Accounting and Control for Managers (ACM)
In ACM you will examine the areas of Financial Accounting, Managerial Accounting, Cost Accounting, and Management Control Systems, concentrating on the transformation and interpretation of financial measures to assist managers in making decisions regarding alternatives.
Required
Accounting Strategy and Control
The target audience for this course is those who intend to manage rather than be managed. Those who intend to progress to senior management corner suite positions and will therefore need to manage performance on a systematic basis. Those with an interest in leadership roles and who will enter into demanding competition for elite consultancy and financial markets employment. Simply put, you need more accounting if you want to do these things.
Elective
Business Law
This course will introduce you to Canadian business law and give you an understanding of general legal principles as they apply to business.
Elective
Business Solutions to Big Problems
In a world where capitalism, business schools, and business are seen as greed-ridden, corrupt, and bankrupt, the position of this course is that business brings managerial, organizational, and motivational acumen that can help address some of the world’s biggest problems. We will see how markets and organizations offer effective ways to solve problems of energy, pollution, poverty, and disease.
Elective
Communicating Effectively (CE)
In CE, you will focus on mastering verbal and non-verbal communication skills in order to be an effective leader. Various presentation styles will be analyzed, but through your own experiences in this hands-on course, you will develop a deepened personal appreciation of how to maximize your own unique style.
Required
Competing with Analytics
The course will build on material covered in the MBA core class “Decision Making with Analytics.” It will provide you with an understanding of the field of business analytics with a focus on examining the ways that globally competitive corporations are using analytics to achieve a sustained competitive advantage.
Elective
Competition and Competitive Analysis
This course extends the Designing and Executing Strategies Module by focusing on competitive interaction. Building on the economic foundations of competitive interaction, the first part of the course analyzes several aspects of game theory thinking and how this thinking can be incorporated into the strategy building process. The behavioral aspects of competition will complement the economic view. The course includes a series of cases on specific firm-level interactions are aimed at building skills in the development of competitive conjectures.
Elective
Consumer Marketing
You will learn hands-on how brands are managed, how brands cope with competitive and environmental threats and opportunities, and how brands are handled in the channel by both manufacturers and retailers.
Elective
Corporate Financial Reporting
You will learn hands-on how brands are managed, how brands cope with competitive and environmental threats and opportunities, and how brands are handled in the channel by both manufacturers and retailers.
Elective
Corporate Strategy
Corporate strategy deals with issues critical to the success of the multi-business firm. How such firms create corporate advantage across several businesses operating in many different industries (as opposed to competitive advantage within one industry). This course develops an understanding of the strategic logic for, and internal management practices of, the multi-business enterprise, as well as the skills required to manage and lead this type of firm. The course is different from, and adds to the knowledge gained in, the Developing and Executing Strategies course.
Elective
Data Management
Data Management will give you a foundational understanding and skills to work with data. Through the use of hands-on examples, we will explore the design and implementation of the kinds of multi-user transactional databases that you are likely to routinely encounter in your future work. You will learn how to query relational databases using a powerful computer programming language called SQL, that allows you to combine relatively few operations to answer almost any data question imaginable. You will also get a practical introduction to popular data management and analytical tools such as Hadoop, MongoDB, Python, and Tableau. With the explosion in number and volume of data sources, and the increased focus on analytics and on “Big Data” in general, it is more important than ever that you develop the skills to understand, design, access and analyze data. These skills will be essential to your future as a decision maker.
Elective
Decision Making with Analytics (DMA)
The goal of DMA is to introduce you to business decision-making using a quantitative approach. You will look at decision-making where the future is uncertain, analyze complex decisions where models are needed, and examine problems where many decisions must be made simultaneously. During this course, you will be introduced to a selection of quantitative approaches that have important applications in business.
Required
Derivatives and Financial Markets
The course strikes a balance between conceptual analysis, skill development, and applications. To this end, the course material includes cases, textbook chapters, and articles written in practitioners’ journals—directed to executives and high level manager. Relevant and current articles from the public press are also discussed. The course also includes exercises/projects using real-time data, and guest speakers. Applications span the markets for commodities and energy products, foreign exchange, stocks, and fixed income instruments. Industries covered include airlines, automakers, oil and gas, telecommunications, computer hardware and software, biotechnology, hedge funds, university foundations, and investment and commercial banks.
