Courses

Accounting

Course Description

Understanding, interpreting and using accounting information is critical for making strategic and financial business decisions. The approach to accounting used in this module of the MSc Essentials course is therefore from the perspective of the manager who is required to create effective business policy under conditions of uncertainty. This accounting module will cover topics designed to make you a more effective business decision-maker including understanding financial statements, cash flows, cost behaviour, relevant costs, time value of money and concepts of business valuation. The course will also develop the fundamental skills required to analyze financial statements by considering accounting policy choice and the use of ratio analysis. This module is designed as a foundation to aid students in understanding the materials through the rest of the program. Accounting is not addressed as a challenge in and of itself, but as a complement to other functional areas of the program, with the goal of making you, the manager, a more effective decision-maker.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this course, students will be able to:

• Understand and interpret the use of accounting and financial information by managers in creating value for their organizations;
• Analyze financial statements using ratios and other techniques;
• Recommend an appropriate course of action for improved financial performance;
• Differentiate between the various choices of accounting policies for revenue recognitions and basic financial accounting issues;
• Interpret the financial impact of management’s selection of policy;
• Classify expenditures according to their cost behavior;
• Develop reasoned recommendations and conclusions about a company’s profitability and strategic decisions;
• Demonstrate the ability to apply the concept of time value of money to complex business situations;
• Identify relevant costs for long-term investments and correctly use various evaluation techniques to assess quantitatively long-term investment opportunities; and,
• Understand the difference between various different definitions of costs/costing (e.g. full costs, process costing, standard costs, and variable costing systems) and use cost accounting information in a managerial context.

This content is subject to change.

Required

Accounting, Governance & Risk

Course Description

This course provides students with an understanding of the important and interrelated business concepts of financial and non-financial corporate reporting, organizational risks, and corporate governance within a global business context. The course will prepare you to be a better user of financial and other reporting issues by deepening and broadening your ability to read and interpret financial statements, appreciate the relevancy of corporate governance and organizational risk within financial reporting, and understand the importance of international business structures and practices, and corporate taxation to how corporations operate and function in society.

The course is issue oriented with a focus on current and emerging issues in financial and management reporting across functional areas such as financial reporting, corporate governance, sustainability reporting, and international reporting/taxation. From a financial reporting perspective this involves 1) being familiar with the structure and content of annual reports, 2) understanding the governance and social environment in which financial reporting choices are made and 3) how to use accounting data to make informed decisions considering environmental, governance and social factors.

The course will first introduce risk and corporate governance frameworks relating to enterprise risk management. Next, the course will examine most significant measurement and disclosure issues that arise in the financial statements and appear regularly in the financial press, including revenue and expense reporting, intangible and investment assets, leases, corporate tax reporting and controversies, executive compensation integrating environmental, social and governance factors, employee benefits, acquisitions, and contemporary earnings management.

Finally, the course will explore governance and social aspects of contemporary reporting and regulatory issues such as SOX, international transfer pricing and tax practices within a digital environment.

Learning Outcomes

Upon completion of the course, students should be able to:

• Understand relevant concepts, frameworks, and underlying theories (i.e. Agency, Shareholder and Stakeholder Theory) for analyzing and addressing organizational risks and corporate governance issues;
• Identify different types of organizational risks including, but not limited to, strategic, operational, marketplace, financial, reporting and compliance risks;
• Understand the context of financial reporting and areas of management judgment;
• Understand and interpret key financial statement notes and accounting policy choices;
• Identify and incorporate analysis of accounting policies and judgments in assessing a company;
• Explain areas of global risks such transfer pricing, digital technologies/assets and ESG; and,
• Apply financial and nonfinancial reporting of accounting policies, disclosure and transparency, and regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act relating to areas of risks.

Elective

Art of Modelling

Course Description

Many major corporations now see analytics as a source of competitive advantage. This course will attempt to familiarize you with the modelling of analytical models for decision making. Since most firms now have access to mountains of information and data, an important differentiator is the skill to this data with models to arrive at great business decisions.

The objective of the Art of Modelling course is to train our students to approach business decisions in a logical, quantitative and systematic way. The course is concerned with processing and visualization of data, conception and development of statistical and mathematical models, evaluation of outcome and decision uncertainty, interpretation of analysis, and business insights guided by data analysis by managers in the process of creating value. The case settings, rather than replicating traditional exercises, are opportunities for students to select from an unstructured environment the appropriate analytics techniques and to organize the data, develop models, and interpret model output so as to either make better decisions, or respond more intelligently to the decisions of others. In summary, the course objective is to provide the student with the capability to use data and mathematical models to inform managerial decisions. The applied research articles will complement cases by showing best practices and new methods.

The major segments of the course are as follows:

1. Modelling and model building
2. Decision making under uncertainty and analyzing sequential decisions
3. Data‐driven decision making
4. Decision making under uncertainty and simulation
5. Simultaneous decision problems and optimization
6. Combined applications

Learning Outcomes

• Construct a suitable model (conceptual and/or spreadsheet) of a business decision problem;
• Identify the need for and make reasonable and justifiable assumptions to abstract a complex business problem into a model;
• Manipulate model inputs to evaluate the influence of specific values and assumptions on outcomes. Perform sensitivity analysis;
• Develop reasoned recommendations based on quantitative analysis of decisions;
• Combine concepts from each module to construct a model of a complex decision problem;
• Articulate analysis and conclusions in class discussions, written exams and reports; and,
• Develop evidence, analysis, and data‐based decision-making skills.

Required

Big Data Analytics

This course provides students with advanced statistical tools in order to properly analyze complex and large data and how to prepare and interpret visual representation of complex and large data.

Required

Business Statistics

Course Description

A constant challenge for business leaders is to ensure that correct decisions are made. In order to make good decisions leaders rely on the best available information and data. Unfortunately, all the information and data in the world is utterly useless without proper skills to analyze and draw correct conclusions. This course provides fundamentals of how business leaders should analyze information and data in a sound and rigorous manner.

Learning Outcomes

• To provide students with some fundamental statistical tools in order to properly analyze information and data; and,
• To develop an analytical approach for understanding and solving complex business problems.

Required

Causal Inference

Course Description

Causal Inference is the process of measuring how specific actions change an outcome. For example, you might want to determine whether a recent marketing campaign increased sales, whether leveraged buyouts increase the probability of bankruptcy, or whether government lockdowns slowed the spread of covid-19. But for questions about cause and effect, running a basic regression can often get us the wrong answer. You have probably heard the warning that “correlation is not causation”. In this course we will explore what we mean by “causation”, how correlations can be misleading, and how to measure causal relationships when we can’t perform a perfect randomized experiment. The course will emphasize applied skills, and will revolve around developing the practical knowledge required to conduct causal inference in R.

Students should have some experience with R, and a basic understanding of Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression, including how to interpret coefficients, standard errors, and t-tests.

Learning Outcomes

• Develop a conceptual framework for analyzing causal questions that allows you to critically examine when statistical estimates can be interpreted as causal;
• Learn practical skills in R, including how to simulate data to test statistical estimators, and how to implement standard casual estimators; and,
• Learn how to estimate causal effects in real-world settings.

Elective

CEMS Business Project

CEMS business projects reinforce the partnership between universities and companies, typically CEMS Corporate Partners, in jointly shaping the students’ learning process in international management. They are consultancy-like projects designed as a real-life learning experience for students. Students gain insight into business life, training their analytical and problem-solving skills, applying research methods, transferring theoretical knowledge into practice, learning process management and acquiring social skills across cultures. They get to know potential employers and the opportunity to define or re-define their professional goals.

