Description of Courses

ACCT S31 Accounting Role in Organizations                                                                                          
Managerial accounting is a strategic course. By understanding how costs behave a manager can plan and control activities in the areas of production and marketing and make decisions that affect both the daily operation of the company and special situations such as adding or dropping product lines, acquiring a new division, accepting special orders, and whether to produce in-house or outsource. This course requires, in addition to accounting background, knowledge of marketing, management, and finance, and a sense of what is going on in the marketplace, both domestic and international, and one's best assessment of what may be happening locally and globally in the future. The basics of managing costs will be taught (without journal entries) and companies will be analyzed to see how they implement cost control and plan strategically.

DECS S50 Decision Analysis
From time to time, we are faced with decision problems that are so difficult that we have no idea how to solve them. Decision Analysis is designed to help us better define the problems we face so we can make better decisions. It provides effective quantitative methods and useful tools for organizing complex decision problems into structures that can be effectively analyzed in the decision making process. The course focuses on practical application of quantitative methodology to solve real-world decision problems taken from the realms of capital investment, bidding, purchasing, inspection, inventory control, and other areas.

FINC S41 Corporate Finance                                                                                                                   
The primary objective is to examine the financial decisions of firms. The course examines the firm's capital budgeting decision (which investments to make), its dividend decision, and its capital structure decision (how to raise capital). These decisions are first examined in an idealized frictionless world. In this world, the firm cannot change its value by altering its dividend or capital structure policy. The effect of frictions (e.g. taxes, bankruptcy costs, inefficient or uncompetitive financial markets, or self-interested managers) on the firm's financial decisions is then explored to see how these decisions can affect firm value.

FINC S42 Managerial Finance
This class deals with the application of financial theory to financial policy decisions. The course demonstrates practical applications of financial models and analytical tools.  It is designed primarily for advanced students who are familiar with basic financial theory and accounting principles.  The purpose of this course is to deepen students’ understanding of financial issues by applying finance theory and methods to real business situations. Topics covered include short term financial forecasting using pro forma financial statements, banking relationships, long-term financing policy and capital structure decisions, cost of capital, investment decisions, mergers and acquisitions, real options, and business valuation.
During the quarter we will consider a series of case problems.  Each class session will be devoted to a particular case. Students will study the assigned case before class, focusing on discussion questions that we provide. We will spend class time discussing the cases.

FINC S48 Management of New Venture Funding
This course is designed to provide students with an understanding and working knowledge of how to project and manage cash flows, an understanding of the financial markets for new ventures, how to value a start-up company, where and how to raise money to support the growth of a business and how to present effectively to investors to raise funds. Students will create a financial plan and valuation for a new business idea, and will engage in simulated presentations to and negotiations with investors. Students will learn to look at entrepreneurial finance issues both from the perspective of the entrepreneur and from the perspective of the venture investor. The course will also include in-class exercises, in-class presentations, lectures and discussions.

FINC S53 Risk Management for Executives
This new Risk Management for Executives course is one of the first international EMBA risk management courses in Thailand and the newest one in the Asia Pacific. The aim of this course is to provide the fundamental concepts of how risk can be measured and managed in many industries and major financial organization. Such financial organizations are banks, insurance, corporate and securities firms, etc. Measurement of risk is based on the quantitative disciplines, where probability plays the major role of how to quantify risk and measure future uncertainty.

The course includes understanding the three principal risks, Market, Credit, Operational, and the economic capital and the regulatory framework of BASEL II. The course is based on various risk techniques used in industrialization sectors such as the investment banks, the government banks, the credit card and insurance firms. The objective is measure the uncertainty of risk factors in financial markets. The course should be of interest to people aspiring to careers in managing uncertainly using risk techniques as well as providing some guidelines on how risk and economic capital can be quantified in different banking and major business divisions. The course is also designed to show how financial industries can be more prepared for financial crisis or the unexpected meltdown of the current financial system. The risk techniques used are often based on engineering, mathematical, and statistical methods. There will be no computer programming involve for this executives course.

FINC S55 Growth through Acquisition
The main objective of this course is to learn how companies can create shareholder value by optimizing their business portfolio by means of targeted acquisitions and divestitures. Besides financial and strategic aspects, the business integration process is studied as well. This course also aims to enhance your competences in the area of business valuation. This will also help you understand how the capital markets and private equity can be utilized by the corporation to support its restructuring and expansion objectives. The course will expose you to a wide range of best and worst M&A business practices from around the world and from a wide range of industries through class discussions of cases and recent transactions.

