Curriculum

The ASEP curriculum is designed to explore the business environment in terms of the key functional areas of management, corporate and business unit strategies, as well as organizational learning.

Strategic Decision Making - Risk and Uncertainty
The ASEP explores various types of decision making - financial, personal, and professional - with primary emphasis on how to make such decisions more effectively. This is achieved through a combination of exercises, group discussions, and analysis. By asking you to make many decisions, we try to highlight some of the underlying tendencies that many people - including you and people around you - often display. This way we can build a deep understanding of the decision making process while we sharpen your analytical skills.

Building and Leading High Performance Teams
The ASEP also aims to improve your ability to manage teams effectively by analyzing team behavior and developing strategic plans for efficient team work. You will also gain an intellectual understanding of group behavior and an appreciation of how to structure a team in order to optimize performance. Moreover, this program will give you the tools you need to understand the trade-offs involved in individual vs. team-based work and to foster the intensity required for high impact projects in the context of virtual constraints.

Strategically Managing New Products/Services
A further objective of the ASEP is to examine the marketing environment, analyze market opportunities, customer profiles, industry/competitor profiles, as well as demand estimates and forecasts. This program also examines issues related to planning effective marketing campaigns, corporate communications, channels of distribution, pricing decisions, product/service concepts, as well as the relationship between business strategies and marketing decisions.

Strategic Crisis Management
Today we live in an age of change and, very often, drastic and violent changes. The ASEP features case studies in strategic crisis management aimed at providing executives with the conceptual tools needed to successfully master high-pressure, complex crisis situations. Topics covered include managing business issues and the media, dealing with activists and interest groups, as well as surviving legal, legislative and regulatory challenges.

Building a Value-added Network
The ASEP will also give you an interactive learning experience that introduces the sources and strategies for creating social capital through networking, relationship building, and cross-functional team design. The program also integrates into the discussion findings from the "Six Degrees of Separation Worksheet", an instrument that enables you to assess your social capital. The case illustrates upward and lateral influence in a complex organization, and the issues of managing a relationship with a strategic partner, colleagues, clients, and other team contacts where private information and trust enhance professional impact.