Required

Communications

Course Description

In this advanced course in communications, students are challenged to enhance their ability to communicate as an individual contributor, as a member of a team and as a leader of projects or people.  In addition, students focus on doing so in a global context and with diverse audiences. Whether working in a large bureaucratic institution, a start-up, a company with global reach, an organization with a technical focus or a creative bent, the ability to communicate in a compelling and persuasive manner to audiences is a differentiator. As individuals grow in their careers, their ability to build relationships, influence others, and motivate action requires increasingly sophisticated communication acumen. The class includes the combination of traditional (readings) and active learning pedagogies (cases, guest speakers, critical explorations as examples.) With an emphasis on understanding oneself as a communicator in today’s ever more complex and diverse world of work, this advanced course is designed to allow students to learn and engage in multiple contexts and situations.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course, students will be more comfortable communicating with confidence in a variety of business contexts and with diverse audiences. Students will learn to adapt and target their communication mindful of the needs and expectations of their audience which may vary along cultural and hierarchal dimensions as well as functional and technical ones.  Students will practice engaging and communicating collaboratively as well as in a leadership context. The Leadership Communication Competencies will serve as the framework for skills development. Learning objectives include:

1. Develop an understanding of themselves as communicators.
2. Learn to use a communications strategy, analyze an audience, target communication style and approach, present data and complex material in a straightforward way, and practice techniques to deal with difficult questions and situations. 
3. Explore how communication is valued differently across different fields and cultures.
4. Learn how to be compelling and persuasive with different audiences.
5. Develop a sophisticated and deep appreciation of how verbal and non-verbal communication impacts successful interactions and relationship building across different audiences.

Competing in and with China

Course Description

The course is an introduction to the contemporary business experiences in China and with Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs). Increasingly, China has been growing into one of the world’s largest market for multinational businesses around the world. At the same time, Chinese enterprises keep accelerating their process of going overseas. As a result of that, they are competing fiercely, in multiple countries, with other leading MNEs that are mainly from advanced economies. To have a grasp of the distinctiveness of the challenges and opportunities in China and with Chinese MNEs, we will discuss about some of the complex business cases. The cases will cover the overarching theme of firm and contextual heterogeneity, and will prepare you for addressing key gaps to our knowledge on this topic. We will first explore different types of Chinese MNEs, and then examine how Chinese MNEs internationalize. As we become familiar with the distinctive characteristics of Chinese MNEs and their environments, we will investigate the business strategy and management of MNEs from advanced economies in China.

Learning Outcomes

The aim of the course will be to prepare participants to work in China and/or with Chinese MNEs. An important objective is to develop your ability to understand institutions, competitions, and collaborations in and with China. By the conclusion of the course, participants should be able to (a) have a better understanding of the contemporary business environment of China, (b) develop the ability to analyze complex business cases in the multinational contexts, (c) evaluate and develop solutions for the context specific challenges that foreign companies face in China, and (d) provoke meaningful inquiry on what we still know little regarding this topic.

 

Elective

Creative Analysis

This course improves how students present and communicate quantitative, analytical, and data-driven topics. The course focuses on the creative process within analytical modeling and problem solving and does not introduce additional analytical models. Instead based on students’ existing analytics background, the focus is on improving communication and presentation skills, and exploring how creativity can bolster the artistic side of analytical modeling.

Elective

Cross Cultural Management

Course Description

In this era of globalization, it is critical for business leaders to have an understanding of cultural differences and to be able to manage these cultural differences with other individuals, in teams, and in whole organizations. In this course students will develop a deep, theoretical understanding of the nature of societal and other cultures. They will gain the analytical skills to map cultural differences and similarities and to diagnose their implications. The course takes a culture-general perspective: students will not become experts in any particular culture; rather, they will have the opportunity to learn systematic frameworks, analytical approaches, self-awareness, and behaviors that are related to effective interaction across cultures and in multicultural settings.

The course will combine research and application. We will identify the leading edge of research in various aspects of cross-cultural management, discovering “how we know” about patterns of knowledge and the causes and consequences of different management actions. We’ll look at many different contexts for cross-cultural interaction, from basic communication to teams and global organizations. Students will conduct their own research around a topic of cross-cultural interaction, including reflecting on their own actions in a cross-cultural situation. They will also work with a diverse team to facilitate class learning to expand knowledge about a particular cross-cultural management topic.

Learning Outcomes

This course explores what culture is and then address several cross-cultural management challenges and opportunities. More specifically, students will have the opportunity to:

• Develop an in-depth understanding of the nature of societal culture and its multiple dimensions, and enhance their ability to analyze the influence of culture on behaviour, particularly with respect to management;
• Enhance their situational awareness and critical thinking through exposure to many examples of cross-cultural interaction in different cultures, organizations, and management situations;
• Increase their behavioral effectiveness in interactions with people from other cultures;
• Develop insights about the role of leadership to bridge across different cultures and create synergies; and,
• Deepen self-awareness as a continuously-learning individual in a multi-cultural global system.

Required

Customer Insights

Students will discover and generate consumer insights using a variety of methods designed to overcome the information biases that occur with self-report surveys (e.g., metaphor-elicitation, brand concept mapping, laddering analysis, consumption chain mapping, and deprivation studies).

Elective

Data Driven Management

Course Description

This course will provide tools and practice for using data and models to obtain managerial insights. It will introduce quantitative methods for decision analysis including probability, linear regression, simulation, optimization, and the combination of these methods. However, analytics is not merely a collection of tools or techniques. It is a refined style of business decision analysis that enables systematic assessment of the business problem, identifying key factors which influence business outcomes, explicit evaluation of assumptions, and quantitative evaluation of uncertainty. This course provides a systematic framework for the use of data and models in managerial decisions in the fields of marketing, operations, finance, accounting, and strategy. 

Throughout the course, students will learn how to identify the type of analysis best-suited for each class of decision problem. Emphasis will be placed on leveraging business analytics tools and techniques to maximize the efficiency and effectiveness of a company’s value-added activities. Throughout the course, students will be encouraged to use and combine different tools in their analysis of corporate problems, assess the influence of uncertainty on their recommendations, and learn to communicate information from quantitative analysis including the communication of uncertainty.

Learning Outcomes

Students will be able to gain basic Excel skills and learn about different analytical models. Particularly the students will learn to:

• Develop models and model building;
• Perform and critically evaluate single variable and multi-variable linear regression using continuous and categorical independent variables; interpret regression coefficients; interpret regression model uncertainty; conduct diagnostic analysis and judge suitability of the model;
• Use a linear regression model to develop recommendations and forecasts;
• Represent sources of uncertainty with probability distributions;
• Construct a simulation model; validate the model;
• Use a simulation model to generate a risk profile or distribution in expected values;
• Develop reasoned recommendations incorporating uncertainty;
• Identify decision criteria, decision variables, objective function, and decision constraints for a set of related strategic business decisions;
• Use Excel Solver to identify optimal decision values;
• Interpret optimization models output and use them to evaluate strategic opportunities;
• Determine whether an optimal solution is robust to changes in constraints or objective function coefficients; and,
• Apply these models to various business decisions for the purpose of making better and more informed decisions.

Elective

Data Management

Course Description

This course focuses on data, a central and essential component of every information system. Providing the right data to the right decision-maker at the right time is critical. Too little data forces managers to rely on intuition and luck, while too much data can lead to cognitive overload.

Developing and utilizing high quality organizational data requires careful planning, intelligent design, and continual maintenance efforts. Through the cases, readings, classroom exercises and discussions in this course you will develop applied knowledge in four main areas. First, you will analyze real-world situations and design high fidelity data models, which are schematic drawings that define how data elements are conceptually interconnected. Second, you will convert your data models into practical relational databases, which are digital containers that hold data and preserve the various data interrelationships. Third, you will access and query structured relational databases, unlocking and converting data into useable knowledge. Fourth, you will get a practical introduction to tools for managing and utilizing unstructured large-scale databases. The skillsets associated with designing, building, manipulating and querying data are powerful, rare, and in great demand among employers across the enterprise.

