Courses and programme delivery

This course emphasizes the synthesis of economic theory, decision sciences, and the various fields of business administration studies. It examines how they interact with one another as the firm attempts to reach optimal managerial decisions in the face of constraints. A special emphasis will be made on how managerial decisions are actually made in the real world. The course will increase the effectiveness of decision making by expanding and sharpening the analytical framework used by managers to make decisions.

The course carefully examines the two aspects of the environment the companies operate in. The first part of the course focuses on the company, primarily the questions of professional responsibilities of “developers”, business ethics and the role of corporation in the society. The second part examines the external environment in which companies do business and are therefore affected by it and their performance depends on whether the business environment is conducive to business growth or not. The course topics covered are environment defined as environment of institutions, stakeholders and different county settings (competitiveness of countries). We define macroeconomic as well as microeconomic environment in line with macroeconomic and microeconomic policies. We also address broader social policies and their impact on the quality of a business environment. We put special emphasis on technological development and challenges emerging from globalization. Political context is addressed as well.

The course topics will be covered economic concept and some contemporary issues, transition and the theory and practice, concepts and GNP measure of economic activity, aggregates expenditure and GDP determination, aggregates supply, economic growth, inflation, and unemployment, basic of monetary economics, economy policies.

The course is an extensive intermediate level corporate finance course. It is designed to first give in-depth knowledge of financial fundamentals. Knowledge is then extended to main strategic financial and investment decisions (capital budgeting, capital structure, dividend policy and working capital policy) and respective operating decisions. The third part of the course builds on analytical models and the logic learned in the first two parts. It is devoted to developing all the necessary skills for problem solving in respective areas of corporate finance through the use of comprehensive guided cases.

The purpose of this course is to understand the theory and process of management as applied to a variety of settings within organisations and with relation to the environment of the 21st century. Management entails the coordination of tasks for the achievement of set objectives and is defined as the creative solving of problems, which occur in the planning, organising, leading and controlling of resources.

The basic purpose of the course is to enable participants to understand the meaning of contemporary marketing, its concepts, methodology and management in market oriented firms. Through such approach students can learn about marketing planinng, decision making and management of marketing processes in local and global markets.

The course combines core strategic management topics and intermediate/ advanced topics. It covers certain aspects of corporate-level strategy (diversification, mergers and acquisitions, core competences), business-level strategy (the sources and forms of competitive advantage), strategy implementation and strategic control (contemporary approaches to performance measurement) as well as some specifics in nonprofit organisations.

Any firm in the manufacturing or the service sector needs to have a sound operations strategy to survive in today’s global economy. If a firm can develop core operational capabilities then it is often able to gain a strong advantage over its competitors. This course will introduce students to concepts and techniques that are essential for the design, planning, control and improvement of service and manufacturing operations with a strong emphasis on supply chain management. The course will provide you with quantitative and qualitative tools to analyze operations and supply chain processes. The first part will cover the topics essential to effective supply chain management like for instance the value of information in achieving a coordinated supply chain networks, the importance of coordinated product and supply chain design and the concept of lead time in selecting the right logistics strategy. The second part will be devoted to demand forecasting and inventory management in companies facing uncertain market demand, where concepts of risk pooling, supply contracts and distribution strategies are discussed. Classic examples discussed through the study of business simulation games and business cases include different industries and companies like Wal-Mart, Amazon, Barilla, Dell Computers, Hewlett-Packard, Apple, Zara and others.

After completing the course, participants will be able to read and analyse financial statements; distinguish between various types of costs; know the traditional and activity-based costing systems and compute costs by using different costing systems; understand and compute the break-even point; perform the cost-volume-profit (i.e. CVP) analysis, and understand the impact of corporate strategy on management accounting, including contemporary management tools related to performance management.

This course is based on the premise, that decisions about managing people make a difference: The decisions you make as a manager affect not only your own success but also employee behaviors, their performance and well being, their focus on satisfying customers, their sense of fair treatment, and ultimately, the efficiency and effectiveness of entire organization. Therefore the way organizations manage their people (human resources) is an important element of organizational success. On the other hand, HRM function should help employees develop their potential and translate it into achieving good working results and positive career outcomes. In the course we thus want to present various activities within HRM function, some methods and techniques used in organizations for managing people and explain the link between HRM and organizational as well as individual employee performance.

The aim of the course is to equip participants with the basic and advanced concepts, methods and information technology tools related to business decisions making. Upon completion of this course, participants should be able to understand why decision support systems are important and how they can be used in an organisation, and to use methods and software tools for business decision making.

The major objective of this course is to gain practical negotiations competencies and enhance negotiations skills in different kind of negotiations based on the science and art of negotiating. Special attention is given to international negotiations and persuation skills. Course is based on interactive class activities, cases, simulations and videos on most important negotiation issues.

The course introduces students into the research process in business studies. It provides an overview of key concepts, methods, and techniques of research. In addition, students will gain advanced understanding of research methods (not only techniques) and develop research skills. The course also shows practical applications and prepares students for Master thesis.

The decision should be approved by Programme Director. If a Research Project is selected, it should be related to the Master thesis topic. The course requires that the students discuss limitations in earning their research findings and present the opportunities for their further research work. The result of a project is a written report which can be developed into an article or a part of Master thesis.