Elective
Design and Technology Management in Creative Businesses
The purpose of this course is to examine the ways in which business value arises in creative enterprises, and especially how design, technology, and management increasingly interact to generate new creative business possibilities. We frame our examination in terms of an historic transition from industrial to innovation-based economies, identifying major points of difference between traditional management principles, processes, and practices and those better suited to innovation-based value creation.
Elective
Design-Driven Innovation
This course is for MBA students interested in innovation processes, innovation management, and building competitive advantage through innovation. While it will be of interest to students interested in Entrepreneurship, this course’s focus is balanced between established firms and new ventures.
Elective
Digital Marketing Analytics
The third decade of the twenty-first century is an era of AI-powered digital marketing and social media influencers. The advances in digital technology and access to abundant digital data have given rise to important questions on their effective and responsible usage. Business leaders need to leverage AI and digital data responsibly to gain competitive advantage. Hence, they need to keep themselves abreast of the latest trends in the field. This course will help you understand network structure, online buyer behavior and digital advertising strategy. You will also learn to build and track performance of a digital marketing plan. The goal is for students to learn frameworks and methods that will allow them to develop valuable and actionable marketing insights from various digital sources.
Elective
Developing and Executing Strategies (DES)
Developing and Executing Strategies is concerned with achieving superior firm performance and sustaining it over the long run. The course is organized around three ideals: value creation, value capture and value distribution.
Required
Entrepreneurial Finance
This course focuses on the financial challenges facing mid-sized companies that are growing rapidly or have the potential for rapid growth. Some of the topics to be addressed include government assistance programs, joint ventures, bank financing, franchising, mezzanine financing, private placements, leveraged buyouts, merchant banking, venture capital and initial public offerings.
Elective
Entrepreneurial Manager
The main thrust of the course is to develop an action orientation – the decisions an entrepreneur needs to make on a timely basis to launch a new venture and to keep it on track. You’ll look at how and when to start a business and how to tap opportunities, emphasizing how one develops business models that convert good ideas into viable ventures.
Elective
Financial Analysis
Analytics with applications drawn from mostly finance, as well as some from operations and marketing. Most useful for students who want to further develop the analytic skills that they acquired in the Decision Making with Analytics (DMA) class.
Elective
Financial Analytics
This course is designed for students who want to further develop the analytic skills that they acquired in the Decision Making with Analytics (DMA) class and for students who need to use mathematical model and advanced analytics for their jobs (e.g. financial risk analyst, traders, bankers, consulting, etc.)
Elective
Financial Models
This course will help you develop proficiency in making and analyzing simple models of business decisions involving optionality. The decisions include the valuation and hedging of financial portfolios, derivative securities, and trading strategies.
Elective
Financial Strategies for Global Success
The focus of the course is on strategic planning with respect to corporate decisions that interface with the financial markets. You will learn to analyze these decisions from a financial perspective, emphasizing creating/preventing price tension, bidding strategies, sourcing of funds and valuation under alternative organizational structures.
Elective
Financing Health Care Enterprises
This course is primarily concerned with the challenges of financing the discovery and development of new pharmaceuticals and medical devices, managing the financial aspects of growing firms in the medical sector, exiting from an investment and valuation of shares.
Elective
Global Economy, Markets & Strategy
While students will learn about the economics of strategy, incentives and information, this course is NOT a rehash of “Econ 101” (or of PKP). Rather than over-emphasizing theory, the course stresses “thinking economically”. It uses the tools of microeconomics to understand the business environment and to facilitate better managerial decision-making. Understanding markets helps managers think systematically about strategy and resource allocation. A series of cases and simulations guide students through real business situations, while forcing them to think methodically about their competitors, customers and the public policy environment in which they operate. Emphasis is on real-world business topics. Current articles from the business press motivate many sessions. Students will use economic concepts and data analysis to develop frameworks and tools that will help them be better decision-makers. Upon completion of this course, students will be able to: • Explain a wide-array of business phenomena using economic thinking. • Identify the fundamental elements of competitive strategy and pricing decisions. • Analyze and critique news stories describing public policy and business decisions. • Apply economic concepts to investment decisions.