Learning Outcomes

• Analyze real-world situations and learn how to design high fidelity graphical data models to explicitly reveal underlying interrelationships between data elements;
• Convert your data models into practical database structures, using relational database software tools such as MySQL and phpMyAdmin;
• Query structured relational databases, using Structured Query Language (SQL) and Business Intelligence (BI) tools; and,
• Explore unstructured “big data” datasets, using frameworks, concepts and tools such as Hadoop, NoSQL, MongoDB, Tableau and Python.

Design Driven Innovation

Course Description

Innovation is a necessary condition for entrepreneurship, be it among startups or established businesses. Without innovation, there is no entrepreneurship, but not all innovations manifest as new businesses or as new products. Understanding innovation and how it relates to firm performance is crucial for success in the hypercompetitive business landscape, but tapping employee creativity, identifying and combining necessary resources, and aligning innovation efforts to build competitive advantage is one of the most difficult tasks for managers. We will address the preceding and other related topics in this course, and at its conclusion, students should possess a deep conceptual knowledge of innovation in its various forms, understand innovation processes, be able to apply that knowledge to build innovation-centric strategies, and to solve common problems related to innovation management. Specifically, we will explore: product, service, and process innovation concepts; innovation in high-tech and low-tech industries; how firms build and sustain innovation-centric strategies; creating and fostering a culture of innovation; and striking the balance between promoting innovation and harvesting its benefits.

Learning Outcomes

• To build foundational knowledge of innovation: where innovation comes from, the forms of innovation, and understanding innovation in a variety of organizational contexts;
• To learn how organizations might be more innovative;
• To demonstrate the ability to improve the innovation skills for others;
• To understand how to build and sustain an innovation-centric strategic posture; and,
• To identify and solve common problems associated with the management of innovation.

Required

Digital Essentials 1

Course Description

The purpose of this course is to arm you with the skills and knowledge of various software tools and capabilities that practitioners frequently identified as necessary components of a comprehensive knowledge base in digital management.

For this course, you will select from the provided list of courses and course modules on the Coursera platform. Each of these courses is a skill-building course that is required in the program but can be adequately covered in self-paced, online learning using the Coursera platform. DM students should be well versed in common design concepts and tools (like web design, UX design, business process mapping tools, and programming basics) commonly used in enterprise platforms. These courses are curated content from Coursera’s course database with evaluation mechanisms designed so that Ivey can ensure students have achieved mastery in the selected domain of knowledge.

These courses are specifically for students in the DM stream.

Extensive consultation has occurred over a long period of time with the MSc program and leaders of the BA stream. We have followed the program advice on using Coursera as our platform for delivery of this content.

Learning Outcomes

1. Learn about current technology, software and how to use these tools for a career in digital management;
2. Learn how to apply digital management concepts learned in core and elective classes using a variety of software tools and programming languages;
3. Develop skills for self-managed, lifelong learning;
4. Develop technological expertise (design) in self-managed learning environment; and,
5. Pursue additional Coursera courses to customize skill development.

Digital Essentials 2

Course Description

The purpose of this course is to arm you with the skills and knowledge of various software tools and capabilities that practitioners frequently identified as necessary components of a comprehensive knowledge base in digital management.

Learning Outcomes

Through this course, students will:

1. Learn about current technology, software and how to use these tools for a career in digital management;
2. Learn how to apply digital management concepts learned in core and elective classes using a variety of software tools and programming languages;
3. Develop skills for self-managed, lifelong learning;
4. Develop technological expertise (design) in self-managed learning environment; and,
5. Pursue additional Coursera courses to customize skill development.

Digital Essentials 3

Course Description

The purpose of this course is to arm you with the skills and knowledge of various software tools and capabilities that practitioners frequently identified as necessary components of a comprehensive knowledge base in digital management.

Learning Outcomes

Through this course, students will:

1. Learn about current technology, software and how to use these tools for a career in digital management;
2. Learn how to apply digital management concepts learned in core and elective classes using a variety of software tools and programming languages;
3. Develop skills for self-managed, lifelong learning;
4. Develop technological expertise (design) in self-managed learning environment; and,
5. Pursue additional Coursera courses to customize skill development.

Digital Essentials 4

Course Description

The purpose of this course is to arm you with the skills and knowledge of various Software Systems, Tools and capabilities that practitioners frequently identified as necessary components of a comprehensive knowledge base in digital management.

Learning Outcomes

Through this course, students will:

1. Learn about current Enterprise Software Systems (SAP, Salesforce);
2. Acquire the necessary ERP Platforms skills, and learn how to use these tools for a career in digital management;
3. Learn how to apply digital management concepts learned in core and elective classes using a variety of software tools and programming languages;
4. Develop skills for self-managed, lifelong learning;
5. Develop technological expertise (design) in self-managed learning environment; and,
6. Pursue additional Coursera courses to customize skill development.

Digital Platform Implementation

The course focuses on cultivating and managing digital architectures that serve the business its suppliers and partners. Students will develop and understanding of the way in which digital platforms span functional boundaries and require substantial partnership and collaboration between stakeholders including technologists, designers, functional management and external partners. They will develop their conceptual understanding of the opportunities and challenges faced within the context of implementing new technologies.

Required

Digital Transformation

Course Description

Digital technologies now impact pretty much every company and every aspect of business. Distinctive digital capabilities often enable new business capabilities -- even new business models -- which, in turn, dramatically alter competitive situations. Digitalization transcends the domain traditionally called “information systems,” and it traverses business departments. In fact, according to MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), more than 60% of the average corporate spend on digital technologies within digitally advanced companies happens outside the IT Department.

This course surveys this new digital context for conducting business. It begins with the economics of disruption and platform competition, and then surveys digitalization-based changes across traditional business disciplines.

Learning Outcomes

1. Students will learn economic and business strategy principles that allow them to understand the competitive implications of digitalization – new capabilities, business models, and modes of value creation.
2. Students will gain specific knowledge of how digitalization impacts particular industries, and how these impacts manifests in particular business disciplines (e.g., finance, marketing).
3. Students will learn to communicate in the language of digital economics and business, and gain a sense of how to use deploy new capabilities offered by digital technologies to accomplish business outcomes.
4. Students will emerge from the course with the enthusiasm and confidence to architect digitalized business solutions.

Required

Entrepreneurship & New Ventures

The purpose of this course is to assist in the development of skills, habits and expertise in salient dimensions of new venture creation (especially as it relates to fostering innovation and new venture creation in independent and corporate settings). Because the identification and enactment of entrepreneurial opportunities is critical to creating value, this course will focus on the process of “searching’ for venture ideas, the process of “screening” the potential of these ideas, the process of “planning” that involves developing these ideas into the kinds of ideas that can create real value, and the processes that underlie the startup of new ventures, as well as the growth of these new ventures.

Required

Entrepreneurship and Growth

Course Description

As a foundation for understanding the process of starting and growing a venture, in this course we will focus on key elements of the entrepreneurial process from starting up (the processes for “searching” and “screening” business ideas and then the development of those ideas in the “planning,” “setup” and “startup” of new ventures) to scaling up. Students will experience the entrepreneurial process through cases, learning assignments, and projects.

Learning Outcomes

• Understand what goes into “searching” for opportunities (spotting problems, proposing coherent solutions, and developing a portfolio of opportunities) and have practice doing so;
• Understand what goes into “screening” opportunities and have practice doing so;
• Know how to solve problems arising in unstructured situations in new ventures through “planning;
• Understand the next steps that are needed in the “setup” and “startup” of a venture once an opportunity is sufficiently developed; and,
• Understand the challenges of growing the business beyond the startup stage.

Elective

Finance

Course Description

This is an introductory finance course that addresses the key decisions and issues faced by senior financial officers in corporations and provides the analytical frameworks and approaches that are employed to resolve these issues. The goal is to ensure all students, regardless of career aspirations, gain an appreciation for the financial issues facing all companies and the analytical tools that are useful in addressing these issues. The major modules in this course are:

1. Assessment of financial performance
2. Introduction to financial markets and capital raising
3. Determination of optimal capital structure

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the assessment of financial performance module, students will be able to:

• Define alternative corporate objectives and explain how a financial manager’s perspective impacts his/her decision-making; and,
• Define major categories of financial ratios and identify signs of organizational strengths and weaknesses using data from financial statements.