FINC S60 Investment Management
This course examines financial theory and empirical evidence useful for making investment decisions. Topics include 1) behavior and distribution of stock returns; 2) portfolio selection based on mean-variance analysis; 3) cross-sectional models of risk and return analysis, , such as, the CAPM, the Fama-French 3-factor model, and other multifactor models based on Ross’s APT; 4) performance evaluation of mutual funds based on the market model; 5) market efficiency including asset pricing anomalies and behavioral finance; 6) bond valuation and the term structure of interest rates; 7) interest rate risk management of bond portfolios by matching duration and convexity. This course involves several projects, including applications to real-world problems such as portfolio selection and investment management.

FINC S65 Derivative Markets 1
This course covers forward, futures, options, and other derivatives.  It offers an introduction to option pricing framework, tools, and applications.  Specific topics include strategies for speculation and risk management, no-arbitrage pricing for forward contracts, the binomial and Black-Scholes option pricing models and applications of pricing models in other contexts.  Option pricing models have applications in diverse areas of finance, such as investments and corporate finance.  At the end of the course, students should be able to price derivatives, use them to construct speculative and hedging strategies, and apply them to make other financial decisions.

FINC S70 Finance for International Business
This course examines the foreign exchange markets, the nature of foreign exchange risks, aspects of the financial management of a multinational corporation. The course explores the determination of spot and forward exchange rates and the relationships that link exchange rates, the prices of goods and interest rates throughout the world. Various concepts of foreign exchange risk are explored, and hedging foreign exchange risk with forward rates, futures contracts, and foreign currency options is examined in detail. Strong emphasis is placed on valuing these derivative securities at any point in time. Pricing by means of no-arbitrage arguments is given substantial weight. Construction of synthetic options is explored. The attributes of exotic currency options is discussed. Overall, the course provides a substantial introduction to the concepts involved in foreign exchange risk management.

FINC S79 Corporate Governance and Management Control
This course uses financial analysis and the economics of contracts and management control systems to provide an understanding of how corporate governance is related to shareholder value creation. The nature of incentive conflicts in organizations and how contractual and governance arrangements and market mechanisms mitigate such conflicts is analyzed. The theoretical concepts developed in analyzing value creation and destruction in specific contexts such as decentralization and examples of corporate restructuring such as mergers, acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, spin-offs and leveraged recapitalizations are then applied.

FINC S486 Topics in Corporate Finance
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LAW S30 Business Law
This course is designed to acquaint students with concepts and applications of the law of contract. Guest lecturers are invited throughout the course to discuss on various topics including business organization, securities regulation, mergers & acquisitions, tax planning, international contracts, administrative law for business, international economic law, and intellectual property law.

MECN S41 Industrial Structure and Strategy Formulation                                                                                     
An analysis of the determinants and nature of competition in a variety of industry structures. The course considers how the structure of a firm’s industry affects its strategic choices and performance. Special attention is given to the possibility that the firm’s strategic commitments may change the structure of its industry. Topics discussed include the dynamic aspects of pricing, entry, and exit in concentrated industries, and product differentiation, advertising, and technological change as competitive strategies.

MECN S46 Pricing Decisions for Managers
This course provides students with an opportunity to develop a systematic framework for assessing and formulating pricing strategies. Economic, marketing, organizational, psychological and competitive factors all effect the pricing decision and each of these presents an interesting aspect of the pricing problem. The course revolves around understanding hoe one may go about making a pricing decision while keeping in mind these factors. To achieve this objective, we will learn appropriate concepts, methods, and explore new approaches for formulating pricing strategy. This course is less about the mechanics of setting a price-it is more about understanding the process of making pricing decisions.

MGMT S54 Formulating Competitive Direction
This course is a second-year strategy course for EMBA students exploring various sources of competitive advantage and how companies leverage these sources to gain and sustain their competitive edge. Topics covered include business landscape analysis, added-value creation, sustaining competitive advantage, growth strategy, customer-driven strategy formulation and business models. Strategy tools and techniques used by leading consulting firms will be introduced. Emphasis will be placed on customer-centric thinking as a means to increase customer willingness to pay and to achieve maximum customer life-time value.

