Business Administration Courses
BUAD 467/667: Sustainability and Green Business
(Please Note: This course does not bear credit toward a Lerner College degree, though students may take it to shore up their understanding of business fundamentals.)
This course intends to provide you, a non-business major, with a broad overview of the complex and dynamic contemporary world of business. The course will illustrate how human resources management, marketing, production and finance are major functions that work together to business organizations, employees, and customers/stakeholders reach their objectives. Both domestic businesses and global businesses operate within economic, social, legal, and political environments. Success is determined by the how well a business can master all these environmental factors within the context of the organizations culture and values. The course will provide a manager’s perspective to working with a wide variety of people and situations within these environments. Though this course is not specifically on international business, however, the world is becoming more flat and the business world is thus global in nature and demands our attention.
Syllabi available: Fall 2011-BUAD500 (Fisher)
Sport Marketing presents an overview of the various techniques and strategies utilized to meet the wants and needs of the sport consumer in the sport industry as well as understanding how sport can be used to assist in the marketing of other companies and products. Areas to be addressed include the uniqueness of the sport marketing in comparison to traditional marketing, an overview of the segments of the sports industry, the importance of market research and segmentation in identifying the right sport consumer, the utilization of data base marketing in reaching the sport consumer, the overview of the marketing mix, and the development of sponsorship and endorsement packages.
Overview of the global sport industry, including the bid and host process for international sport competitions, the organization of the international sport community, the penetration strategies of American sport leagues and products into international markets, and the structure of sport in other countries.
BUAD 634: Sport Finance
HESC634: Explores the principles of financial management and microeconomics as applied to the sport industry, with a focus on spectator sports at both professional and collegiate levels. Topics include the financing of sport facility construction, budgeting in collegiate athletics, and the financial effects of collective bargaining agreements.
The objective of the course is to explore the role of the contemporary corporation and how it interacts – or should interact – with American society. The answers to these inquiries will meaningfully contribute to the shape of the 21st society that you will help lead, whether in the business world or not. Your understanding of these issues will be important to attaining these leadership positions.
In a simpler era, the purpose of the American corporation was sharply defined: maximize profits. Strong corporations are, after all, the engine of the American economy – leading to jobs, wealth creation, and national strength.
But to the contemporary corporation, generating profits – though still of undeniable importance – is accompanied by other expectations.
Today, many commentators are demanding that corporations meet enhanced standards of governance and conduct. Many advocates may have narrow agendas – seeking to enlist the wealth and expertise of corporations to address specific, legitimate public goals (e.g., environmental sustainability). Yet some of these objectives may not always appear consistent with the traditional corporate focus on profit maximization.
Among the topics considered are the following:
- The modern corporate structure: Designed or Created by happenstance?
- The status of contemporary Corporate Governance
- Who are—or should be—Corporate Directors?
- Compensation Issues
- quality management
- Corporate Social Responsibility and its Implications
- Corporate Reputation as affected by Society’s Opinion Shapers
- Corporate Philanthropy – still a significant measure of corporate citizenship?
- Or is Environmentalism the new litmus test of corporate citizenship?
- Corporations and the Public Sector (Government)
- Corporate Lobbying
- Crisis Management
Study the largest component of the economy of all developed countries, the service sector. This sector has not had the large productivity improvements that other sectors have experienced, therefore it is critical that attention be given to improving the operations of service delivery systems. This is not a problem that will be solved by technology alone.
This course will focus on the following areas in order to provide the student with the management talent required to be successful and improve this sector.
- An overview of the role of services in the economy and enterprises
- Design and delivery of services
- Measurement of productivity and quality
- Managing capacity and demand
- quality management
- Redesign of service delivery processes
- Management of technology
- Managing human resources
This course will cover these topics as they relate to both “pure” service sector (banking, transportation, travel and tourism, government, etc.) and within the service functions of manufacturing (after-sales support, financing, etc.).
Syllabi available: Spring 2008-BUAD667 (Harker)
BUAD 667: Spreadsheet Modeling for Business Decision Making (Spring 2010)
Syllabi available: Spring 2010-BUAD667 (Chen)
BUAD 667:Health Care Delivery (Spring 2010)
BUAD667: Sustainability and Green Business (Spring 2011)
Syllabi available: Spring 2011-BUAD667 (Chapas)
This survey course looks at environmental, market, institutional, industrial, strategic, organizational, and managerial features of international business. We consider several viewpoints that guide managers’ understanding of the idea of international business, review how managers interpret operational challenges and opportunities, and discuss implications to professional development. The mandate of this class, then, is to study the phenomena of the environments and operations of international business in ways that help managers clarify the basis for their success and identify way to sustain it.