At the end of the introduction to financial markets, securities, and alternatives for raising capital module, students will be able to:

• Identify differences between types of financial securities and explain how these differences should affect the desirability of securities from the perspective of organizations (issuers) and investors; and,
• Describe the pattern of promised cash flows arising to investors from debt and equity securities and compute their discounted present values.

At the end of the determination of an optimal capital structure module, students will be able to:

• Identify key capital structure decision-making criteria emerging from Modigliani and Miller’s theory, and evaluate alternative capital structures against those criteria; and,
• Apply scenario analysis to determine the impact of different financing alternatives on an organization’s risk and return.

Financial Analytics

Restricted to Business Analytics stream. This course includes analytics with applications drawn from finance, such as trading strategy, portfolio optimization, European/American Option pricing. The following analytical techniques are covered: simulation, optimization, various distributions (e.g. discrete, triangular, uniform, normal, lognormal), Binomial tree, use of Excel add-ins @Risk and Evolver, and VBA programming.

Elective

Frontier Markets

Course Description

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) are faced with tremendous challenges as they enter the new decade. The global pandemic, trade wars, as well as declining growth rates and rising labor costs in top foreign direct investment locations are some of the developments that have caused MNEs to reconsider their supply chains and global risk exposures.

One important strategy to address these changing conditions is to shift focus towards frontier markets (if not already considering these from the outset) – those countries which exhibit greater challenges but also higher growth potentials than other emerging economies that are further advanced. Often, these markets possess untapped resources and are not as dependent on global economic trends as other countries, offering significant potential especially for first and early movers. With the right strategy, businesses can make a significant return while also playing a role in the social and economic development of that market.

Designed to broaden your perspective in more ways than one, this course will not only help you gain an understanding and appreciation of frontier markets – but also equip you with novel insights and analytical approaches that will allow you to think differently about markets at home.

Learning Outcomes

This course provides a thorough introduction to the strategic, organizational, and managerial implications related to frontier markets. The goal is to equip students from any background with essential knowledge for careers in the current global economic environment. Students will:

• gain a nuanced appreciation of the opportunities and challenges associated with entering and operating in a frontier market;
• enhance their decision-making and problem-solving skills in the context of frontier markets through readings, cases, class discussions, and interactions with experts;
• sharpen analytical skills by utilizing data, conducting research, and practicing critical thinking; and,
• develop and apply research capabilities related to frontier markets.

Elective

Global Communications

Communication is key to success in every aspect of your professional and personal life. Learning how to communicate effectively in the world of work is a differentiator--especially for individuals who strive to lead initiatives, projects and people. Whether you are in consulting, data analytics, finance, investment services, management, marketing, product development, sales or literally in any organizational role, the ability to have impact with what you say and how you say it... matters. This course is about learning to move beyond communicating well at work... and becoming a professional who understands how to communicate in a compelling and persuasive manner. You will learn the skills you need to communicate and have influence in the business environment. You will develop an understanding about targeting your message and flexing your style to your audience--whether they are down the hall or located half way around the world, whether they think like you or are your polar opposite. Transitioning from being an individual contributor to being a leader requires strong communication and interpersonal skills. It also requires a willingness to be self reflective and challenge yourself to stretch beyond your comfort zone.

Required

Global Corporate Finance

Course Description

The goal of the course is to analyse the main issues in the theory and practice of corporate finance with an emphasis on applications in an international context. The focus of our discussion will be on ways in which corporate managers can create value for shareholders through their capital structure and financing choices. This course places corporate financial decisions in a strategic context, emphasizing the relationship between capital structure, financial markets and strategic financial decisions.

Learning Outcomes

• Financial forecasting and valuation of long-term investments;
• Determination of an optimal capital structure and measurement of hurdle rates for long-term investments (the cost of capital);
• Firm valuation; and,
• Strategic financial decisions (capital raising, mergers and acquisitions) and value creation.

Elective

Global Financial Markets

Course Description

Innovations in global financial markets and products have long shaped corporate financial and operating strategies. These markets are vast and diverse, covering foreign exchange, commodities (energy, agricultural, and metals), stocks, and bonds (interest rates). The objective of the course is to provide a solid understanding of how these markets and products function, and how they influence the strategies of market participants in such sectors as manufacturing, natural resources and energy, commercial and investment banking, and money management (pension funds, hedge funds, mutual funds, and foundations). This understanding is essential for executives of corporations that tap global markets to obtain new financing or to reduce financing costs, and of corporations that face significant financial or commodity risks and use global financial markets to manage these risks; bankers who make markets domestically and abroad (euro-market) and provide liquidity for the corporate sector; and investment managers who participate in global financial markets as part of active as well as passive investment strategies.

Learning Outcomes

The course strikes a balance between theory and applications. To this end, the course material includes cases, textbook chapters, and articles written in practitioners’ journals—directed to executives and high-level managers. Relevant and current articles from the public press are discussed as well. The course also includes exercises/projects using real-time data. Applications span the four markets of foreign exchange, commodities and energy products, stocks, and fixed income instruments. Industries covered include airlines, automakers, oil and gas, hedge funds, university foundations, power utilities, theme parks, and commercial and investment banks.

The course provides knowledge that is essential for any top managerial positions in global companies whether in the financial or non-financial sectors. Shorter term, the course benefits students going back to or starting careers in sales and trading, investment banking and corporate finance, risk management, consulting, portfolio management (mutual, pension, and hedge funds).

Elective

Global Management Practices

Restricted to CEMS visiting exchange students. This course explores the complex nature of the global business environment and the implications for global leadership and management practices. Students develop a sophisticated and deep appreciation of culture, not only geographic cultures, but a perspective for leveraging cultural expertise in changing multi-cultural combinations both within and across people.

Required

Global Marketing

This course looks at how firms and consumers behave, as well as the strategies marketers can use to operate successfully in the global environment. Students will become familiar with the economic, cultural, legal, and political forces within which firms operate and will also develop their research and analytical skills to understand the challenges of international marketing.

Elective

Global Strategy

The objective of this course is to provide an in-depth understanding of strategic issues facing firms that operate internationally. Drawing from a range of materials and facilitated by engaging classroom discussions, students will explore the fundamental concepts, theories, and frameworks that underlie global strategy and learn how to apply them to firms operating in the current international environment.

Required

Global Supply Chain Management

Course Description

The course is composed of 10 class sessions that focus on the fundamentals of supply chain management. Topics covered include organization, supply processes and technology, lean supply chains, supplier selection and evaluation, transportation, distribution, logistics, metrics, reverse logistics and supply chain strategy. 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.

The key question for the course is: What should you know about suppliers and supply chain management to be a good general manager? This can be slightly rephrased into: How can the general manager be sure that his or her supply chain contributes effectively to organizational objectives and strategy and that organizational objectives and strategy properly reflect supply inputs?

Learning Outcomes

• Assess and evaluate the contribution of suppliers and the opportunities available for organizations to use their supply chains and supply networks to create competitive advantage;
• Assess the strengths and weaknesses of existing suppliers, purchasing and supply management organizations, policies and practices;
• Assess the interrelationships among other organizational functional activities and the supply chain function and the effects of changes in strategies, policies and practices on one another; and,
• Identify and analyze the major decisions and problems facing managers in this area and to apply the appropriate concepts, tools and techniques in their resolution.

Elective

Inequality and Business

Course Description

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.

As government and business leaders grapple with how to respond to these questions, it is important that they understand how society is stratified, how this stratification is perpetuated, and its consequences. Specific topics to be covered are stratification and social mobility; cultural and social capital; labour market discrimination; the relationship between inequality and attitudes; diversity and innovation; and the ways in which equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) have been tackled in organizations.