Elective
Global Marketing
This will be a rigorous case-based exploration of marketing around the world. Emphasis will be on crossing borders, or defending against those who cross into our marketplace.
Elective
Global Strategy
The course is composed of three parts. The first part of the course covers the broad perspective of purchasing and supply management. The second part of the course addresses logistics activities in the supply chain, including transportation, distribution, planning and forecasting and customer service strategies. The balance of the course focuses on supply chain strategy and deals with opportunities to develop and implement initiatives to create competitive advantage. Every effort is made to make the methodology as interesting and exciting as possible. This course uses a variety of approaches, including a classroom simulation exercise.
Elective
Global Supply Management
The course is composed of three parts: purchasing and supply management; logistics activities in the supply chain; and supply chain strategy.
Elective
Health Sector Innovation for Business Leaders
This course presents health system innovation trends with a range of Ivey Business Cases taught with Leaders identified in the cases including CEO’s of Ontario hospitals, the Global VP of Astra Zeneca Inc., Former VP of Cancer Care Ontario, CEO of Medtronic Canada. Students will learn directly from leaders and Innovators who have lead transformative change in the health sector. Consumer trends in the health sector, governance and policy, financial models, and funding structures in Canadian health systems, product development, consumer influence on innovation adoption of new technologies, products, and service delivery.
Elective
High Impact Presenting
The 4 P’s of the course are: Persuasion, Presentation, Practice, Performance, with special emphasis on “hands on” personal experiencing.
Elective
Inequality, Diversity and Business
This course explores the implications of economic inequality and diversity for business. How are “opportunities”, both within organizations and in society more generally, created and constrained by social stratification? Does inequality and diversity affect innovation and productivity? These issues are explored in cross-national perspective, with particular emphasis on liberal democracies.
Elective
International Study Trips
During your time in Paris, France and Dubai, UAE you’ll visit local businesses, make connections with business leaders, join in 'cultural plunge' team activities, and learn how businesses operate successfully in these economic climates.
Elective
Introduction to Data Science
This course will cover some of the following topics: Descriptive Statistics, Data Visualization, Logistic Regression, Artificial Neural Networks, Forecasting and Time series, and Classification Methods including k-nearest neighbours and Classification and Regression Trees (CART).
Elective
Investment Banking and Capital Markets
Students will learn how financial managers create shareholder value using both sides of the balance sheet, namely capital structure and financing choices, and their acquisition, sale, or restructuring of corporate assets. The emphasis will be on the institutional arrangements and processes, valuation and modelling techniques, and the fit with corporate strategy.
Elective
Leadership Under Fire
The "Leadership Under Fire" course is designed to bring the insights of good leadership developed over generations of military service to the students at the Ivey Business School. The course aims to increase awareness of "leadership of self" with a specific focus on leadership character and commitment to the role of leadership. This is a challenging course that aims to stretch students – mentally, physically, and emotionally. Mental adversity and persistence are key features of the four days that we'll spend in the "the field." The course features Ivey instructors, current and former members of the Canadian Forces, and business executives.
Elective
Leading Family Firms
The foundation of the course is the three circle model of family business, which identifies roles of ownership, management and family. These three circles overlap by varying degrees (depending on business stage) in family-controlled business. The cases and lectures will focus on the areas of overlap and what is the best approach to good governance within and between each of the three circles. The course takes specific care to identify both the strengths of this business structure and the weaknesses. Upon completion of the course, students should be better equipped to deal positively within their own family business or in their business careers dealing with family-controlled enterprise. This course offers insights that are most helpful to three types of audiences: One; students that come from Business Families and who expect to play a key role in their family enterprises. Two; students that expect a career in investment banking, financial services or consulting, where there will be a high degree of interaction with Business Families. Third; entrepreneurs who recognize that over the next decade a substantial number of family owned companies will change generational ownership, and many of these will be acquisition and merger candidates.
