Curriculum

(3 credit units)

Top managers require exceptional leadership skills to successfully guide modern organizations. This course allows students to consider, discuss and reflect on the nature of leadership and develop an understanding of how they can enhance their leadership effectiveness. By course end, students will have a deep understanding of the role, importance and function of leadership and the implications of different leadership styles. Students will examine their assumptions about themselves and their future growth development and develop their own views on effective and ineffective leadership. Building on this process, students will examine their assumptions about others and how they lead and follow. The course will also involve investigation of leadership issues related to diversity, global business management and ethics.

(3 credit units)

This course focuses on topics and concepts for the strategic visioning task for both for profit and not for profit organizations. Strategic visions are required to grow and transform the firm and/or non profit organization in the face of rapidly evolving markets. The course will begin with a definition of the strategic task, an overview of the scope of the field, and a review of key strategic concepts (competitive advantage, industry structure, competitive intelligence, critical success factors, and positional advantages) as they apply to a variety of industries and organizations. Next the role of the strategist will be presented including a discussion of the major strategic decision making tasks (building and leveraging strategic resources, developing information assets and knowledge management, leveraging human, intellectual, social, and financial capital, linking vision to strategic outcomes, and value creation for shareholders and stakeholders).

(3.75 credit units)

This is the capstone course of the program, during which students will integrate the key concepts from previous courses to identify, analyze and propose recommendations for important strategic issues facing companies. The course will emphasize the manager’s role in improving performance along a number of critical quantitative and qualitative dimensions. Topics will include the strategist as analyst and integrator, implementing value chain revisions, as well as successful implementation in growth, stable, and declining industries. This course includes the team capstone project that examines strategy and implementation issues in a live corporate setting. Each team will select a client organization and engage with that organization on the project over the last half of the year.”

(3 credit units)

This course takes a leadership view of Operations Management and considers the role of Operations in executing a firm’s strategy. Specific areas of focus include supply chain strategy, project management, service management, offshore outsourcing, and lean innovation. Discussions and assignments will be case based and consider firms with a global perspective. This course connects closely to the underlying program themes of strategy, global business, leadership, innovation, and corporate social responsibility.

(1.5 credit units)

Today’s national and international business environments are complex. An ability to monitor and understand the economic environment is critical to the success of today's for profit or not for profit organizations. Within this context, the course will focus on the applied economics of demand and forecasting; theory of the firm, production and cost; competition, pricing strategies, market structures; and the role of government in a modern market economy.

(3 credit units)

This course includes concepts and frameworks on how organizations can create a digital roadmap and deploy technologies to optimize and transform their businesses. Key topics include: -Identifying business problems and opportunities in organizations and determining digital strategies and solutions, especially with emerging technologies;

• Managing digital transformation in terms of people, processes and technologies to overcome digital barriers and effect meaningful change; and
• Understanding managerial challenges dealing with in-house technology departments and external partners, as well as ethical considerations regarding data security and privacy.

Elective Course
(1.5 credit units)

Are you creative? Would you consider your organization innovative? Why or why not? Is creativity necessary in your business? The answers to these questions may surprise you. Most executives agree that their organizations cannot stay the same and survive long term, yet the majority struggle with how to drive ‘Next’ in their business. This seminar-style course is intended to help identify opportunities for ‘Next’ in an organization, and Operationalize change in that direction. That is, our focus on the field of Intrapreneurship and a macro-perspective of innovation. At the core of this shift in thinking is organizational culture – the behaviours and beliefs embodied by senior leadership. An innovative perspective leads to novel new processes, services or products the firm can leverage for increased relationships with existing or new customers. Getting to that perspective, however, requires some reflection – who are our customers? Who do we want to be our customers? What do our customers want? As importantly, what will they want in 3 years? Ultimately, innovation is the responsibility of everyone in the firm, and a core strategy for most successful companies today, yet there are barriers and obstructions that keep us from optimizing creativity. In this class, we will try to understand those barriers, and identify leadership tactics for eliminating them. Consider this – if your organization ceased to exist tomorrow, would anyone notice?