Learning Outcomes

Content-related outcomes:

• Understand social science perspectives on the major sources of economic inequality in Canada and other liberal democracies;
• Understand the interconnectivity of gender, ethnicity and social class, and how they produce economic inequality;
• Understand the role of business in reproducing inequality;
• Understand the consequences of inequality for business, and society more generally; and,
• Understand how inequality and diversity affect attitudes and values generally, and how these attitudinal differences impact organizations.

Skills-related outcomes:

• Analyze the effectiveness of EDI policies; and,
• Ability to assess how cross-national differences in inequality and diversity may influence values that affect business practices.

Attitude-related outcomes:

• Reflect upon the possible origins of attitudes and preferences that might influence business decisions;
• Understand the importance of diversity of ideas, and thus the diversity of social origins, for innovation; and,
• Express insights, observations, and views towards EDI policies confidently.

Elective

International Business Project

Restricted to CEMS visiting exchange students. Student teams challenge themselves in a business project by tackling a real case for a real international company. The business project is supervised and evaluated by both the company and a faculty advisor.

Required

International Business Workshops

These workshops cover specific topics relevant to working in a global environment. Previous topics have included, but are not limited to: blockchain technology, disruptions in targeted industries, and more. Topics will vary by term.

Required

International Decisions and Risks

This course provides students with a theoretical grounding in judgment, decision making, and risk management under risk and uncertainty, as well as methods to help individuals and organizations reach better decision making processes and thus better decision outcomes.

Elective

International Joint Ventures and Alliances

This course is designed to equip students with an advanced level of knowledge about best practices regarding international joint ventures and alliances, a crucial mode of internationalization multinational enterprises utilize in pursuit of a competitive advantage. Students will develop a thorough understanding of current research, foster their research capabilities, and enhance decision-making and problem-solving skills within an engaging classroom discussion setting.

Required

Internationalization

Course Description

This course aims to provide you with an overview of the key themes of the program, providing both a scholarly research perspective and a managerial practice perspective. Three broad questions run through this course: What are the opportunities for businesses reaching beyond their home country? What challenges do they face in in international business environment? And, how can they overcome these challenges? The discussions in this class thus will iterate between analyzing the business environment and analyzing the interactions of businesses with this environment.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the course, participants should be able to:

• Explain key opportunities for firms engaging in international operations;
• Explain and apply key theoretical concepts of international business;
• Identify challenges arising from variations in the business environment across countries; and develop solutions to address such challenges; and,
• Read and interpret key academic articles in the field of international business.

Required

Ivey Analytics Lab (IAL)

The IAL presents an important opportunity for Ivey MSc Business Analytics students to gain real world experience working in an analytics intensive organizational environment.  It is a 10- week summer work experience with an Ivey partner corporation. Students are expected to contribute to the analytics projects being undertaken by the analytics team within an organization; to develop a broad understanding of the organization, the industry and the business issues; and to contribute both quantitatively and qualitatively to solution development and implementation as appropriate. At various points during the IAL, students will be required to make progress reports to their Faculty Supervisor, and where applicable, to the client.

Required

Ivey Digital Innovation Lab

In the summer term, there will be several ‘studios’ modelled after Parson’s MSc in Design and Management. The studios will explore the overlap between business and design. Students will work collaboratively on complex multidisciplinary projects requiring iterative, collaborative and innovative responses. A corporate partner will provide a comprehensive brief or ‘runs’ a live experience involving an opportunity, issue or challenge they face that requires students to work in research teams to make, and then, intensively critique prototyped interventions. Student teams are expected to present their findings, proposals and recommendations to colleagues, experts and stakeholders for critical feedback. For this course, students will use a range of research methods, ideation processes, and theoretical frameworks based on coursework in Term 1 to make reasoned judgments about strategic responses to complicated situations.

Required

Ivey Essentials

This course focuses on business essentials: Accounting, Finance, Leadership, Marketing, Operations and Strategy. Students will be introduced to Ivey’s high engagement case-based learning methodology. The course is designed to aid students in understanding materials for their courses throughout the program.

Required

Ivey Global Lab (IGL)

The Ivey IGL is an in-company experience taking place during the summer term. The IGL provides International Business stream students the opportunity to gain real life hands-on experience in the business and cultural environment with an international business. Student teams are assigned to a project, where they will collaborate with top management of an organization to identify and deal with issues, problems and opportunities that are critical to the future success of the organization while being deeply immersed in an unfamiliar culture. The IGL experience equips students with strong project management skills, strategy consulting skills, client-facing interaction and an understanding of business in a cross-cultural context, while developing personal character. Countries and projects may change from year to year. While students may indicate a preference for a certain country and project, students are not guaranteed their preference of country or project. The IGL is designed to fulfill the CEMS MIM practicum requirement.

Required

Law and the Multinational Firm

This course will leverage theoretical works, law cases, and assigned readings to develop students’ abilities to analyze and address legal issues facing the multinational enterprise. We will develop a specific vocabulary to help students identify, anticipate, and address legal concerns in the MNE. Students will end the course with a presentation to their peers on a current issue involving the international legal environment and the MNE.

Elective

Leadership

The major objectives of this course are to learn how to lead teams effectively by leveraging those leader character dimensions that result in effective collective behavior in teams. To gain an understanding of how a leader’s character and commitment to lead contribute to shape a positive organizational culture and sustain organizational effectiveness, and to improve your leadership skills by practicing key leadership behaviors needed to develop talent effectively.

The classes in the course are divided into three modules:

1. LEADING TEAMS
The first 3-class module is designed to develop your team leadership skills, by providing a deep insight into how and why collective phenomena influence how people in their teams, regards to their tasks, their leader, and their fellow team members.

2. SHAPING A POSITIVE CULTURE
The second 3-class module is designed to develop your understanding of the concept of organizational culture, and how leaders can (re)shape it. We will discuss the determinants of organizational culture and its interplay with a firm’s senior leadership as drivers of organizational performance.

3. DEVELOPING TALENT
This 3-class module is designed to provide insight into how to develop talented individuals and develop skills for managing key work relationships.

Learning Outcomes

LEADING TEAMS
At the end of this module, students will be able to apply Mathieu and colleagues’ model of team effectiveness (TEM) to understand how to:

• Diagnose problems in existing teams;
• Intervene to improve a team’s functioning; and,
• Structure and manage a team to ensure high-level performance.

SHAPING A POSITIVE CULTURE
At the end of this module, students will be able apply Galbraith’s STAR alignment model and use it to:

• to evaluate the extent to which an organization’s culture is virtuous, non-virtuous or toxic;
• Identify the role of strength of commitment to lead to improve processes, practices;
• increase the likelihood of attaining business goals; and,
• align organizational-level systems so that a firm can attain and sustain growth.

DEVELOPING TALENT
At the end of this module, students will be able to explain how a leader’s characteristics can be used to:

• evaluate an employee’s performance from a broader perspective;
• intervene to enhance and develop talented employees; and,
• build constructive relationships at work with other coworkers.

Leading Responsibly

Course Description

Courses on topics such as ethics and responsibility often focus on theories and frameworks—encouraging you to engage with these challenging real-world realities from a distance. Often focused on examining concepts such as misconduct through a binary lens of good or bad; as bad apples or bad barrels, engagement and discussion remain as external to the individual. In this course, you will look at these topics from the inside—making responsible decisions at a point of intersection where leaders (individuals like you) must navigate and negotiate multiple often opposing pressures and expectations. Drawing on the work of contemporary scholars (Kempster and Carroll, 2015) this course explores these topics in a manner where active learning can take place. Not from a position of judgment looking in, but from juggling complexities from the real-world positions considering dimensions such as context (spatial, temporal and cultural); norms and values which privilege economic metrics and pressures to continuously grow, be more efficient and productive; and expectations to actively engage with diverse stakeholders to support doing good, not just less harm.

