Course Descriptions
The course title links to the webpage for the course, when available, or check the online course list in Registration and Records.
MBA
MBA 500: Managerial and Career Effectiveness I-III
This unique, skill-based course aims to offer students frameworks, concepts and tools for management and career effectiveness in a supportive learning environment. In the fall semester, the course will be largely integrated with the material presented in MBA 530. Students will assess their own managerial strengths, weaknesses, and potential, using a variety of methods, including paper-and-pencil instruments, and team and self-reflection exercises, and video review of individual and team behaviors. Topics to be covered include team building, public speaking, networking, decision making, creativity and problem solving. In the spring semester, the primary focus will be on career effectiveness as students will learn key career skills such as data mining, job search, behavior based interviewing, and negotiation skills with practical application of those concepts.
MBA 503 : Accounting for Managers
Accelerated survey of basic concepts underlying accounting in profit-oriented firms; concepts for decision making in manufacturing; content and interpretation of published financial statements; data measurement; product costing; budgeting.
MBA 504: Statistics and Quantitative Methods
Formulation and estimation of statistical models consistent with a managerial objective. Decision making and forecast generation based on data derived from models.
MBA 505 : Global Economics for Managers
Survey of microeconomic concepts applied to managerial decisions. Competition. Market power. The firm, production, and cost. Pricing practices. Economics of information and innovation.
MBA 510 : Information Technology Management
Effective implementation, management and use of emerging IT-driven business practices. Information technology innovation and firm IT adoption. Strategic implications of IT. IT investment justification. Techniques for decision making regarding IT.
MBA 511: Networking Infrastructure for E-Commerce
In keeping with the changing needs of modern business, MBA 511 will be offered with a security and privacy focus this fall. Computer networks have become an integral part of business operations today and these networked resources introduce numerous threats to system security and information privacy. Ignoring security issues can endanger system integrity and expose a company’s critical assets to damage or theft.
Similarly, it is important to consider consumer needs as they relate to information privacy. The goal of the course will be to provide the skills and knowledge necessary for today’s professionals to assess and manage information security and customer privacy. Topics will include: attack methods, security technologies, incident response, security policy, privacy management and privacy policy. A small portion of the semester will cover basic networking concepts that are necessary to discuss security topics.
MBA 512 : Decision Support Systems
This course is designed to give MBA students an introduction to the topic of computerized Decision Support Systems (DSS). Upon completing this course, students will know how DSS differ from and relate to other types of information systems. Students will also develop considerable skill at creating spreadsheet-based DSS using Visual Basic of Applications in MS Office 2000. This course fits in the IT concentration.
MBA 513: Database Management
Structure and function of managerial databases; design options and implementation of database management systems in organizations; hands-on laboratory practice includes use of a widely used database software application; case readings including implications of database technologies to the firm.
MBA 514: Technology, Competition, and the Law
Intellectual property law, including patent, copyright, trade secrets and trademark law. Impact on management decision making. International differences in intellectual property law and moves toward harmonization. Relationship to torts, contracts and antitrust.
MBA 515 : Enterprise Systems
Use of enterprise systems in planning, controlling and managing operations. Discussion of ERP and other enterprise systems such as customer relationship management systems. Enterprise systems life cycle. Project using reengineering principles to make business processes more efficient. Hands on experience with Netsuite ERP/CRM and Microsoft Visio. Enterprise systems case studies providing implications for IT management. Technical and end user aspects included.
MBA 516: E-Commerce and IT Practicum
The eCommerce Practicum consists of a semester long team project to prototype a secure eCommerce system to address a real problem furnished by a corporate sponsor. Students will be organized into teams of appropriate size and comprising individuals of varying backgrounds, majors and skill sets to cover both the business and technical aspects of the problem.
Prerequisite: BUS 510
MBA 520: Managerial Finance
Investment and financing decisions by businesses with emphasis on technology-driven organizations in rapidly changing environments. Cash as the basis of asset valuation. Time value of money. Capital budgeting decisions under certainty and uncertainty. Capital market theory. Cost of capital. Capital structure theory and dividend policy. Cash management. Options and managerial implications. Derivatives and risk management.