This class adopts the executive perspective that all dimension in the business world are in play. As such, I expect students to strive to integrate the knowledge gained through their university studies thus far with the wisdom earned during their personal and professional experiences. Ideally, within the context of our class, the task of integration will give each student the opportunity to improve his or her understanding of international business.
Syllabi available: Spring 2012-BUAD811 (Sullivan)
BUAD820 is a core course in the MBA program that is designed to provide the student with insights on analyzing data to guide business decisions.The course introduces the student to following data analysis topics:
- Stratification – students learn how to organize data into tables and graphs to help decision making process.
- Tools of quality management – students learn how companies use a set of simple tools for analyzing and improving business processes.
- Control charts – students learn how companies track important service and manufacturing processes to identify opportunities for improvement.
- Quantifying uncertainty – students learn how to statistically quantify uncertainty and work with empirical and commonly used theoretical data distributions.
- Decision tree analysis – this topic addresses how available data can be used for strategic decision making (e.g. launching a new product) under uncertainty.
- Sampling and Estimation – student learn how to draw conclusions about data coming from opinion and business surveys.
- Regression analysis – students learn how available data can be used to build powerful models for making predictions for important business metrics.
In this course, students learn to analyze data using Microsoft EXCEL, which is a widely used business productivity software package. Students see applications of many of the topics listed above via business cases published by Richard Ivey School of Business, Harvard Business School and Kellogg School of Management.
Syllabi available: Spring 2013-BUAD820 (Thompson)
Operations Management relates to the design and management of processes that create goods and services. The coverage of operations topics will help you gain an understanding of the role of the operations function in developing and maintaining competitive service and manufacturing organizations.
Examples of operations management topics typically covered in BUAD831 are:
- Process Design
- Sales & Operations Planning
- Project Management
- Supply Chain Management
- Inventory Management
- Lean (JIT) Systems
- Capacity Management
Management Science refers to the use of mathematical models in business decision making contexts. Such models are used to obtain preliminary solutions to business problems. These models are driven by measurable characteristics of the system being analyzed. The process by which managers can then use these preliminary solutions in conjunction with qualitative factors to obtain good solutions is a vital connection between Operations Management and Management Science and thus, an important element of the course.
Examples of management science topics typically covered in BUAD831 are:
- Linear Programming
- Waiting Line or Queuing Models
The purpose of this course is to help you:
- Clarify your personal values
- Anticipate and prepare for ethical dilemmas you may encounter
- Be sensitive to evolving social expectations
- Recognize ethical dimensions in real business situations and decisions
- Understand legal and other longer term consequences of unethical behavior
- Learn how to analyze ethical situations and make wise decisions
- Develop approaches for reducing unethical behavior in your organization
Using a seminar approach, the principles and dimensions of business ethics will be explored. A range of cases and issues will be examined to develop ethical sensitivity and decision-making skills. There will also be small group learning activities. To customize the course to your specific ethical concerns, four classes will focus primarily on issues that you select and analyze.
Syllabi available: Spring 2013-BUAD840 (Weaver); Summer 2013-BUAD840 (Osoinach); Winter Session 2013-BUAD840.867 (Weaver); Fall 2012-BUAD840.012 (Smith); Fall 2012-BUAD840 (Weaver); Fall 2009-BUAD840 (Weaver); Fall 2008-BUAD840 (Norman); Summer 2008-BUAD840 (Osoinach)
Examines selected topics in global business that may focus on one or more areas of the world (e.g. the European Union, Latin America, Pacific Basin, etc.).
Syllabi available: Spring Session 2013-BUAD843 (Kane); Winter Session 2013-BUAD843 (Weaver); Summer 2007-BUAD843 (Piccardi)
This course focuses on the creation of new business ventures, and is primarily concerned with bringing an innovation to launch, that is, to market or application. The course introduces a number of tools and procedures to increase the success of development and control the process.
The objective of the course is for students to be able to structure a new venture process, know the various tools that are available, and be able to apply appropriate tools to an actual new venture, whether a start-up or an “intrapreneurial” project. Student learning will be primarily assessed through evaluation of this applied project, along with a few individual problems and a brief test.
Syllabi available: Fall 2007-BUAD856 (Kmetz)
Innovention – the processes of innovation and invention.