Grounded on key perspectives and new directions researched and explored by scholars and practitioners in the field of responsible leadership, this course engages you in active and experiential learning. Looking at individual and organizational failures, across sectors and across the globe, this course also draws on the Ivey Leadership Institute’s work related to the critical role of judgment and dimensions of character in decision-making. Culminating in an assignment focused on timely and relevant example of failure and wrongdoing, you will engage with experts in the field, draw on their experience and course material as well as consider current literature, research and scholarship to expand your own learning and contribute to class knowledge.

Learning Outcomes

In this experiential course, you will explore the pressures and challenges decision-makers face—that you will face in the “real world.” Consider how and why failure, misconduct and wrongdoing is so prevalent today—from the for-profit sector to public service, and from the political arena to NGOs. Develop an understanding of how to navigate conflicting and opposing expectations and pressures while privileging a responsible mindset.

• Understand the basic tenets of Responsible Leadership: examine how harm is being caused by individual and organizational decision-making;
• Develop an understanding of the impact and influence of neoliberalism on responsible leadership and global citizenship;
• Deconstruct real-world scenarios: develop competence in addressing situations;
• Build dimensions of leader character (Ivey Leadership Institute) to support growth and resiliency related to the pressures you will face; and,
• Become more confident and comfortable in working toward practical solutions and approaches.

Elective

Macroeconomics for Managers

Course Description

Successful business management demands more than naïve reactions to current economic events such as recession, trade spats and exchange rate swings. It requires an understanding of fundamental economic forces and trends at both national and international levels and of how they affect business performance in the long-run as well as the short-run. The core objective of this course is thus to strengthen students’ understanding of behaviour of the economy as a whole – the macroeconomy – and of its impact on firm performance and strategy. The state of the macroeconomy provides arguably the most important contextual factor that Ivey graduates will face in their future economic lives – as employees, consumers and saver-investors. A nuanced understanding of the workings of economies is therefore not only a necessary component of the practicing manager’s toolkit, but also of the educated citizen’s worldview. Through academic and practitioner readings, data analysis exercises, case studies, and group discussions, students will acquire the knowledge and experience needed to connect macroeconomic analysis to managerial decision-making. The material covered in the course complements other courses in the Ivey MSc program. For example, the ability to analyse country information, including macroeconomic data, is an essential skill for finance, analytics, international business and strategy.

Learning Descriptions

Throughout the course, students will be able to:

• Articulate analysis and conclusions during class discussions and written reports; and,
• Connect factors in the macroeconomy to firm-level decision making.

Elective

Managing Innovation

In this course, students will understand innovation and how it relates to firm performance that is crucial for success in the hypercompetitive business landscape, and tapping employee creativity, identifying and combining necessary resources, and aligning innovation efforts to build competitive advantage is one of the most difficult tasks for managers. Students will possess a deep conceptual knowledge of innovation in its various forms, understand innovation processes, be able to apply that knowledge to build innovation-centric strategies, and to solve common problems related to innovation management.

Elective

Managing Risk in Organizations

Course Description

Numerous problems from the 2008 financial crisis to recent crashes of Boeing 737 airplanes have been attributed to systematic problems in management decision making and organizational risk management processes. The COVID-19 pandemic has further highlighted the importance of high-quality decision making and risk management for organizational survival and growth.

When facing high levels of risk and uncertainty, an organization’s outcomes, as well as outcomes experienced by others, depend on decision makers’ ability to accurately perceive the situation, other stakeholders’ perspectives, and possible future scenarios. They need to accurately determine what information is relevant and what is not. And they need to employ appropriate decision-making processes. Unfortunately, cognitive limitations, biases and subconscious decision heuristics often hinder these activities. In addition, many organizations lack strategies and methods for managing new and unexpected risks.

This course draws on insights from cognitive psychology, economics, statistics, and decision sciences to examine good and bad decision making and risk management practices. Frameworks and practices to improve decision making and risk management will be introduced. We will study the role of emotion, affect, and intuitive statistical thinking in risk decisions. We’ll look at how decisions and risk behaviours are shaped by mental models and organizational context. Decision making and risk management frameworks and approaches will be explored via case analysis, simulations, discussion, guest presentations, and a group project. Students will see the role of risk management practices in low-risk organizations such as universities, to high risk ones, like oil refineries. (Note: this is not a course on financial risk management, but rather, on individual, managerial and organizational risk management).

Learning Outcomes

By the end of the course students will be able to:

• Recognize and explain how selective perception, decision heuristics, and cognitive biases, systematically affect decision making quality;
• Understand what mental models are, and their role in risk perception, decision making, and risk management behaviours;
• Appropriately apply decision analysis methods discussed during the term;
• Compare and apply various risk management frameworks discussed in the course;
• Create a stakeholder analysis and an expert model of a risk decision in order to assess multiple stakeholders’ perspectives of that decision; and,
• Apply ideas from the course to describe and analyze a complex challenge/opportunity with high levels of risk and uncertainty in order to assess past events, or to devise recommendations going forward.

Elective

Marketing

Course Description

This module is part of the MSc Essentials course, designed as a foundation to aid students in understanding the materials throughout the rest of the MSc program. We will mainly cover the three pillars of marketing (Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning).

Learning Outcomes

To develop an understanding of the fundamental concepts and vocabulary of marketing, and a set of analysis skills that will allow students to quickly assess and evaluate marketing situations from a business perspective. The intent is to have you develop a curiosity and interest in marketing, acquire sufficient basic skills to assist your career, and maintain a market orientation, whatever your career path. You should leave the course with well‐developed abilities to:

• analyze the market and business environment in which an organization is operating;
• determine the major opportunities and challenges facing the organization;
• develop a set of alternative marketing strategies, and select the most appropriate one; and,
• convert your choice into an implementable, differentiated, and profitable action plan.

Operations

The operational system is comprised of processes and associated functioning elements (e.g., plant, parts, people, partners, policies/practices) that transform inputs into outputs. While most people think of factories (or even hospitals!) when they think of “operations,” delivering customer value through operations is much broader and more general. In fact, every organization in every industry uses operations-based principles to plan, control or improve their business processes. Cultivating and leveraging operational excellence through efficient and effective operations is crucial to create and sustain a competitive advantage.

Consider a firm such as Dell Inc., which utilizes parts, people and customer information as inputs to produce individually configured computers as outputs. To accomplish this, a defined sequence of operating practices, such as order taking, parts insertion, soldering, assembly, and packaging, are carried out. Moreover, the operations function is not limited to manufacturing goods, but also encompasses the creation and delivery of services. For example, Manulife Financial uses process activities to identify clients, gather needed information, and write life insurance policies, along with many other financial products. Each service delivery process can be studied and improved using operations-based principles.

Our primary interest here is to identify and understand how the efficient and effective management of all operational efforts within the firm contributes to realizing value. Tactical decisions such as operational system planning and control are the basis for addressing broader managerial concerns such as quality and supply management. Collectively, these must contribute to an overarching operations strategy that should be aligned with the firm’s business strategy to deliver a clear, distinctive competitive advantage.

Learning Outcomes

This Operations course has three related objectives. The first objective is to contribute to your general management understanding through exposure to fundamental operations management issues. By the end of this operations segment of Ivey Essentials, you should be able to:

• Employ appropriate operations tools, concepts, and analyses;
• Identify by name and function the major components of an operational system;
• Identify, define, analyze and propose feasible solutions to operations-based problems;
• Analyze the important quantitative and qualitative factors in specific operating situations and make appropriate trade-offs between them;
• Differentiate between critical and non-critical, and short- and long-term; recognize the pros and cons of operations-based solutions in practical situations. In short, develop informed judgments regarding operations system decisions; and,
• Formulate an operations strategy consistent with an overall business strategy while taking into consideration the cross-enterprise objectives related financial, marketing, and personnel.