Prerequisites: MBA 503, MBA 505
MBA 521 : Advanced Topics in Corporate Finance
This course continues and extends the discussion of the basic corporate financial management decision-making process begun in MBA 520. This course covers: an overview of financial management; valuing real assets and real options; risk management and derivatives; the role of financial leverage; optimal capital structure; conflicts between security holders and management; stockholder-bondholder conflicts; financial distress, bankruptcy and reorganization; corporate control and restructuring: mergers, acquisitions, takeovers, spinoffs and divestitures; corporate governance issues. This course fits in the Finance concentration.
Prerequisite: MBA 520
MBA 522: Portfolio and Capital Market Theory
Detailed, thorough examination of the theory and practice of security analysis and valuation with a particular focus on equities. Students will be responsible for producing detailed analysis reports which provide direct investment recommendations. The analysis will be based heavily on quantitative valuation methods.
Prerequisite: MBA 520
MBA 523 : Investment Theory and Practice
Students in this course will continue to evaluate new and existing stocks for consideration for the class portfolio, but the overall course focus will be on the theory and empirical evidence that surrounds active portfolio management strategies, asset pricing, risk, return and performance evaluation.
Prerequisite: MBA 520
MBA 525: Tax Planning and Business Strategy
This course focuses on the importance of tax considerations in making business decisions. Accounting, finance, and strategy courses often ignore taxes, while traditional tax courses generally ignore the richness of the decision context in which tax factors operate. Through this course, you will develop a framework for understanding how taxes affect business strategy and financing decisions in a wide variety of settings. Three key themes are introduced: in any decision, one needs to consider all parties, all taxes, and all costs. The three themes are applied to such decision contexts as investments, compensation and pensions, organizational form, multinational ventures, mergers and acquisitions, and family tax planning. The ultimate goal is to provide you with a new approach to thinking about taxes (and all forms of government intervention) that will be valuable even as laws and governments change. This course fits in the Finance concentration.
MBA 526: International Finance
Theory and practice of financial management in the international arena, including spot and forward markets for foreign exchange, currency futures and options contracts, international arbitrage conditions, foreign exchange exposure, foreign trade financing instruments, direct and portfolio investment abroad, and the role of country risk in determining investments.
MBA 527 : Financial Risk Management
This course is designed to teach managers how to use derivatives to maximize firm value through risk management. It introduces students to tools necessary for managers to effectively hedge with derivatives and protect firms from losses. Topics covered include the identification, management, evaluation, and monitoring of the financial price risks facing a corporation. These risks arise from unexpected changes in interest rates, foreign exchange rates, commodity prices and security prices. Rather than focusing on the details of pricing a variety of derivatives, the course is more concerned about how to use existing derivatives as well as financial innovation to manage risks in order to add value to the firm.
MBA 529: New Firm Financing
Survey of financial management problems at firms from initial formation to initial public offering. Financial components of business plan, design of financial information and control systems, sources of funds for small firms, financing rapid growth, firm valuation for initial public offerings, going public transactions.
Prerequisite: MBA 520
MBA 530: Managing the Global High Tech Workforce
Management of people in organizations. Processes of staffing, motivating, and managing within the cultures of technology-intensive organizations. Leadership. Diagnosis of organizational culture. Conflict management and negotiations. Innovation and change management.
MBA 535 : Change Management
The purpose of this course is to understand change on several levels: psychological/internal, group/social, organizational, and broader cultural, technological, economic levels. We will explore practitioner and theoretical approaches to managing uncertainty and change, especially from the manager’s perspective. We will revisit the traditional functions of management and reevaluate their importance within highly dynamic, global environments. Are managers evolving into a new role? Are they leaders or something different altogether? What role(s) should managers serve within change environments?
MBA 536: Creativity in Management
More than ever, the ability to think creatively is essential in business decision making and problem solving. This course builds on the Creativity Project offered to MBA students last year. Students will be introduced to various models exploring creativity and the workplace; equally important will be off-site classes held at local businesses involving conversations with executives on the issue of creative thinking. Also, there will be interaction with artists both in class and at their studios to help students understand how artistically creative people approach their art and craft. This course work will provide students with a much asked for component of management – the ability to think and utilize creativity in practical ways.