(2.25 credit units)

This course addresses critical issues in the development of marketing strategies. The first two sessions in the course focus on a particular approach to reviewing and developing marketing programs – Mission Critical Marketing. Alternative strategies will be identified and the most common problems in executing those strategies will be outlined. Next, the associated remedial actions will be reviewed. Having established this strategic foundation, the course will then focus on internal organizational issues including building a market driven organization, as well as external issues that affect how marketers reach customers. These latter issues include the changing power dynamics amongst channel of distribution members and the impact of technology on building customer and business relationships.

(3 credit units)

Organizations, whether large or small, profit or non-profit oriented, are increasingly operating in a global environment. This course is designed to help students understand globalization trends in the world economy and the political-economic climate of global business, the role of international institutions, and the impact on effective management in a multinational corporation. Being an effective global manager also demands skill in interpersonal management so that the challenges that arise in cross-cultural settings can be met. Global managers must also understand the visible and subtle dynamics of power in a distributed global enterprise. This course will use cases and briefings to introduce the aforementioned subjects and, through individual and team assignments, will provide opportunities for the application of theory to complex global management situations.

Elective Course
(1.5 credit units)

Multi-national enterprises (MNEs) provide partnerships and accelerated access to new funding, channels and markets. Start-ups provide new products and services and occasionally “disrupt,” creating entirely new business models and markets. Where there is an obvious Product--Market fit, a beneficial symbiosis should easily occur. But processes, procedures, planning cycles, decision-making, and above all…cultures…clash. Market dominant technology MNEs that lack an innovation strategy (e.g. Nortel, RIM) are failing faster than ever before.

This course is designed to provide modern management frameworks to develop and audit an organizations innovation strategy; learn from current practitioners of entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship; discuss the viability/applicability of those frameworks in the real world using many models (BMC & Lean-Start-up), approaches (Disruption & Incrementalism), and valuation (NPV vs Revenues vs EBITDA) map across the SME & MNE experience; ultimately, this course will help establish a sharper focus on Ideation and Innovation.

(3 credit units)

The success and failure of today’s complex and networked enterprises hinges upon developing access to capital markets, deploying resources to value enhancing projects, and managing risk strategically. This course presents leading edge topics in investment management (asset allocation, fixed income analysis, and the valuation of old and new economy stocks), corporate finance (real options analysis, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate governance), and risk management (derivatives, market and credit risk exposure measurement, and management).

(3 credit units)

This course deals with the major challenge facing executives today – the implementation and execution of major, strategic decisions. This course will be based around the frameworks and concepts developed in the book: Fast Forward: Organizational Change in 100 Days by Elspeth Murray and Peter Richardson, both members of the Queen’s Faculty. The first two sessions will be used to explore the notions of strategic planning as the ‘game plan’ for change, and that guidance, speed and momentum are necessary winning conditions for successful strategic change. In the subsequent three sessions, these concepts will be applied to major strategic change challenges – turnaround, integrating new acquisitions, and cultural change. In addition, the course will address the specific challenge of successful implementation – how leaders implement transformational strategies fast and effectively.

(3 credit units)

Arriving at and implementing successful Marketing Strategy entails a wonderful blend of fundamental strategic principles surrounding the organization with cutting edge thinking brought on by dynamic consumer and societal trends and ever advancing information and communication technology. It is these dynamics that come to shape the customer value upon which companies must build their marketing strategy. As such, the Strategic Marketing II course picks up where Strategic Marketing I ended by demonstrating how these societal dynamics shape customer value and therefore, how companies must integrate this understanding of customer value into their business practices.

By integrating these dynamics, this course is designed to provide participants with a practical, hands-on approach in order to evaluate the readiness of their own business operations to deliver superior value to customers. The foundational marketing strategy premise of this course is that organizations must deliver maximum value to their customers / clients / stakeholders in order to survive and thrive into the future. In order to accomplish this, a full, coordinated organizational effort is required.

