Full-time MBA Course
Through systematic world-standard MBA education, BiMBA aims to nurture a group of executives with a mastery of the theories and practices of international business and build a group of leaders with knowledge, vision and entrepreneurship. The curriculum focuses on leadership and decision making skills, and application of advanced management theory in Chinese practices. The regular MBA program lasts for 18 months, with 10 weeks and 4 courses every semester. Internationally used MBA textbooks are employed and English is set as the teaching language, with the exception of the courses holding Chinese cases. Students could select Finance Concentration and General Management Concentration. Qualified students will be conferred the MBA degree of Fordham University, US. licensed by the Office of Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council of China.
Fundamental Courses
Business English
This course aims to improve the students' listening comprehension, speaking and writing skills in English used in the business context. The course will be centered on the key areas of business, such as office management, personnel, marketing, production & operations, finance, corporate culture, intercultural awareness, business practices, sales presentations, etc.
Business Mathematics
This course introduces fundamental methods of mathematics applied in business statistics, operations management, and managerial economics. The course focuses on linear algebra and differential and integral calculus.
Business Statistics
This course introduces the basic statistical concepts essential to economic and business research and decision making. These include business survey methods, descriptive statistics, probability distributions, parameter estimation, hypothesis tests, and fundamentals of regression analysis. Students will be able to analyze real world problems related to business management.
Managerial Economics
This course introduces basic concepts and techniques of economics and discusses their implications for business and management. The course employs the economic theory and methodology to study the decision rules behind the management practices by firms and other organizations, and examines the economic environments as the background for the management operations in the modern market economy with special reference to the context of the Chinese economy.
Fundamentals of Accounting
This course is designed primarily for users, rather than preparers, of accounting information, aims to provide students with a basic understanding of the content and interpretation of financial statements. It gives students insights into the manner by which accounting information can be used to measure the results of business operations. The topics covered include transaction analysis, accounting principles, revenue and expense recognition, receivables, operation assets, and debt and equity securities.
Compulsory Courses
Corporate Finance
This course introduces the theory, methods, concepts, and issues of financial analysis with a particular emphasis on the applications of these principles to the operations management and decision-makings of the firm. Students learn how to diagnose the corporate financial health and to measure financial returns in relation to risk. Topics to be covered include present value analysis, valuation of investment, capital budgeting, risk and return, capital structure, option pricing, mergers, risk management using derivatives, and working capital management.
Fundamentals of Management and Organizational Behavior
This course introduces key concepts, theories and practices of management and organizational behavior. It is aimed to help students better understand the foundations of market-based management theories, concepts, philosophies, skills and practices under different cultural, economic and social conditions. Students are expected to critically study key management concepts and utilize these ideas in analyzing burning management issues and cases under the current Chinese social, cultural, economic, legal and institutional environments. Students will also acquire necessary managerial skills to work more effectively in business firms across cultures.
Executive Communication
This course is designed to improve the presentation and communication skills of students. In an interactive environment, basic writing and speaking abilities are enhanced. The presentation part covers informative presentation, verbal and visual supporting materials, and persuasive presentation (both individual and team). The writing part includes business reports format, editing, and documentation.
Human Resource Management
This course offers an introduction to key concepts, theories and policies of human resource management. Students will learn theories and applications involved in effectively managing people in organizations. Topics covered include global environment, job analysis and job design, recruitment, selection and placement, performance management, training and development, compensation and benefits, employment relationship, and managing careers, etc.
Operations Management
This course is an overview of manufacturing and service operation, mainly how an organization can plan and execute the acquisition and deployment of resources, so as to effectively align supply and demand for its products and services. Students will obtain conceptual intuitions and analytical tools for structuring OM decisions. A unifying theme is the emphasis on systematic analysis of business processes, a detail-attentive mindset whose utility transcends departmental boundaries.
Marketing Management
This course aims to develop students' ability and experience in formulating and planning market strategies. The course introduces the fundamental concepts and processes essential for marketing goods and services in today's competitive environment. These include researching, segmenting and targeting markets, and developing a marketing mix: the combination of product, pricing, distribution, and promotion strategies needed to sell a product efficiently and successfully. Issues and variables covered include consumer behavior, government regulation, marketing research, product planning, personal selling, and international marketing.
