International Graduate Business School

The primary focus of this course is the top-level executives who provide strategic leadership to business organizations.  Students will learn about the roles, functions, and responsibilities of leadership, in order to learn the administrative requirements of leadership.

In addition, students will be introduced to the analytical skills and social and personal characteristics of highly effective leaders.  Case studies, videotapes and other media will be used to explore these and related issues.

Today's business environment forces executives to use every tool at their disposal to create and maintain an effective and adaptable organization. A major source of effectiveness and adaptability is the way in which the company's efforts are organized-its systems, structures, management process, rewards and strategies. The primary job of senior management today is to design, build, and operate organizations that function effectively. What this means is that the organization is in a constant state of change.

Understanding the change process is vital. Knowing the roadblocks to effective change is very important. The role of the manager as a change agent becomes critical. Often the problems arise not from the change itself, but the process of making the change. Individuals resist change. It is a natural phenomenon. How and why this change manifests itself is a central issue in this course. Developing the skills to move through the change process not knowing what roadblocks one might encounter is becoming incredibly valuable.

This course is designed for individuals interested in starting, building or growing with a high-tech company. It would also be of interest to students pursuing a career in consulting to high-tech industries or venture capital.

The course will help students build a strategic perspective on problems related to innovation management and explore solution implementation to the challenges of innovation.

Building and managing a global talent pipeline is the single most critical leadership challenge in today's global business environment. In this clinic, we will introduce students to current issues and practices in talent management. Our course will examine in-depth practices launched at the C-Suite level and by Boards of Directors to meet these challenges. This clinic will allow students to directly discuss these issues with senior corporate leaders and Board members who have been intimately involved in the global talent management process. An Action-Learning philosophy guides the operations of the course and students will be given several tools to assess development practices in their company and to better understand opportunities for developing their global leadership skills.

Successful management of business enterprises requires consistently good decision-making. This course focuses on the development and enhancement of the critical thinking skills that effective business leaders must have, the relationship between critical thinking and sound decision-making processes, and the ways to guard against reasoning errors that, when left unchecked, may result in poor business decisions.

*Each student may choose which of this two elective courses he/she wants to take

The objective of this course is to familiarize students with the basic principle of how the world economy functions and on how it may impact international business managers.

The focus will be on the global environment in which multinational companies operate. Thus, participants should acquire awareness of, and appreciation for, the diversity and complexity of the international environment.

The purpose of this course is to provide students with an in-depth exposure to the theory of industry structural analysis and to begin gain practice in its application.

Students will learn how to use the competitive forces model for interpreting the strategic implications of evolutionary and revolutionary shifts in industry structures.