MGMT S55 Strategic IT Decision Making for Executives
This course is designed to provide a sound foundation in essential enterprise technology and management issues. Topics covered include return on investment (ROI) for technology projects, risk and rewards of implementing new technologies, ERP deployment best practices, CRM selection, technology project and product management, outsourcing, IT portfolio management, and strategies for working with IT. Class lectures are complemented by four classic case discussions on strategic and management issues of enterprise technology. MGMT S55 is the core requirement for the New Hybrid Executives.

MGMT S56 Cross Cultural Management
This course is designed to provide students with an intellectual and experiential forum for developing the intercultural and interaction skills necessary for international managers. Given the 21st century complexity whereby globalization is dramatically shifting and demographic are changing, it is vital that our workforce has a solid and practical understanding of how navigate in different cultural business settings. This course is much more than the study of cross cultural communication. It involves the study of international business practices and managing diversity in the context of understanding international business.

MGMT S64 Creating Business Value through Technology Management
The course introduces the students to the important technology-based business trends and an overview of various emerging technologies, particularly web 2.0 technologies.  Students will themselves explore technologies and applications to have a general understanding of contemporary web applications that enhance the possibilities for social interaction, exchange of information and content creation, and the use of these applications for business benefit.  In addition, the course culminates in discussion of potential business impact and managerial implications of these technologies as well as guidance on how to select and deploy them effectively. 
The course is designed to reflect technological business environment particularly in Thailand and with awareness of potential important role of overall Asian countries, which can play to not only react to but also even shape innovation and technology-based business trends.

MGMT S62 Entrepreneurship Management
This course introduces students to entrepreneurship and business planning for new business initiatives in the global business environment. Topics include entrepreneurial attitudes, abilities, and behaviors; business plan development; opportunity recognition and viability screening; first-mover advantages and disadvantages; risk recognition and risk reduction strategies; intellectual property protection; new venture strategy, marketing and funding; financial analysis of the new venture; and negotiation of equity participation in the new venture. Students will form groups to discuss and critique business plans and/or case studies during the course, and will ultimately produce and present their own business plan for a proposed new venture.

MGMT S68 Corporate Social Responsibility
This course is designed to get students to not only review their way of thinking on the ultimate goal of business, but also to equip them with tools, best practices and ideas on both doing good for its communities and doing well for its sustainable profits.  Students will be expected to achieve the following concepts: what CSR is and why it is important to align business goals with cultural and social ones; how corporations can choose the right social issues to voluntarily support; what recommended practices are for Conflict-Sensitive Businesses; and how to create a Corporate Responsibility Culture.

MGMT S910 Strategic Crisis Management
This course provides conceptual tools for managers in high-pressure, complex crisis situations. Topics include management and media, dealing with activists and interest groups, and surviving legal, legislative and regulatory challenges.\

MKTG S52 Consumption and Marketing Management
Contemporary marketing requires a holistic understanding of consumer behavior as they interact in marketplaces around the globe. This course will help you comprehend, stimulate and manage the marketing forces that shape and reflect the consumption. You will grasp the market as a complex system of material and metaphysical interactions, and learn to manipulate these intersections in a pro-social, ethical manner. This course encourages you to understand marketing as a subtly interlocking psychological and socio-cultural system. You will explore instrumental and expressive behavior of stakeholders engaged in creating, circulating and transforming resources. Tempering interdisciplinary perspectives with a symbolic cast and combining the techniques of systematic introspection with participant observation, you will examine the many ways that consumption ramifies throughout daily life. You will learn to animate the stuff of life. Positive and normative managerial interventions will be thoroughly considered; consumer creativity will be interpreted as well. Marketer and consumer misbehavior will also be probed. This course is especially attentive to the interplay of macro- and micro-level forces that shape our marketing practices.

MKTG S54 Communicating with Consumers
In recent years, the number of brands and media that consumers can choose from has exploded. Consequently, the need for brands to engage with potential consumers has never been more urgent. How do you get through to your core audience effectively and efficiently, moving them from awareness to purchase and, eventually, loyalty? This course aims to help you answer this question, by providing a balanced analysis of communication strategy and execution.  We will discuss the key communication challenges in today’s marketplace and you will learn about frameworks that help you communicate with your customers and build your brand in a dynamic environment. Although our main focus will be on advertising, we will also address other key elements of integrated marketing communication strategies that, done coherently and well, enable marketers to be most effective. Throughout, the course will stress the importance of customer insight as a basis for creating and executing optimal communication strategies.