This course will demonstrate that we are all capable of innovation – it is intrinsic in the human psyche. Our educational and business structures teach us quite forcefully how not to be innovative. We will go into detail on the differences between innovation and invention. The hard part of innovation is properly determining the parameters of the problem and ultimate opportunity. Once that is done the only challenge that remains is finding solutions which are efficient and profitable – and we will also show how to do this. Invention is harder to learn but it has its tricks as well.
There will be numerous exercises, examples and projects. Innovation is NOT a spectator sport, but once you learn how easy it actually is, you will be overwhelmed by the number of opportunities whose profitable solution is well within your grasp.
Think back to how innovative the early Egyptians and Chinese were and you have no choice but to accept that the conventional wisdom that you have to have an advanced degree in science or be a senior corporate executive in order to be innovative is completely wrong.
BUAD 861: Ethical Leadership Development
In this course we will explore the science, theories, research and current popular notions about why people behave the way they do in organizations and what we as ethical leaders can do to better engage our employees and encourage them to be fully productive.
We will draw on research from psychology, neuroscience, evolutionary science and organizational behavior to learn how to best lead our teams, our organizations and ourselves.
We will explore our own personal, management and leadership practices through a series of assignments, surveys and exercises, which are designed to help us diagnose our own effectiveness as individuals and leaders.
We will learn how to be better leaders regardless of our organizational level or function. The primary goal is to improve both our understanding and our practice of leadership. We will use the frame of authentic leadership as a way to examine both our ethics and our personal leadership journeys.
Syllabi available: Fall 2012-BUAD861 (Baroudi)
Syllabi available: Fall 2010-BUAD861 (Baroudi)
This course focuses on the design of a successful small business venture and the application of business management practices. Working alone or with a partner, you will develop a business plan for a project of your choosing. You will be expected to incorporate a broad range of business management skills including accounting, marketing, and finance. Each of these areas will be covered in classroom discussions.
Syllabi available: Winter 2013-BUAD867 (Osoinach)
Organizational success depends on people interacting to achieve a common goal. In this course, we will explore those human interactions specifically focused on understanding 1) How can you more effectively participate in an organization? and 2) How can you better manage people in organizations? We will address these questions by learning about the underlying psychological and sociological foundations of human behavior, and will engage in discussions and exercises to help you build effective individual and managerial skills. This course considers four levels of analysis – individual, interpersonal, group and organizational. Much of our learning in this course will be through case studies, exercises and class discussions.
Course Objectives
- Understanding theories about managing people to achieve productive and satisfied organizational members and improved organizational performance.
- Improving managerial skills involved with diagnosing organizational problems and making managerial decisions.
- Developing the knowledge and skills you need to explore your own potential and manager yourself and your career.
This course explores the innovation process, linkages between creativity and innovation, and the methodology for the management of an organization and individuals with responsibility for innovation and creativity. We will explore the origins of creative thought and the interactions of the individual with the organizational and social environment in order to understand how ideas are generated and linked to opportunities. This will include understanding the customers/constituents needs in order to create new products, services, and offerings.
Syllabi available: Spring 2012-BUAD871 (Karol)
This course focuses on the theory and application of organizational change. The overall course objective is to provide knowledge and skills to function as effective change agents in organizations. This objective will be achieved by exposing you to a variety of real cases along with relevant existing theories. At the end the course, you are expected to:
- Better understand both classic and contemporary organizational change concepts
- Be ready to use techniques for planned organizational change
- Acquire the sense of “being in the shoes” of managers facing situations of change and feel competent to deal with them
Learn valid principles and practices of human resource management, especially those pertaining to strategic HR management, employee selection, training and development, compensation, and employee relations. Understand how these apply to real work settings and how they can provide competitive advantage.
Syllabi available: Spring 2013-BUAD875 (Becker); Spring 2008-BUAD875 (Becker)
This course focuses on the transition of theory to practice in driving change at the individual, team and organization levels. By the conclusion of the session, participants will have gained increased skill and ability to view systems more clearly from individual, team and system levels and posses skills to positively drive change.
Specific outcomes are to:
- Increase self-awareness to acquire insight into self and the impact upon others
- Discover how individual belief systems drive organization behavior
- Increase ability to diagnose, develop and advance team effectiveness
- Expand ability to more effectively negotiate to achieve win/win outcomes
- Learn and apply change theory and practices to drive positive change
- Link individual, team and organization change theory into effective practice
- Have some fun while learning and applying change concepts!!
