic role of its operations within the organization. Then, at the more detailed operational level, the firm must execute effectively and efficiently. This course examines the strategic role that the operations function can play, and offers specific tools and techniques that the firm can use for strategy execution. We cover concepts of operations management applied to both manufacturing and services, including operations strategy, analysis of process flows and bottlenecks, waiting line models, total quality management, six–sigma, and revenue management.
Marketing Strategy
Covers marketing decisions, with an emphasis on strategic issues addressed in going to market. Discussion includes: the marketing concept, market orientation, contrast marketing strategy with corporate and business unit strategy. Students will explore the segmentation of markets and the selection of an appropriate target market, including an analysis of competitors already serving that targeted segment.
Strategic and Transformational IT
Examines how to identify transformational technologies and develop strategies to take advantage of them, including case studies to illustrate managerial decisions about technology as well as lectures that help frame the issues. The course is focused on management issues and is suitable for the student with no IT experience, as well as for students with technical backgrounds who want to understand how to manage IT in the firm.