MKTG S55 DigiMarketing
Digital media are sweeping the world. The ways people get information and relay information are changing   dramatically. These changes have a major impact on marketing. Digital marketing (digimarketing) is marketing for the digital age. It's a lot more than simply moving what we did in traditional print, radio, TV, and outdoor onto digital devices. Digital media have new capabilities. Digital media are inherently consumer controlled and participative. This course explores the implications of digital media for marketing in a hands-on practical environment. Digital marketing is the future of marketing.

MKTG S59 Services and Hospitality Marketing Management
This course examines the marketing and managerial implications of the differences between goods and services. A wide variety of services are examined, such as travel, professional services, hospitals, banks, hotels, churches, sports clubs and theme parks. The course discusses many service marketing concepts, including the relationship between the service provider and customer, the real-time experience of services, customer satisfaction and service quality.

MKTG S68 Multi-cultural Marketing Management
This survey course on multicultural marketing is based on a combination of lectures, discussions, quizzes, cases, videos, outside speakers, country specialist reports, and a final marketing project in another country. It integrates and addresses the significant impact of cultural, economic, political, infrastructure and population variables in cross-cultural marketing management and acquaints students with basic strategic and functional areas of marketing in a cross-cultural environment. After their initial exposure to the field, students can seek more in-depth knowledge in areas of specific interest to them.

MKTG S465 Managing New Products and Services
This course answers the manager's question: "What do I need to know and do as a marketer in order to develop a successful new product?" Participants will gain a firm understanding of the steps necessary to bring a new product from concept to successful launch. The course is case-based and example driven. Illustrations and discussions will encompass consumer packaged goods, high tech and consumer electronics, biotechnology, agribusiness, entertainment, B2B, international and many other industries. The course content will help those pursuing careers in brand management, marketing, project management, marketing research, new product and service consulting, venture capital, and entrepreneurial ventures.

MORS S35 Return on Investment in Human Capital
The course focuses on the benefits of implementing and measuring the effectiveness of strategic HR programs in an organization to ensure that they help to successfully execute business strategy and goals.  We will focus on measuring the effectiveness of strategic human resource management practices including recruiting and staffing, training and development, compensation and benefits, career and leadership development and performance management.  The course will also include developing HR scorecards and dashboards to track the implementation of strategic human resource management programs that are directly linked to the achievement of key business goals.  The course will include methodology for collecting and analyzing data, the development of specific measurements, conducting cost/benefit analysis, calculating the return on investment (ROI) in strategic human resource management practices, and using the outcomes of the measurements to make recommendations for changes and improvements.

MORS S38 Managing Human Capital in a Global Context
This course will be an advanced seminar on the management of human capital in global business.  Frequently the single largest line-item investment which enterprises make is people.  While home country socio-economic and political situations and laws may be easily handled by most companies, the complexities involved in leading and managing people across borders cannot be underestimated. 
This class will have a clear focus on global issues, and will revolve around the five domains of Global Human Capital: Strategic HR Management, Global Talent Acquisition and Mobility, Global Compensation and Benefits, Organizational Effectiveness and Talent Development, and Workforce Relations and Risk Management.  Although Thai practices will be referenced, the focus will be on cross-border issues, particularly some of the more frequent business destinations in the world: The EU, the US, China, India, the UK, and Canada. 

MORS S452 Management of Organizational Change
This course provides knowledge that will help participants diagnose and implement organizational change in a way that minimizes resistance and maximizes acceptance and commitment to change. The objectives are to develop an understanding of the complexity and dynamics of change in organizations, to discuss and evaluate the different strategies , and to examine the role of the leader as a change agent.

OPNS S50 Analytical Decision Modeling 
This course focuses on structuring, analyzing, and solving managerial decision problems on Excel spreadsheets.  Problems involving optimal resource allocation and risk analysis are studied through applications in operations, finance and marketing. Some decision analysis, data analysis and forecasting is also covered. The course assumes working knowledge of Microsoft Excel.

OPNS S75 Managing Projects for Executives
This course focuses on basic concepts and tools in project management for executives in businesses in general. Topics will include a systems approach to project management, project selection and evaluation (NPV, IRR, scoring models, etc.), organizational concepts in project management (functional, project, and matrix organizations), project planning (WBS, RIM, CPM, PERT, etc.), project monitoring and control (EVA, dashboard, etc.), and project termination. The objective is to get insight into human behavior, understand organizational issues, and learn quantitative methods that are necessary for successful project management. The course has a strong emphasis on team work and a significant amount of interaction is expected during lectures, assignments, and project presentations.