The course is designed to help develop negotiation skills experientially (through participation in negotiation role-play exercises) and to understand negotiation in useful analytical frameworks.
The following is a partial list of course objectives:
- Improve your ability to negotiate effectively
- Be able to analyze negotiation situation
- Develop a strategic plan for effective negotiation
- Gain an intellectual understanding of negotiator behavior
- Gain confidence as a negotiator
BUAD880 class deals with management of marketing functions in modern profit and nonprofit enterprises. The major purpose of this course is to introduce you to the marketing management process. It is designed to help you:
- To develop an awareness of the major types of marketing problems faced by organizations, with emphasis on sound analytical approaches to effective decisions.
- To analyze critically the task of marketing under contemporary conditions and to examine the major functions that comprise the marketing task.
- To evaluate various types of policies that can be employed in guiding the marketing activity.
The course is divided in four modules:
- Introduction: Topics covered – Basic marketing concepts, marketing arithmetic, marketing plan, effect of environment on marketing decision making
- Assessing Marketing Opportunity: Topics covered: Market segmentation, targeting, and positioning, consumer analysis, marketing research
- Designing Marketing Strategy: Topics covered: Models of competitive analysis, 4Ps – Product, Price, Place, and Promotion decisions
- Group Project: A comprehensive group project developing marketing plan or strategy for a company
This class focuses on the techniques of research design, data collection, and data
analysis for making marketing decisions. Helps students develop an
appreciation for the potential contributions and limitations of marketing
research data, enabling them to evaluate marketing research activities.
Emphasizes interpretation, not computation, from statistical analyses.
Note: This class is required for a Marketing concentration. PREREQ: BUAD820 and BUAD880
Syllabi available: Fall 2012-BUAD881 (Manrai); Spring 2012-BUAD881 (Manrai)
BUAD 882: International Marketing Managing
Syllabi available: Spring 2013-BUAD882 (Manrai)
BUAD 883 integrates topics in pricing strategy and product marketing planning. Special emphasis is given to the use of conceptual frameworks and analytical methods that may be used to improve product and price decisions.
Pricing – Very few people really understand pricing. Most people believe incorrectly that 95% of all prices are driven by the cost of a product or service. BAUD 883 takes a marketing approach to examine how prices are set and how prices should be set. The concepts and methods taught are then applied to real-world case studies.
Marketing Planning – Marketing planning is the process of deciding how to provide value to your customers, your company/organization, and key stakeholders by analyzing the market and target customers, developing marketing objectives, strategies and programs and then evaluating and implementing key marketing activities to achieve your objective. The course prepares the student to tackle the task of designing and preparing a marketing plan.
Syllabi available: Spring 2013-BUAD883 (Chopko); Summer 2010-BUAD883 (Chopko)
BUAD884 discusses ways in which information technology can be used to learn about and market to individual customers. Information technology has had two important effects on marketing.
First, the most recent technology, the internet, has changed the competitive environment: The Internet has strengthened direct-to-consumer offerings, introduced new ways to advertise to the consumer, has bolstered multi-media offerings and so on. Therefore, the first goal of this course is focus on how to adapt marketing strategy to the online environment.
Second, technologies, like the internet, are versatile tools for collecting huge amounts of customer information. However, these databases of customer information would be useless if not for a) the ability to intelligently manipulate these databases and b) to use the resulting information to enhance marketing programs and build strong customer relationships. Hence, the second goal of this course deals with database marketing. Specifically, the course will discuss tools and techniques that help marketers analyze and act on customer information.
This course can be interesting and fun if you have significant interest in IT, the enthusiasm to think outside the box, and an ability to understand that sometimes business problems do not have textbook solutions.
The course is divided in four modules:
- Introduction to the online environment and industry
- Internet Marketing Techniques
- Database marketing and customer economics
- Regression, Response Modeling, Segmentation Analysis and Lifetime Value
BUAD886 provides a practical introduction to the basics of advertising management from a client’s perspective. The topics include agency selection, buyer targeting, creative strategy and methods, media selection and evolution, and effects measurement. A strong emphasis is placed throughout the course on new media technologies such as digital television, TiVo, satellite radio, wireless networks, GPS, and TV over the internet.
Students create and present a comprehensive ad plan late in the term. Other tasks involve writing essay exams and papers on ad clients and media technologies. The course is appropriate for people with and without direct advertising experience.
Syllabi available: Fall 2007-BUAD886 (Kent)
Marketing begins and ends with the consumer- from determining consumer needs to providing consumer satisfaction. Thus, a clear understanding of consumers is critical in successfully managing the marketing function in any organization, whether profit or nonprofit.