MBA 540: Production and Operations Management
Design and management of an organizational operation, including both service and manufacturing. Analysis of strategies, process design, planning and control, operations organizational structures, work design, scheduling, materials management, and advanced operations techniques using a variety of managerial and quantitative models.
Prerequisite: MBA 503, MBA 505
MBA 541: Supply Chain Relationships
This class in the sequence develops major themes and strategies of Supply Chain Management relationships. The focus is on performance measurement, relationship assessment, negotiation, contracting, and managing conflict in business relationships in a globally integrated supply chain. In this context, relationships may exist between internal functional groups, as well as with suppliers and/or customers. The focus of the course is on collaboration and strategy execution. Emphasis is on for assessing, establishing metrics/expectations, contracting, and managing external business relationships in sourcing, logistics and operations. However, many of the concepts will be explored primarily from the perspective of the purchasing/sourcing perspective, and less emphasis will be placed on the marketing/sales perspective.
Prerequisite: MBA 590I
MBA 542: Supply Chain Logistics
In this course, a variety of tools and frameworks are presented in order to help students understand the basis behind effective logistics decision making and how it relates to broader issues in managing the entire supply chain and fulfilling the strategic objectives of a firm. The methods used to convey and develop these ideas include a mix of traditional lecture, interactive class discussion, case study analysis, spreadsheet exercises, and independent research. The course material is drawn from a number of sources, including a recently published textbook, recent articles from the popular business press, and articles from academic journals.
MBA 543: Planning and Control Systems
Design and management of operations planning and control systems for manufacturing firms. Capacity management, master production scheduling, production activity control. Just-in-time and time-based competition concepts. Multi-week simulation of decision making in manufacturing environment.
Prerequisite: MBA 540
MBA 549: Supply Chain Management Practicum
This is a required capstone course for OM/SCM majors. The course is comprised of a team-based project working on a Supply Chain Resource Consortium (SCRC) partner company’s SCM issues. These projects will be as varied in scope as are company’s SC issues and improvement initiatives, but they will contain a specific, somewhat narrowly-focused set of deliverables. We anticipate a mix of projects that will generally center, or focus, on SC Relationships, SC Physical Flows and/or SC Information Flows, yet remain integrated across the supply chain issue that faces the company. The scope of the projects will be defined prior to, or early in, the semester of the class. Background and objectives, as well as key deliverables and milestones, along with deadlines will be established for the student teams. Students should expect to learn at two levels in the Practicum: first, they will study technical supply chain issues particular to each project; and second, they will learn the team-based, deadline-driven nature of supply chain initiatives in a real company setting. This course fits in the SCM concentration.
MBA 550: Management of Technology & Innovation
Development of technology policy and strategy. Management and implementation of new technologies. Technology sourcing, technology forecasting and life cycles, economic and financial analysis of technology. Innovation process and impact on organizations.
MBA 551 : Services Management
The first part of this course will provide an overview of service management from an integrated viewpoint with a focus on customer satisfaction. The material will integrate operations, marketing, strategy, information technology and organizational issues. Objectives include understanding the “state of the art” in service management strategies, mastering the tools for analyzing and optimizing the service experience, and analyzing the operational processes for managing the service encounter to achieve internal and external customer satisfaction. The second part of this course will examine organizational culture; it will provide an overview of aspects, artifacts, rituals and languages of organizational culture. Participants will learn tools and techniques for mapping an organization’s culture for the purpose of identifying opportunities for developing service innovations.
MBA 553 : Business Process Design and Analysis
This course examines the major aspects of developing, analyzing, improving, and managing business processes. The focus is on processes, as opposed to functions. Virtually all businesses are made up of a series of sequential and/or parallel business processes, many of which cut across functional and organizational boundaries. The ability to understand, design, and manage these complex processes is a critical skill, and competent business process analysts, managers, and architects are in high demand in the job market. In this course we will examine business processes from a variety of perspectives. We will consider both strategic and executional issues critical to high-performance processes. We will also examine processes in a number of different industries and functional areas within firms, to identify similarities and differences of well run processes. While we will cover some key IT aspects of processes, the ultimate focus of our analysis is on business performance and business impact. The course will be practice-oriented. We will use cases, exercises, and discussions in order to learn and apply BPM skills and concepts.