The second objective contributes to Ivey’s mission of cultivating critical thinkers and problem solvers. You should significantly improve your abilities in the following areas:

• Discover and clearly define the problem(s);
• State and analyze the causal sequence of circumstances that may be contributing to such problems;
• Generate and critically evaluate a series of plausible alternatives for resolving these problems;
• Decide which alternative or combination of alternatives is the “best”; and,
• Develop an implementation program and action plan that provides the highest probability of resolving the identified problem(s) and contributes effectively to the organizational objectives and strategy.

The third objective is to dispel the myths surrounding operations and its associated technologies. During your business career you might not be directly responsible for managing an operational system, but you will deal with those who are. For example, consultants and investment bankers, while not directly working on a daily basis on the shop floor or service centre, are concerned with assessing the present, future or potential value of an organization’s operational system. In this regard, this course will assist you in developing the following abilities:

• Discuss problems, concerns or issues with operations and technical experts; Solve operational problems within your own jurisdiction;
• Identify the operations skills required in the people you must rely upon for assistance; and,
• Evaluate the impact of actions taken by operations for other business disciplines / functions of the organization and vice versa.

Predictive Analytics

Course Description

Our increasingly connected world is producing more data than humans are able to process and is transforming our economy and many businesses. In making decision, executives rely on predictions and forecasts that are based on the versatile data that nowadays companies are increasingly gathering. Problems of this nature occur in fields as diverse as finance, operations management, marketing, risk management among others. Making accurate forecasts is thus a necessity for managers to cope with issues such as seasonality, demand changes, price-cutting maneuvers, and swings in the economy and is fundamental for creating a competitive advantage. For instance, in the retail industry, accurately forecasting demand is key to optimizing order quantities, stock levels, and in avoiding stock-outs and costly obsolete product disposals. Accordingly, predicting consumer behaviors allows retailers to adjust sourcing and distribution strategies and in maintaining a cash-flow that otherwise would be tied to extra inventory.

Learning Outcomes

Students will be able to gain basic R skills and learn about different predictive analytics models. Particularly the students will learn to:

• Identify different features of realistic data and analyze these features using the appropriate predictive analytics methods;
• Identify the limitations and the applicability of different predictive analytics methods.;
• Develop different predictive models to predict data and evaluate these models quantitatively; and,
• Implement predictive models using R and/or python.

Elective

Prescriptive Analytics and Optimization

This course covers formulations, applications and theory of optimization. The students will learn how to model decision problems using linear, integer and nonlinear programming techniques, how to implement these models using modern software, and finally how to interpret the results and gain business and managerial insights.

Required

Pricing and Revenue Analytics

Course Description

First emerged in the airline industry in the late 70s after US airline deregulation, revenue management collectively refers to the tactical use of quantitative models to predict demand and customer preferences, and optimize product assortment and pricing strategies. It focuses on how firms in various industries should manage capacity and product availability, set and update prices across different selling channels with the goal of maximizing profitability. This course provides an introduction to both the theory and practice of revenue management. This course will discuss the theory underlying revenue management as well as practical case studies and how to apply this theory.

Students will learn the essential principles and tools of pricing and revenue management. This includes:

• Introduction to revenue management
• Demand forecasting
• Capacity allocation & Overbooking
• Customer choice modeling
• Price optimization and markdown pricing
  • dynamic pricing with constrained supply
  • peak load pricing
  • personalized promotions
  • personalized pricing

Learning Outcomes

• Use classic revenue management techniques, such as unconstraining censored demand, “critical ratio” and “expected marginal seat revenue” methods, to make capacity allocation and overbooking decisions;
• Use data to estimate an appropriate price demand relationship;
• Use estimated price demand relationship to optimize price and provide appropriate recommendations to managers regarding pricing, both in variable pricing as well as dynamic pricing;
• Comprehend revenue management related research articles, articulate analysis and conclusions during class discussion and written examinations; and,
• Communicate complex models and analytics to managers without formal training in analytics.

Elective

Programming Skills Workshops

These workshops cover technical programming skills that are identified as important by data science practitioners, such as SAS, SQL, Hadoop, Python, R, JAVA, Tableau, and others. Topics vary by term.

Required

Simulation and Risk Analysis

The Simulation and Risk Analysis course introduces students to technologies and practices for simulation used to model complex systems. It covers modeling and risk assessment approaches with a focus on continuous and discrete event simulation. There will be a review of fundamentals on discrete and continuous systems modeling. The topics on statistical input and output data analysis, systems modeling using a simulation software, verification and validation issues will be covered as well. More advanced topics like Markov chain and time series using simulation will be discussed by case studies. Examples will be introduced from real applications. Throughout the course, Microsoft Excel and Simul 8 will be used as the main simulation tools.

Required

Social Media Analytics and Digital Marketing

The first decade of twenty-first century is the era of business analytics and social media. The increasing popularity of social media has resulted in astounding growth in the amount of digital data available, Marketers keep up to date on emerging digital information relevant to business. Marketing managers are now determining how social media platform can be leverage to gain competitive strategy. This course will help you understand online buy behavior, firm advertising strategy and market structure. The most important, the course identifies data sources that allow you to define and track performance indicators for your digital marketing activities. The goal is for students to learn frameworks and methods that will allow them to generate valuable and actionable marketing insights from common social media sources.

Strategy

Course Description

Strategic management is concerned with achieving superior firm performance and sustaining it over the long run. Strategy at Ivey has a strong general management, or cross-enterprise, orientation. The key decision maker is the general manager. The primary objective of the Ivey Essentials Strategy course is to develop your skills in formulating (analysis) and implementing (action) strategy that you will need as a practicing general manager or cross-enterprise leader.

Two threads weave their way through the fabric of the course: value and competitive advantage. First, organizations–be they for-profit, not-for-profit, or public sector organizations–generate value that individuals cannot generate on their own. All organizations, therefore, must create value vis-à-vis the environment in which they are embedded. Second, organizations must have a competitive advantage, i.e., do something better than others, in order to attract customers, clients, investment, and resources to be able to capture and distribute that value in the marketplace.

Value and competitive advantage are embedded in a context that always includes ethics and the realities of globalization. Leaders are charged with the moral, social, and corporate responsibilities to do the right thing, to compete within the rules, and to consider the legitimate claims that multiple, global stakeholders have on the value generated by organizations that are part of the societies in which they operate.

Strategy is different from other courses that emphasize the development of expertise related to a specific aspect of the enterprise (e.g., finance, operations, marketing, accounting). Instead of focusing on a particular functional area, this course provides you with a process for problem solving and decision-making that encompasses the entire organization and requires you to integrate and apply the knowledge gained from those disciplines in order to develop an overall general management perspective. Strategy issues are characterized by volatility, ambiguity, complexity, and uncertainty. The frameworks and tools we use in the course will allow us to manage, but never eliminate these realities. The course is as much about asking the right questions as it is about having the right answers. There is seldom a single “correct” response to a situation. We will reach consensus on some issues, yet many will have differing interpretations on the most appropriate course of action. The goal of the strategy course is to develop a solid, rigorous, and logical thought process that leads to a plausible solution to the issue at hand.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the course, you will have achieved the following learning outcomes if you have worked thoughtfully through the material presented in the cases, the textbook, and the class discussions:

1. You will have had comprehensive exposure to business unit strategy problems in a variety of contexts that trained you to identify and critique the key components of strategy (business goals, product/market focus, value proposition, core activities, competitive advantage) and you will have explored differences between firm-level strategy from functional strategies (e.g. marketing, operations, finance, HR strategies).
2. You will have consistently applied fundamental tools for strategic analysis (e.g. five forces, industry value chain, resource analysis, stakeholder analysis) and you will have become able to analyze complex strategic problems and situations.
3. You will have developed the ability to assess how a firm should compete in the industry in which it operates, i.e., against its closest competitors.
4. You will have learned how to identify, build, and acquire the capabilities a firm needs to sustain competitive advantage and drive future growth.
5. You will have developed the ability to ensure alignment between a firm’s strategy and its structure, its control system, and its reward system.
6. You will have gained the ability to make strategic recommendations that consider the tradeoffs required to balance what a company needs to do (industry structure and trends), what it wants to do (management preferences), and what it is capable of doing (using resources & capabilities).
7. You will have gained competence and confidence in proposing, justifying, and defending arguments and recommendations about strategic business problems through in-class discussion.