Elective
Leading People and Organizations (LPO)
This course is divided into three sections: developing leadership skills, building effective organizations and leading change. Using a variety of materials and approaches, you will heighten your self-awareness about your own role and behavior with respect to each topical area, and increase your effectiveness in these areas of activity.
Required
Leveraging Information Technology (LIT)
LIT will arm you with an understanding of the technical, organizational, and strategic issues surrounding the management of information and communication technologies. You will learn about key IT issues that firms face, and you will learn the analytical tools you need in order to take effective action to leverage information technology successfully.
Required
Macroeconomics for Business Decisions (MBD)
This course is devoted entirely to increasing your understanding of global economic forces and how they affect business. By the end of the course you should be comfortable reading, discussing and interpreting economic news as it appears in many high quality publications and reports. You will also be able to incorporate important macroeconomic variables into your analysis and decision making about industries and firms.
Required
Management Consulting
The purpose of this course is to provide you with an overview, as well as selected skill development, in the areas of traditional “expert” consulting and results-focused “high impact” consulting. You will learn how to provide true value to clients in a range of project types and situations, from solid analytical inputs to working side by side driving large-scale organizational change.
Elective
Management of Services
Management of services is a general management course that integrates material from several disciplines, especially operations, marketing, human resources and strategy. The course takes both a strategic as well as an operational perspective and seeks to improve your understanding of organizations that produce services instead of (and in addition to) goods.
Elective
Managing Financial Resources
This course addresses the key decisions and issues faced by senior officers in a corporation and the analytical frameworks and approaches that are helpful in resolving these issues.
Required
Managing High-Growth Companies
The purpose of this course is to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are needed to create and manage a high growth company. In essence, the course addresses the holistic and systemic nature of firm growth and what it takes to create and sustainably manage a high-growth company. The students will also develop a real-world perspective on the management and challenges of high growth by studying a current high-growth firm.
Elective
Managing Operations (MO)
In MO you will learn how tactical decisions such as process design, planning and control, and project management are the basis for broader quality and supply chain management systems.. You will also learn to identify and understand how effectively managing operations contributes to customer value.
Required
Managing People for Exceptional Performance
The course is organized around six sets of activities critical to managerial success, each involving face-to-face interaction and a high degree of interpersonal skill: Selecting Employees; Coaching for Exceptional Performance; Resolving Conflict; Getting Commitment to Goals and Standards; Conducting Performance Reviews; and Managing Problem Employees.
Elective
Managing Risk in Organizations
The unprecedented risk and uncertainty all organizations have experienced with the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted for all the importance of having strategies in place for managing high levels of risk and uncertainty. When facing risk and uncertainty, organizational outcomes depend on the quality of leaders’ decision making and risk management practices. This course draws on insights from cognitive psychology, economics, statistics, and decision sciences to examine good and bad risk management practices at the individual and organizational levels. Frameworks and practices to improve risk management will be introduced. We will study the role of emotion, affect, and intuitive thinking in risk decisions. We’ll look at how behaviour is shaped by context and existing mental models. Risk management will be explored via case analysis, discussion, exercises, guest presentations and a project. Best practices including some analytical models will be introduced, although this course is more qualitative and behavioural. This course complements courses that focus on the analytical aspects of risk management by focusing on the human and organizational aspects.
Elective
Marketing Products and Services (MPS)
MPS will teach you to identify and seize market opportunities through effective marketing strategies. It will provide you with the tools and concepts to contribute to the development of marketing strategies for your organization, and to constructively evaluate the marketing strategies developed by others.
Required
Marketing Strategy
Students looking to gain a deeper understanding of the linkages between marketing and corporate strategy, either because you are aiming for a career in marketing or because you believe, as I do, that a deep understanding of marketing is essential to business success. We will tackle a variety of questions including: • How do you build competitive advantage in the marketplace? • Which markets and consumers do you serve? • Who are your competitors? How do you understand your role/position in the market and ecosystem? The course consists of a rich mix of topical case discussions, conceptual lecture-discussions, and guest speakers who share their real-world experience. The overarching objective of the pedagogy of this course is to bring the real-world into the classroom and develop mental models for understanding and solving big problems.