Participants should be able to come away from the course with the ability to critically assess their organizations around four fundamental marketing strategy questions:

1. Are your operations aligned to deliver customer value?
2. Do you fully understand what your customer values?
3. What business model will best deliver value to those customers?
4. How does brand strategy fit into this business model? 

(1.87 credit units)

Both for profit and not for profit leaders are facing increased scrutiny from external stakeholders (e.g. clients, shareholders, politicians, citizen groups, and the media). Recent events have brought home as never before the importance of moral leadership, the development of an ethical corporate culture, and the incorporation of ethical thought and social responsibility into managerial decision making. This course is founded on the premise that ethical leadership is a critical management task, just as much as is leadership of the traditional business functions of finance, accounting and marketing. Students will be given the opportunity to apply the tools of ethical leadership and diversity sensitive management to a range of ethical challenges in both national and international contexts.

(1.87 credit units)

In MBUS 834, we will extend students’ understanding of financial statements by exploring principles of advanced financial statement analysis and financial modelling that facilitate firm-specific valuation. We will analyze financial statements using ratios, growth rates, and trend analysis, and explore firm-specific managerial and strategic decisions by modelling the effects of those decisions on financial statements. By connecting financial statements back to strategy, and key performance indicators with financial metrics and financial drivers, we will focus on integrating modelling and strategic decisions. We will explore strategic and other factors that lead to success through the lens of the financial statements. Current Canadian business will be analyzed and modelled from a practical standpoint while integrating financial analysis theory.

(1.5 credit units)

This course is designed to explore the relevance and impact of management during challenging situations, against the backdrop of the current global pandemic. It will examine the effect of crisis from a number of different perspectives/functions, and outline strategies to adapt, react and thrive during turbulent times. It will provide future and current leaders with a working knowledge of how to anticipate the effects a crisis situation might have on their operations, and to identify real-time solutions to bring back to their employers. Topics covered (among others) include change and resilience, leading virtual teams, people analytics, our “next normal”, and executing in uncertain times. This intensive three-week elective course is divided into six modules and taught by Smith faculty members, leveraging their teaching and research expertise.

(1.5 credit units)

Negotiation involves resolving differences, reaching agreements, and managing conflict between individuals, groups, organizations, and even nations. These are essential activities in the world of management. Indeed, such expertise is now considered a core competency for executives and leaders. Excellent negotiation abilities are crucial in both the private and public sectors, in managerial decision-making, in inter-organization negotiations, in labour-management conflict, in mergers and acquisitions, and a host of other commercial and political interactions and transactions. It is therefore essential to develop or refine the skills and understanding to negotiate and to manage conflict effectively. It is possible to become an excellent negotiator and conflict manager without taking a course in the subject, but individuals who develop negotiation skills entirely on their own are quite rare. More importantly, they have become professional in their behaviour through extensive experience (i.e., practice). In other words, they, too, have learned to be highly effective negotiators. Often they have learned from others. Moreover, they have learned not just from their successes but also their mistakes. One purpose of this course is to help you avoid the mistakes that can be made in negotiations, and the course will provide opportunities for you to learn from your mistakes in the low-cost environment of our classroom. Another purpose of the course is to place negotiation behaviour into a broader theoretical context to allow you to analyze your past actions and future negotiation strategies more systematically. Many people believe, like much other management activity, negotiation is more art than science. However, good negotiating behaviour is both innate and learned; you can improve your skills and learn related techniques through classroom education. To become an effective negotiator, you must have excellent interpersonal skills (some of these are innate, but some can be developed) and you must be highly conceptual and strategic in your thinking (this, too, can be taught and developed). Moreover, it is useful to have a thorough knowledge of the negotiation process in both theoretical and practical terms so that you can better understand the behaviour of others with whom you interact in negotiation settings. All of this is to say that it is useful to study as well as participate in negotiations. Both knowledge from theory and knowledge from practice are useful to those attempting to improve their understanding of the negotiation process. A sound theoretical framework informs practice, and theory evolves from the experience of those who practice. You will have the opportunity to acquire the core competencies and knowledge through lectures, video, case analysis, and experiential exercises that simulate negotiations.