Legal and Ethical Systems
This course is an introduction of American law and judicial system to current and future managers, including entrepreneurs. Although the reading for the course is concerned primarily with American legal practice, the discussion will consider how American law and ethics compares with that of China. The course is to enable students to develop an understanding of the American legal system and to attain practical knowledge of the law to a degree sufficient to be useful in business transactions. This course is also to enable students to develop skills to make sound legal and ethical managerial decisions and to implement those decisions within a business organization.
Growing the Firm
The course focuses on the initiation and development of a new business, including an analysis of business opportunities and development of a business plan. Approaches to solving typical start-up problems, such as financing and licensing arrangements, are discussed. The course will also provide a means of integrating the knowledge you have obtained from various core courses into a coherent understanding of the complex relationships concerning the creation and management of entrepreneurial organizations. The transition issues and approaches in growing the firm are also addressed.
Innovation and Change
This course is to provide students with an in-depth understanding of the creative process, and to provide them with the necessary skills for managing organizational change. Students will explore the necessary conditions for innovation and discuss the minimal specifications for successful change initiatives. The course introduces methods to bring about change in organizations and operations necessary to compete in the global marketplace and addresses how to facilitate innovation in products and services. Traditional mechanistic change theories and emergent change processes derived from the so-called new sciences will be discussed.
China's Economic Management
This course provides students with a theoretical framework for analyzing fundamental economic problems and opportunities in China's reform and development. China is engaged in a remarkable and often puzzling process of transition – a simultaneous industrial, social and economic reform. This course covers a number of issues, such as historical perspectives, the late 1970's economic reform, current problems, further reforms and future business opportunities.
Managerial Accounting
This course introduces managerial accounting topics and the methodologies employed in the preparation and interpretation of financial information and nonfinancial tools for internal decision makers. It is to acquaint students with internal accounting information topics that help managers plan, control, make decisions, and evaluate performance effectively. Topics include cost behavior, relevant costs and benefits, transfer pricing, etc. It focuses on product and service cost determination, and is orientated toward the manager as a user and interpreter of accounting information.
Advanced Finance
Prerequisite: Corporate Finance. This course develops proficiency in the application of finance concepts and principles of financial decision-making. The course is to provide a systematic treatment of the traditional and modern approaches to the theory and practice of managerial finance. The central focus of finance is value, and this course builds from a value foundation to approach both the investment and financing decisions of companies. Students will strengthen their analytical skills and gain insights into the operations of companies in a variety of industries. It will help students understand the primary factors considered and the alternatives available when making financial decisions.
Advanced Marketing
Prerequisite: Marketing Management. This course will build on the foundation developed by marketing management course. The course will focus on specific management decisions that lead firms to achieve superior marketing performance. The course will emphasize the integration of business functional (HR, finance, operations, etc.) strategies. It aims to help students develop skills of analysis of an industry's profitability, research techniques for understanding customers, deconstruction of a firm's competitive advantage, and analysis of the "sources" of competitive advantage, and marketing strategies and tactics to build competitive advantages.
Negotiation
The goal of this course is to teach students the theory and processes of negotiation as it is practiced in a variety of settings. The course covers a broad spectrum of negotiation problems encountered by managers and professionals. It will allow students to develop a broad array of negotiation skills through an interactive teaching process. Considerable emphasis will be placed on simulations, role-playing and cases. It offers a practical psychological exploration of the major concepts and theories of bargaining and negotiation. In addition, the course will consider negotiations that occur in everyday life and the role each individual's own background, experience, self-confidence and preparedness plays in successful dispute resolution.
Management Information Systems
This course is to introduce students to computer-based information systems and their applications in business. The course emphasizes on the managerial side rather than the technical side of information systems. Topics include overview of underlying information systems technologies, methods for valuing, storing, viewing and protecting business information, information systems applications such as enterprise resource planning, customer relationship management, decision support and supply chain management and emerging areas such of e-business, data warehousing, and business intelligence, etc. The strategic impact of information technology is studied.