Sustainability

Course Description

Historically, environmental and social issues have been treated as peripheral concerns or additional costs for business organizations that were often driven by regulation. However, over the last two decades any perceived separation between social and environmental issues, and financial performance is breaking down. Markets now take environmental and social investments and performance into account. More specifically, customer, investors, and the public are increasingly asking not only what product or service is being offered, but also how it is done, and whether business can satisfy multi-faceted performance expectations. For example, environmental and social pressures include supplier working conditions, carbon footprinting, Fair Trade and environmental stewardship, to name just a few.

In a nutshell, for corporate managers, sustainable development focuses on the inter-relationships between financial, social and environmental performance. Many companies are now actively seeking to pull these three together under a competitive strategy that captures the so called “triple bottom line.” This multi-dimensional conceptualization of performance opens avenues to new customers and can transform traditional industries. Global firms are increasingly being redefined by their ecological performance, and markets are rewarding those who develop green products and services, factor in social needs along the supply chain, and balance multiple objectives. Customers also must sort through confusing claims, and can punish those who appear to pay only lip service or misrepresent their sustainability initiatives. Changing environmental and social expectations encourage both incremental and radical innovations – not just within the product or process, but also in strategies, business models, supply chains and industry partnerships.

Learning Outcomes

Competitive advantage can be rooted in new capabilities related to the triple bottom line. Taking the general perspective of managers, we will confront difficult challenges, scientific uncertainty, and new opportunities. Overall, the course is designed to deepen your understanding of value creation, value delivery and value capture that remain central to business administration; to map a number of the complex and evolving interactions between business and society along the supply chain; and to delve into promising sources of improved competitiveness. To do so, our sessions focus on strategic, marketing and operational aspects, thereby enabling managers to:

• explore how markets respond to environmental and social concerns, and how businesses might do better by doing good;
• apply conceptual frameworks and toolkits to evaluate environmental and social performance; and,
• develop a competitive advantage in an era of where the triple bottom line is increasingly important.

Elective

Systems Thinking

Course Description

This course is designed to encourage students to go beyond the linear, causal, planning oriented models often prescribed in business courses. Instead, it is about learning to recognize and manage the complexity inherent in organizations and their broader environment. Each business organization is an open system, yet we often treat businesses as closed, controlled contexts. This way of thinking made sense when the environment of the organization changed slowly. However, today’s business world is being buffeted by disruptions coming at a speed and volume that have never been seen before. Using old ways of dealing with business issues will no longer be effective.

This course will focus on the influence of specific recent disruptions (e.g., artificial intelligence, climate change, human tracking, public health crises, migration, water and food scarcity, etc.) and offer tools that will help students better manage a business environment that has become increasingly volatile. Systems thinking will enable students to consider how all parts of the system are interdependent. They will become more able to find and work leverage points that influence critical business outcomes. For example, students will learn how system interconnections are influenced by information flow, finding and building feedback loops, how systems behave, and where and how to intervene to achieve desired systemic change.

Learning Outcomes

This course is about thinking expansively and acting deliberately in response to certain managerial, organizational, and societal problems. You will play games, wrestle with puzzles, and tell stories. You work in teams to tackle a real-time problem of an organization assigned to your team. Think of it as live cases. The difference is that you’re the author of the case, and as the course goes on, you will discover different aspects of the case. In the process, you will discover how complex patterns or systems’ behaviour can arise from simple structures and simple rules. You will draw on such insights to develop a deeper understanding of many managers' or organizations' issues or problems. You will develop new toolkits and ‘thinkways’ for analyzing complex issues, modeling their structures, and hypothesize where and how to intervene.

Along the way, you will read about the theory and practice of systems thinking. Although it is quite impossible to package the history of systems theory in a single course, you will develop an appreciation for how it provides new ways of seeing, thinking, and acting. You may even want to study the relationships between the most important global challenges of the twenty-first century, including globalization, climate change, conflict, democracy, energy, health & wellbeing, and security. This course aims to develop new perspectives to help you learn thinking-and-acting in a systems’ ways. At the end of the course, you will:

• Understand the basic tenets of systems thinking;
• Know when and how to use systems thinking principles to solve real-world situations;
• Articulate and illustrate cause and effect relationships, develop predictions, and provide scenario analyses using systems thinking;
• Become more confident and comfortable in using systems thinking to assess, critique and evaluate complex business situations; and,
• Become adept at identifying how systems thinking can be used in a business context.

Elective

Technology and Humanity

Course Description

This course enables MSc students to become critical thinkers and better decision makers on contemporary issues related to the increasingly significant role of digital technology in our economy and society. We focus on issues at the intersection of technology and humanity, but go beyond the superficial changes that are more readily perceived in organizations, at work, and at home. Instead, we engage with the deep historical and institutional structures upon which technology is changing our economy, society, and the very nature our humanity. With a sharper, broader critical lens with which to see our unfolding future, students who complete this course will be better equipped to make decisions that create more inclusive long-term prosperity while building a better future for all.

In this course, we pose the questions: Are digital technologies producing a better society? If so, for whom? What are the managerial and leadership challenges associated with the digital transformation of society? We will explore and learn various modes of thinking about these issues so that we can have a deeper understanding of how technology, particularly digital technology, is transforming our society, governance, economics, and culture. Rapid advances in digital technologies are fundamentally changing the way we work, organize, govern, trade, and interact with each other. That is why responsible and effective leadership in the digital age requires a good understanding of the mechanisms underlying these changes.

In this course, we will take a deep dive into issues at the heart of how new manifestations of digital technology, such as artificial intelligence, big data, social networks, and digital platforms, are reshaping our humanity. Topics examined in the course include the future of work, algorithmic biases, privacy and security, digital inequality, and the surveillance economy.

Learning Outcomes

Content related outcomes:

1. Students will learn key conceptual models and methods for analyzing and assessing issues at the intersection of technology and society;
2. Students will use these models to assess key topics raised in class to develop their skills in analytical reasoning and approaches to knowledge discovery;

Skills related outcomes:

3. Students will learn to communicate persuasively and work collaboratively to build opportunities and solutions at the intersection of technology and society;

Attitude related outcomes:

4. Students will develop an interest and passion for critical analysis of contemporary Technology and Society issues and will seek opportunities to engage with these issues.

Elective

Technology and Society

This course will draw on humanities and social science practices to provide perspective on the human factors which shape the development and application of technology. Students will learn to critically question and analyze the historical, cultural, social, political and economic factors which have influenced and will continue to influence the development and application of technology. We will discuss: the history of technology and the social and cultural contexts which shape its trajectory (including gender and inclusion issues); emerging political issues like cyber security risks and political systems; economic consequences related to the future of work, the costs of privacy, and the ethical implications of digital transformation.

Elective

Technology Prospecting

This course covers forecasting and future and potential entrepreneurial value of new technologies and innovations; assessing the potential value of specific innovations; strategy formulation and implementation at high tech startups, incumbent companies, and other organizations.

Elective

Venturing Field Project

This course provides students the opportunity to expand and apply their knowledge to current trends and situations at real entrepreneurial ventures. Expanding beyond the summer studios, this field work will demand a broader focus, greater leadership capability and advanced design and digital literacy based on the prior 12 months of course work. Through a combination of individual and team deliverables, students will learn (1) how to critically evaluate entrepreneurs’ responses and reactions to disruptive innovations and challenges; (2) how to develop a rapid response to a real entrepreneurial challenges; (3) how to work with an array of entrepreneurial clients to develop recommendations and best practices; and (4) how to assess and predict the emergence of tomorrow’s enterprise challenges.

Required