Courses

• GSM OB 860: Managerial Decision Making
  This course examines theoretical and practical aspects of decision-making. Using a combination of cases, exercises, and psychological and behavioral instruments, students will learn to understand and manage decision making from various perspectives. There will be an emphasis placed on strategic decisions and crisis decisions in a wide variety of circumstances, including business decisions, personal decisions, and managerial decisions made during several different types of events. There will be a detailed analysis of managerial decisions made during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Decisions will be analyzed using several models, including rational choice, game theory, organizational and communications structure, context analysis, cognitive mapping, and several psychologically based theories.
• GSM OB 915: Career Management & Work-Life Integration
  This seminar will examine major theoretical models and research on the process of how careers unfold in and out of organizations. It will examine both the more traditional issues of career dynamics in organizational settings (e.g., internal labor markets, tournament mobility systems, organizational socialization) as well as emergent issues of boundary-less, protean, or "free agent" career processes, such as career transformation, career networks, developmental relationships, adult development, and emotional competencies.
• GSM OB 918: Seminar in Micro Organizational Behavior
  Micro organizational behavior is the study of individual behavior and social processes in organizations. The goal of this doctoral course is to familiarize students with major conceptual frameworks, debates, and developments in the field of micro organizational behavior. This course will review the key literature in the study of individual behaviors, interpersonal relations, and group dynamics in organizations. The readings and discussions will focus on core topics in the field, such as personality and individual differences, work attitudes, motivation, leadership, groups, and socialization. This course is required of all first year doctoral students in Organizational Behavior and is open to other doctoral students with permission.
• GSM OM 725: Creating Value Through Operations and Technology
  This MBA core course is case-oriented and focuses on topics of use to managers in any environment: process analysis, process improvement, supply chain management, and strategic operations decision-making. The course emphasizes the importance of effectiveness and efficiency and evaluates the potential trade-offs between them.
• GSM OM 726: Creating Value Through Operations and Technology
  This MBA core course is case-oriented and focuses on topics of use to managers in any environment: process analysis, process improvement, supply chain management, and strategic operations decision-making. The course emphasizes the importance of effectiveness and efficiency and evaluates the potential trade-offs between them.
• GSM OM 840: Managing and Improving Quality: Lean Six Sigma Green Belt Certification
  Lean and Six Sigma are powerful improvement methodologies that promote process improvement, cost reduction and significant enhancement of bottom-line profitability. The purpose of this course is to thoroughly examine the concept of quality, to define it in terms that are useful for managers, to survey the ideas of major quality thinkers and theorists, to develop proficiency in the use of quality tools, and to consider the challenges of quality program implementation in real business situations. Throughout the course we will investigate similarities and differences between quality management in manufacturing and service contexts. The course has three major objectives. The first goal is to define quality and explore important philosophies and useful frameworks for managers or consultants. The second goal is to focus on the Lean and Six Sigma tools available for the pursuit of lasting quality improvements. The third is to bring the experiences of Lean Six Sigma practice into the classroom. We'll benefit from the expertise and experience of Lean and Six Sigma professionals who will help us to understand the challenges of Lean and Six Sigma implementations and analyze the lessons they have learned from projects they have undertaken.
• GSM OM 845: Clean Technologies and Supply Chains
  The clean technology industry is one of the largest sectors of the economy and yet still undergoing significant growth and attracting a plethora of new entrants. It has been characterized by a great deal of experimentation around new technologies and around business models in the face of regulatory and market place disruptions. The course uses a combination of cases, simulation and analytical exercises to review trends and their co-evolution within the clean technology/energy eco-system. It aims to build a skill set around risk and opportunity assessment, and allied implementation challenges. This course is aligned with the requirements of the Entrepreneurship, PNP and Strategy concentrations.
• GSM OM 854: Supply Chain Management
  This course presents tools and modeling frameworks that are relevant to solving today's supply-chain problems. The class will offer a mixture of case discussions, lectures, games, and outside speakers. Case discussions will cover subjects including designing new-product supply chains, optimizing inventory levels, quick response, the role of B2B exchanges, and managing capacity for short life-cycle products. Games, including the distribution game, the OPT game, and the Beer Game, will reinforce the concepts in a constructive way. Finally, outside speakers will present real-world examples of how supply-chain models are being deployed in practice. This course is for students who will be working in consulting or supply-chain management. For those interested in finance or marketing, the course provides solid exposure to an area that is integral to product-focused companies.