International Trade and Finance
This course makes an introduction to two important areas of economics: international trade and international money and finance. It covers trade theories and its applications in the world trade as well as introduction to foreign exchange markets and institutions, fundamental international parity conditions, theories of exchange rate determination, exchange rate risk management, and balance of payments. This course addresses the current globalization trend, the WTO issues and the impacts of China's accession to the WTO.
Global Policy and Strategy
As the capstone course of the MBA program, this course integrates the knowledge and skills developed throughout the curriculum. It requires students to creatively apply what they have learned to the understanding and analysis of strategic management issues. The focus of this course is on designing organization's mission, determining objectives, constructing effective organization, and assuring the implementation and continual updating of long term plans. The course also investigates techniques of external and internal analysis, which will be employed to assess the relative position of firms within industries and to help formulate effective firm-level strategies.
Elective Courses
Concentration of General Management
Decision Making in Complex Organizations
This course attempts to systematically analyze the various issues and concerns in, perspectives on, and techniques for decision making in complex organizations, covering multiple levels including organization, group, as well as personal. It surveys both conceptual frameworks and analytical tools as well as their application in contemporary business world. The course aims to help students nurture the habit of critical thinking, enhance analytical skills and interpersonal skills, and foster awareness of the social, political, and behavioral context in which business organizations operate.
Business in China
By studying the basic concepts of new institutional economics, this course uses cases and examples to enhance students' understanding of economic institutions as a basic constraint of economic activities, and to increase students' ability to explain the economic phenomena in real world. The course will incorporate reading, critical thinking, class lecture and discussions to help students understand basic economic institutions, e.g. ownership, property rights, market, enterprise and country, and master methods of analyzing how economic institutions influence economic behaviors. The course is taught in Chinese.
Leadership
This course is an introduction to the key concepts, theories and practices of global and international leadership. The main objective of the course is to help students better understand the foundations, contemporary leadership theories, philosophies and skills under mostly western and market based economies. Students are expected to critically study key leadership concepts and utilize, as much as possible, these leadership ideas and concepts in analyzing burning issues in today's organizations.
International Field Study
The course involves cooperation with well-known business schools abroad in developing business plans, providing consulting to businesses and international business travel so students could apply business theories they have learned in real life business practices, and enhance communication with international students.
Concentration of Finance
Special Topics in Finance: Multinational Business Finance
Prerequisite: Corporate Finance. This course describes the international financial environment within which multinational firms and financial institutions operate and deals with the theories and practices of international financial management. Students will learn the fundamental concepts of exchange rate determination and develop the key skills and techniques in managing transaction exposures to exchange rate risk. The course will also discuss international financing strategies, interest rate instruments, accounting and operating exposures, and international investment strategies. The objective of the course is to enhance the ability of students to evaluate the international financial and monetary framework and then to analyze the solve problems arising in the international financial operations of a firm.
Applied Corporate Finance
Prerequisite: Corporate Finance. This Course focuses on the application aspects of corporate finance knowledge and intends to provide a bridge to the finance theory that students have learned from other finance courses. Students are expected to attain a clearer understanding of the skills required in corporate financial services and acquire insights into the roles and functions of international finance professionals. Topics include design of the optimal capitalization structure, equity securities offering techniques, liability and risk management, equity-linked securities, joint ventures, initial public offering, dividend policy and share repurchases, LBO, mergers and acquisitions, and subsidiary redeployment.
Investment
Prerequisite: Corporate Finance. This course aims to expose the students to the nature and problems of investments. The student will learn to evaluate current investment and future investment opportunities, to study the classifications and approaches for the selection of securities, to review guidelines for investments in securities, and to develop the foundations for portfolio management. After the course, students will know about investment choices today and how they are traded, develop a model for risk and return relationships in investments, and learn how to value financial assets.
Valuation
Prerequisite: Corporate Finance. This course is to provide students with the practical details in implementing various corporate valuation models (e.g. how to measure the variables, where to find the data, etc.). Students will learn to apply the valuation models to different business situations in domestic and global environments. |