Elective
Marketing to Businesses - Growth Strategies and Best Practices
Most Ivey graduates pursue careers in companies whose primary customers are businesses rather than consumers. This requires a keen understanding of business buying behaviour, which is quite different than consumer behaviour. In addition, many of these companies employ as sales force as their chief means of competing for market share and growing the business. This is the elective at Ivey that is designed specifically for this segment. This is a case-based course, focused on growth marketing strategies and best practice tactics to create and capture value, with a high return on the investment in marketing and sales costs.
Elective
Negotiation for Leaders
A basic premise of this course is that while a manager needs analytical skills to develop optimal solutions to problems, a broad array of negotiation skills is needed to get these solutions accepted and implemented. The course will allow you to develop these skills experientially (through participation in negotiation role-play exercises) and to understand negotiation in useful analytical frameworks.
Elective
New Venture Creation
The purpose of this course is to explore the many dimensions of new venture creation and growth and to foster innovation and new business formations in independent and corporate settings. Initially you will focus on opportunity recognition, followed by exploring a wide range of issues that often face entrepreneurs in the processes of new venture creation and growth.
Elective
Operations Strategy
This course is focused at the level of a senior executive with responsibilities in one or more of operations, finance, marketing, human resources, supply chain, or distribution. It critically addresses high-level issues such as implementing strategy, operations infrastructure, operational design, and operating in a crisis. This course will rely primarily on cases to illustrate the necessary topics across many industries, including health care, insurance, financial services, technology, and consumer discretionary, retail, and others.
Elective
Portfolio Management
The course takes the perspective of an institutional investor and deals with important issues such investors face including the development of investment policies, the implementation of investment strategies, and the management of risk.
Elective
Power and Politics in Organizations
This course aims to prepare students to understand and navigate the dynamics of power and politics in and across organizations. By the end of the course, students should be able to: 1) Diagnose power and politics, both where they come from and why they matter to leaders and organizations; 2) understand the strategy and tactics of using power; 3) increase their skills in using power; 4) appreciate the dilemmas that power dynamics present to both individuals and organizations; and 5) develop a personal approach to power and politics in organizations.
Elective
Private Equity
This course provides an overview of the world of private equity, and how it fits into both the portfolios of many investors as well as the broader capital markets. The unique terminology, expected returns and challenges facing private equity funds are all examined.
Elective
Project Management
This course is designed to provide students with a holistic, integrative view of project management, including both the technical elements (e.g., scope, schedules, budgets and status reports, etc.) and the socio-cultural elements (e.g., leadership, teamwork, politics, etc.).
Elective
Prospering for the Long Term
Most business decisions focus on the short-term organizational profits. This course, unique to the Ivey Business School, offers you the opportunity to extend the time frames and consider the societal implications of your decisions. The instructor will co-teach a class with each of your instructors to show how shifting the framing of your decisions can lead to different decisions – outcomes that build long-term prosperity for the firm and for society.
Required
Regulation of Financial Markets
The course strikes a balance between setting out the basic regulatory requirements for banking and securities activities, and the management decisions that are required to deal effectively with them. It will prepare you to manage in complex, regulated markets in different countries.
Elective
Responsible Governance
This course will be taught from three different yet interrelated perspectives - Accounting, Finance and Strategy. The Accounting sessions (Module 1) will focus on corporate accountability and the role of disclosure, reporting and performance metrics in achieving corporate governance. This enables a discussion of the regulatory and best practice frameworks that enable corporate actors to govern responsibly. The module also addresses investor demands for the integration of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) metrics in executive compensation. Students are encouraged to be critical of the efficacy, measurement and completeness of metrics used in directing executives’ attention to financial, environmental and social goals. The Finance sessions (Module 2) will focus on the role of governance rules and practices in how decisions are made to balance the interests of a company’s many stakeholders. The module will start by examining the relationship between governance and strategic risk taking (or avoiding). Since governance is designed to manage the Agency Problem, we will consider the role of control and how management does (should?) make important financial, strategic and social decisions. The Strategy sessions (Module 3) will focus on deepening our understanding of the phrase “in the best interests of the corporation” from the Canadian Business Corporations Act. We will examine this from the perspective of senior leaders such as CEOs, business unit leaders, former CEOs and founders. In addition, we will discuss court decisions that have impacted our understanding of the above phrase and the role of activist investors and boards in decisions that impact whether an organization survives or prospers. Finally, we assess corporate governance from a stakeholder perspective, e.g., debtholders.