This course focuses on the analysis of consumer behavior phenomena from a scientific, psychological perspective. Depth of understanding of empirical regularities and underlying psychological processes is the key to success in today’s complex marketplaces. Product life cycles are shorter, marketer segments are smaller, and the competition is more intense than ever. The marketing manager who possesses an in-depth, scientific understanding of consumer judgment and decision-making will succeed where others fail.
Accordingly, the purpose of this course is to introduce you to the scientific study of buyer behavior. Sometimes we will take the perspective of a marketing manager who needs an understanding of consumer behavior in order to develop, evaluate, and implement effective marketing strategies. We will examine many concepts and theories from the behavioral sciences and analyze their usefulness for developing marketing strategies. In other cases, we will take the perspective of a consumer (which we all are!), introspecting about our own consumer behavior. This will make the concepts and theories more concrete and imaginable.
Syllabus available: Fall 2012-BUAD887 (Bayuk)
The primary purpose of the seminar is to provide students an opportunity to become experts in a marketing related topic of their interest. Therefore, the seminar class is designed to allow students to research a marketing problem in greater depth and detail. Typically, an expert would be someone who is extensively familiar with the existing knowledge and practice on a topic. The seminar begins with your selection of a topic of your choice that you would like to investigate and study in depth.
Syllabi available: Winter 2013-BUAD888 (Manrai); Summer 2012-BUAD888 (Manrai)
Corporate Strategy is all about competition in the global environment. It examines the enterprise from the vantage point of the CEO and Board of Directors. It involves developing policy at the corporate level that will create and sustain competitive advantage.
Corporate Strategy integrates the many disciplines studied in your MBA program. By developing an understanding of when and how to apply concepts and techniques learned in earlier accounting, finance, management, and marketing courses, Corporate Strategy bridges the gap between theory and practice. The emphasis is on combining analytical, integrative, and decision-making skills to plan and implement a course of action for an enterprise.
Corporate Strategy is a course about the realities of today’s corporate climate that include rapidly changing markets, breakthrough technologies, fickle consumer tastes, and global competition. In order to navigate in this difficult environment, survival depends increasingly on skillful execution of well-conceived strategies. An understanding of competition and competitive strategies to deal with today’s threats and opportunities is gained by studying theory and cases from the business world.
Course objectives are to:
- Develop competence in understanding strategic issues and options
- Recognize the influence of external and internal forces on strategic options
- Appreciate the strengths and weaknesses of alternative strategies
- Understand the relationships between functional areas and systems of interrelated activities
- Apply theoretical concepts in making policy decisions
- Gain experience in applying tactical decisions to competitive situations
- Develop oral presentation and writing skills
- Enhance team building and collaborative skills in accomplishing group tasks
BUAD 898: Professional Project: MS OEDC
Syllabi available: Fall 2012-BUAD898 (Sawyer); Fall 2011-BUAD898 (Sawyer)
The Business Consulting Project is a capstone practicum course in the MBA program offered by the Lerner College. The course provides the opportunity for MBA students to gain applied consulting project experience while providing a valuable service to the business community. MBA students work in teams of two to five people on significant business projects under the guidance of business professors with considerable professional experience. Student project groups will dedicate up to 500-1000 person-hours to a specific business project. Business projects may originate from large corporations, non-profit and government agencies, small businesses, entrepreneurs, and may include projects derived from students’ employers.
The course is designed to meet the needs of the majority of students who work in existing organizations, where issues such as changes in strategy, changes in organization, process improvement, quality certification, marketing problems and projects, and many other kinds of challenges routinely arise and may require internal consulting skills. However, the course is also appropriate for those students who have career interests in consulting, whether working for a large global consultancy or striking out on their own.
Appropriate consulting projects may come from any area of business and may support one or more of the concentrations or specializations in the MBA program. Three attributes of an acceptable project are: (1) the problem is one that has been sufficiently articulated by the client to define an initial scope of work (2) the organization will allow the student group to implement and test their solution, or accept their recommendations if action is not possible; and (3) the organization will cover the necessary expenses of the project.
Students may elect to take BUAD 899 twice, for a maximum of six credits. The information below is provided for those students taking the course for the first time, and in the event that students are repeating, the initial orientation requirements will not apply, but rather, full course grading and credit will be placed on the second client project
Syllabi available: Spring 2013-BUAD899 (Kmetz)