MBA 554: Project Management
Life cycle view of organizing and managing technical projects, including project selection, planning, and execution. Methods for managing and controlling project costs, schedules, and scope. Techniques for assessing project risk. Use of popular project management software tools. Application of project management tools and methods to product development, software, and process reengineering projects.
MBA 555: Product Design and Development
This course presents and utilizes an integrated approach to new product design, development, and launch with corporate-sponsored projects. Cross-disciplinary teams of students from management, engineering, and design apply the skills they learned in the foundation courses to develop a new product and prototype. The course provides a team experience of formulating, evaluating, and developing a new product concept.
MBA 556: Services Innovation Lab
Successful service innovation requires cross-functional collaboration across many disciplines. Because of the challenges associated with spanning traditional functional boundaries and interfacing across disciplines, effective management of the service innovation process is a key driver of success. The backbone of the service innovation lab program at NC State will be an emphasis on cross-functional, end-to-end new service development and the integrated systems perspectives needed to conceive, create, launch, and support innovative service solutions. A unique aspect of this course is its sole focus on development of a real service solution. All activities in the course are geared toward the successful scoping and execution of team projects. Student grading and evaluation is based entirely on the effort and results of their projects. The course will be jointly taught by College of Management and College of Engineering faculty.
MBA 557: Consulting
An overview of the field of consulting with primary emphasis on the application of consulting methods to address performance issues within organizations. Articulation of the key performance issues faced by organizations across a number of industries today. Overview of the generic issue-based consulting process: identifying and prioritizing issues, identifying root-causes of priority issues, developing interventions to address root-causes and measuring impact of interventions on peformance issues. Explanation of how the concepts, procedures and methods of issue-based consulting can be leveraged to address these performance issues. Application of Issue-Based Consulting concepts and procedures to organization issues via Case Analysis. Secondary emphasis will be placed on the management and operation of the Professional Services Firm. Overview of a generic consulting firm’s Management System (MS) including: Mission, Organization Structure, Roles and Responsibilities, Processes, Measurements, Policies, and Content/Resource Management. Overview of opportunities and challenges associated with working within the Professional Services field. This course fits in the Innovation Management and Entrepreneurship and Techology Commercialization concentrations.
MBA 560 : Marketing Management and Strategy
Market segmentation, targeting, and positioning. Channels of distribution, promotion strategy, product development strategy, and pricing strategy. Relationship marketing and marketing strategy. Applications in high-tech environments.
MBA 561: Marketing Analytics
Marketing Analytics is the art and science of developing and utilizing interactive marketing decision models to plan, implement, and analyze marketing strategies and tactics. Ever-changing marketplaces and the related computing environment are making an impact on the structure and content of the marketing manager’s job. Concurrently, marketing, as a profession, is so rapidly evolving that it is no longer based on its conceptual content alone. The new and emerging marketing increasingly looks like engineering by combining art and science effectively to solve marketing problems. Marketers need more than concepts to fully exploit various and rich data available to them. This course is designed to help students move from conceptual marketing to analytical marketing. The course is primarily designed for MBA students who have an understanding of marketing principles and exposure to EXCEL. The course may also be useful for graduate students in econometrics who are interested in marketing applications of econometric models.
MBA 562: Marketing Research
A systematic approach to structure, implementation and analysis of marketing research for decision making. This course will focus analysis of information about the customer as well as information about the customer’s wants and needs for the purposes of developing marketing promotional campaigns, developing new products and refining current product offerings and for improving customer service efforts. Appropriate models of consumer behavior and frim behavior will be analyzed in a marketing context.
MBA 563 : Product and Brand Management
Established, mature products and brands are critical to an organization’s profitability, financial stability and strategic posture. This course focuses on creating and managing product and brand portfolios for long-term profitability. Students will apply strategic and implementation frameworks for managing mature products for profitability, transferring existing competencies to new products, exploiting evolving market opportunities, and strategic management of a product portfolio. The course will also focus on building and managing brand equity, examining the impact of brand equity on product line and firm performance, evaluating opportunities for extending brands, and repositioning existing brands. These topics are explored in a variety of product contexts including consumer packaged goods, industrial, and high-technology product markets. The course uses a combination of case analyses, projects, lectures and guest speakers, allowing students to develop their repertoire of quantitative and qualitative marketing decision skills.
