MBA Courses

The Core Courses (32 units) are:

Basic Core

MGT 306 Quantitative MethodsMGT 321 Marketing ManagementMGT 326 Financial AccountingMGT 325 The Drucker DifferenceMGT 345 Organizational Behavior
Intermediate Core:MGT 335 Corporate FinanceMGT 360 Applied Operational Methods
Advanced Core:MGT 340 Strategy

Waiving CoursesStudents may request waivers from first-year core courses if they’ve mastered them through previous study. Such exemptions, based on transcript reviews or waiver examinations, do not reduce the 60 unit requirement for the MBA degree.
The Courses

MGT 306 Quantitative MethodsThis course is designed to provide an introduction to statistical methods useful for analyzing data, with specific application to problems of business and economics. At the end of the class, students will have an understanding of uncertainty and risk management, estimation and forecasting, optimization, and the logic of statistical inference. Students will also be expected to learn how to use statistics to think critically about real world issues. Statistical methodology and theory will be presented in an applications context. Ultimately, the goal is to provide students with quantitative tools that can be used in the areas of economics, marketing, financial and managerial accounting, corporate finance, and applied operational methods.
MGT 321 Marketing ManagementThis course examines the process of strategic marketing management and considers its role within organizations. It presents the fundamentals of the marketing concept and considers the relationship between the marketing concept and other concepts such as innovation and entrepreneurship. The course considers tools and methods used to examine marketing environments, understand consumer and organizational buying behavior, segment markets and position products, develop new products, manage existing products and promote, price and place products.
MGT 325 The Drucker DifferenceThis course focuses on individual, organizational, and societal issues raised by Peter Drucker and explores their implications in different functional areas of management. It is intended to offer a broad overview on the major works of Peter Drucker while also providing vertical depth of analysis in one of the functional areas.
This course is offered as a 14-week MBA course for entering students. Each three-hour class session is taught by a Drucker faculty member with a distinctive focus based on the faculty’s expertise.
MGT 326 Financial AccountingThe goal of this course is to enable the student to appreciate and understand financial accounting—the language of business—from the perspective of the user/manager. By the end of the course, the student will understand the basic rules governing the preparation of financial statements, the flexibility that exists within these rules, possible incentives for management to make choices from within these rules, and the output from this environment.
MGT 335 Corporate Finance(Prerequisite: MGT 306, MGT 326)This course is designed to help students develop an understanding of financial decision making, including investment decisions, financing decisions, and their interaction. The course provides the students with the underlying framework of corporate finance including valuation, market efficiency, portfolio theory, agency costs, and information costs. The course will relate financial management to the structure of financial institutions in the U.S. In addition, the course includes a survey of special topics in finance including option pricing, mergers and acquisitions, hedging, and international finance.
MGT 340 Strategy(Prerequisite: All core classes completed)The focus of this course is on how general managers enhance and sustain business performance. The course covers analytical and conceptual tools that are aids to the development of decision. Its fundamental focus, however, is not on tools but on sharpening skills at developing robust judgments in the face of uncertainty and complexity. The central concept of this course is that of strategy. Strategy is enabled and constrained by the underlying economic and political conditions that prevail in an industry or a country, as well as by the resources available to management.
MGT 345 Organizational BehaviorThe purpose of this course is to provide students with a foundation of the fundamental skills they will need to understand, diagnose, and manage organizational behavior in order to attain the organization’s mission more effectively. We will conduct structured classroom exercises geared toward discovering your own strengths and their potential for optimizing your contribution to an organization.
MGT 360 Applied Operational Methods(Prerequisite: MGT 306)The objective of this course is to develop a general managerial perspective on the role of operations management in the function of a firm, at both the tactical and strategic levels. The course will offer a broad survey of concepts and techniques in managing operations, with particular emphasis on a number of major operations management issues that can significantly affect the competitive position of a firm in the marketplace. Through the discussions of these issues, the students can also develop a good understanding about how operations should interact with other functional areas such as marketing and finance. We will also study coordination and incentives across multiple groups or players in a supply chain. While tactical models and decisions are part of this course, the emphasis is on the qualitative insights needed by general managers or management consultants.