Elective
Risk, Accountability, and Governance
Risk, accountability and governance are the philosophy, practices, and procedures in which companies are directed. This course examines two approaches: the rules based approach to governance (largely a US based approach) and the comply or explain approach chosen in the UK, with an understanding that Canada falls in the middle.
Elective
Strategic Brand Management
In this course brands are viewed as assets that need to be developed, nurtured, and used to generate a return for the firm. You will learn hands-on how brands are managed, how brands cope with competitive and environmental threats and opportunities, and how brands are handled in the channel by both manufacturers and retailers.
Elective
Strategy Implementation
The purpose of this course is to improve your skills and capabilities in evaluating and responding to the challenges of strategy implementation. Specifically, you will consider how the social structure of an organization shapes what you can accomplish, how to build a position of structural and social power that will allow you to implement strategy, and how to design and manage organizational structures and business processes that lead to a more effective strategy.
Elective
Sustainable Business Practices
This course examines how environmental and social factors are reshaping the competitive landscape of business. It will teach you to a) apply conceptual frameworks to evaluate environmental and social performance; b) assess how markets respond to environmental and social concerns; and c) develop a competitive advantage in an era of higher environmental and social expectations.
Elective
Sustainable Finance
This elective will shed light on the reality and plausibility of putting the financial sector at the service of society. Finance is arguably one of the most important sectors today. It is an industry which, not only due to its complexity but also due to its damaged reputation in the recent crisis, can potentially provide real solutions to pressing social concerns despite its seeming to be a most unlikely candidate. The course is designed so as to follow the money through the investment chain. We will explore how the flow of capital travels from the savers to the corporations in which the money is ultimately invested. Throughout, we will reflect on the potential flaws in the system and how to address them.
Elective
Technology & Humanity
We pose the central question: Has information and communication technology (ICT) produced a better society? If so, for whom? What are the managerial challenges associated with this phenomenon? How do you lead with technology without causing or exacerbating bias, inequality, increasing privacy and security risks etc. The course will be broken into parts so that we can: 1) Analyze management opportunities and challenges via frameworks for critically engaging with claims of social change wrought by technological change; 2) Explore challenges for management in contemporary topics embedding a systems thinking perspective – i.e. management and cybersecurity (media/social media/fake news/cyberwarfare); management and systems design/agency/liability (algorithmic bias, autonomous vehicle liability, predictive policing/credit scoring) and management and governance including privacy/transparency); 3) Evaluate the future of work via automation/infomating; microwork/gig economy; collaboration and coordination in knowledge work; knowledge work and artificial intelligence and the future of professions.
Elective
The Business of Health
The course begins with a discussion of the Canadian context - policy, population health issues, globalization and health - focusing on a systems view of the health sector. The course then looks at issues related to population health, health care delivery, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals. Most classes consist of cases and/or issue discussions and may include classroom guests.
Elective
The Health Sector
The purpose of the course is to provide a foundation for students who wish to pursue careers or who have an interest in the health sector. The course begins with a discussion of the Canadian context - policy, population health issues, globalization and health - focusing on a systems view of the health sector. It then looks at specific industries including medical instruments and devices, biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, and health care delivery.
Elective
Transformational Leadership
The course provides a learning journey that takes a deep dive into your own character strengths as a platform for multi-level leadership: self, others, organization, and society.
Elective
Value Investing
The course is intended to teach you the fundamentals of the value investing approach to investment management as developed by Graham and Dodd. The substantive areas covered will be: the fundamental assumptions and approaches to value investing, techniques for assessing fundamental value based on traditional and value investing-based valuation, the design of strategies for searching efficiently for value investing opportunities, and the structuring of value-based portfolios to control for risk.
Elective