MBA 564: Business Relationship Development
This course focuses on strategically and successfully managing the multitude of business relationships that contemporary marketing managers (as well as general managers) face. The conceptual framework of this course is an integrated perspective of marketing communications as a process of successfully interacting with each constituency with the goal of fostering long-term satisfaction and loyalty. Topics broached in this course include market orientation, customer relationship management, managing a sales force, supply chain partnerships, buyer behavior, managing internally as well as other relationship marketing topics. Each module in the course is designed to provide managers with the skill set to effectively and efficiently approach their multifaceted business climate. This course is research and theory based but is strongly grounded in marketing practice. This course fits in the Marketing concentration.
MBA 570: Entrepreneurship
Elements and application of the entrepreneurial process. entrepreneurship, business and strategies, structuring and financing a venture, managing growth and risk, plan.\
MBA 576: Technology Evaluation and Commercialization Concepts
Commercialization potential of new technologies, products and processes. Marketing, organizational, financial, operational and manufacturing issues. Strategic assessment and planning. Innovation management. Entrepreneurial transfer mechanisms including spin-offs, licensing and high-technology start-ups. Practical application with project and team management skills development.
MBA 577: High Technology Entrepreneurship
Development of strategies to commercialize technology based on prioritized assessments. Investigation of various commercialization approaches. Business plan development. Practical application of technology management skills to actual cases with commercial potential.
Prerequisite: MBA 576
MBA 580 : Global Strategy
Theory and practice of business, global, and corporate strategy for high technology firms and firm’s in industries affected by advancements in information technology. Alignment of technologically intensive organizations’ strategies and structures with their macro and industry environments.
MBA 582 : Risk Modeling
The course on risk measurement tools will explore techniques used to (1) identify and measure risk from both quantitative and qualitative perspectives; (2) integrate measurement tools often associated with finance, statistics, and economics to explore how common risk measurement techniques could be applied to other more challenging risk categories including operational and strategic risk; and (3) leverage and develop decision support tools in the service of managing risk.
MBA 586: Legal/Market Dynamics in Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Commerce
Students will be exposed to an array of classical and contemporary issues that highlight the inherent friction between laissez faire capitalism and a highly regulated environment. Detailed analyses of Phase I-IV clinical trials, 510(k) and PMA steps, and other roles of the FDA; pharmaceutical sales; management issues; market identification; and the IP/patent process are some of the topics covered. Off-label usage and social issues such as ethics and corporate social responsibility are also broached. This course is centered on practical issues that will help students become effective business managers in the life sciences industry.
MBA 585 : Current Issues in BioPharma Management
This class develops major themes and emerging strategies in the pharmaceutical industry. The focus is on strategic planning, process improvement, outsourcing, globalization, federal regulation, global distribution, and deployment challenges for executives in the pharmaceutical industry. The course will be explored in a series of management presentations, frameworks, industry collaborative projects, and secondary research, with an emphasis on driving change in a dynamic and competitive global pharmaceutical industry.
MBA 590J: Leadership and Ethics
Explores links between ethics and leadership including topics such as the nature of U.S. corporations, stakeholder considerations, corporate social responsibility, regulation, importance of leader and organizational values and cultures, various ethical theories/frameworks, basic ethical reasoning, and individual skills such as emotional intelligence and managing conflict. Students will learn via simulation, cases, exercises and discussion.
MBA 590 : Issues in Global Health
This course will explore the major political, economic, societal, technological and legal/regulatory trends and issues confronting health care product manufacturers in different regions of the world, with an emphasis on the dominant market of the United States. The first third of the course will focus on the unique attributes of health care markets versus the markets for other goods and services. International trends in health care spending, utilization, access and quality will be compared and the ramifications of these trends and various health “reform” initiatives will be discussed. The middle third of the course will examine the impact of emerging and converging technologies (info, bio, nano, etc.) on health care markets and explore changes occurring globally with respect to research, development and commercialization of new products. The final third of the course will delve into the challenges and opportunities associated with globalization from the perspective of pharmaceutical and other health care product company executives faced with choices on where to locate R&D and manufacturing operations as well as where and how to market their products. Special attention will be paid to the political, ethical and cultural considerations attendant to these strategic business decisions.