• GSM OM 855: Project Management
  Projects are increasingly the way that work gets done in companies of all types and sizes. In this new course you will learn the strategic dimensions of project management, including critical aspects of project selection, definition, planning, execution, and monitoring. Concepts and approaches for dealing with complexity, uncertainty, vague mandates, temporary staff, partners, stakeholders, dynamic risk, and time-critical deadlines are emphasized. Cases and readings cover a wide range of industry and organizational contexts. This course requires that students apply these topics and considerations to a real project of their choice either by analysis of publicly available information or direct field study. Many MBAs are tested on the job through tough assignments in project settings. Your performance there is highly visible. Doing especially well can accelerate your subsequent career opportunities. Prepare now for success in strategic project management by developing the skills and perspectives covered in OM855!
• GSM OM 865: Idea Lab
  This is an experiential course aimed at developing ideas for digital products and services ("web services"), within the context of a multi-stage "innovation tournament." The tournament structure will force the screening of certain ideas in the initial stages, and in such cases, some students will get reassigned to the surviving ideas. Participants will learn specific tools, methods, and concepts related to the creation of such services (e.g., opportunity sensing, management of variation, innovation/business analytics, crowd sourcing vs out sourcing decisions, existing versus incremental enabling technologies, idea interdependence and information architecture, task sequencing for enhancing cycle time and service quality) and will be required to develop web based test tools. The instructor anticipates that the best performing ideas will have high potential for entrepreneurial development. Thus, this course can serve as a front end to conduct follow-on development by working either in the IS, operations, health sector management, energy or entrepreneurship concentration courses, and/or by working with affinity groups in the BU community, such as, ITEC. Participants will be expected to read assigned material on visualization of ideas, and engage in the generation of promising ideas prior to starting this class. Make sure you have basic familiarity with how the web works. You need not be technical, nor have deep experience with the web development. Rather, you simply should understand the basic ideas behind URLs, HTML, and how web browsers work. You can figure this out by reading the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web). We will also provide you with a mock-up of a typical website along with a tutorial on how to upload and edit this web site.
• GSM OM 880: Product Design and Development
  This course explores central managerial challenges in the effective design, development, and introduction of new products. Topics covered include reducing the time to market while meeting cost and quality targets; managing cross-functional projects and inherent technological risks while keeping a focus on customer requirements; and integrated problem-solving by industrial designers, engineers, manufactures, and marketing specialists. [Case studies, readings, guest lecturers, field project]
• GSM OM 925: Serv Op & Qual
  
• GSM PL 700: Introduction to Business Law
  This course will survey contemporary issues in selected areas of law and ethics. We will introduce pivotal areas of law, so that students begin to anticipate legal problems, analyze how to avoid them, and realize how legal principles can be employed to add value in their chosen fields. The subjects are torts, contracts, employment law, securities regulation and corporate governance. We expect that this overview of a few disciplines will encourage students to explore other legal topics relevant to their business interests. We will also offer an analytic structure that enables students to identify ethical issues in business, analyze options and make choices consistent with their own values.
• GSM PL 727: Organizations, Markets, and Society
  Understanding and analyzing the core strategic decisions facing businesses in competitive markets. Students will examine how businesses achieve their fundamental goals given the need to produce goods and services efficiently and a market environment reflecting consumer preferences (demand) and the strategies and strengths of competitors. Students will develop analytic skills necessary for understanding core business models and how different models create value for the business as well as the larger society.
• GSM PL 815: Competitive Decision Making
  This course explores the strategies of decision-makers in a variety of competitive situations. The main topics include 1) bargaining, negotiation, and arbitration; 2) market competition; 3) competitive bidding; 4) group decisions in organizations; and 5) game theory. In most of these settings, optimal decisions call for cooperation as well as competition. Examples are drawn from a wide variety of managerial settings. [Text, cases and other readings; simulations.]
• GSM PL 834: Macroeconomics in the Global Environment
  Macroeconomics is the study of the aggregate behavior of global market participants, i.e. consumers, firms, workers, governments, central banks, foreign investors. Decision making by investment bankers, product/sales managers, policy makers, or consumers inevitably rely on an understanding of the main forces driving GDP, inflation, unemployment, interest rates, and exchange rates. Consider these questions: 1. Should new consumer durable products be launched during recessions? 2. Are countries that experience high productivity growth good investment targets? 3. Will interest rates drop if the US government starts buying back its debt? 4. With significant liquidity demands by the US economy from the public sector, the household sector and businesses, what explains the low US interest rates? Are these factors expected to keep interest rates low also in the future? 5. Can the Euro boost productivity in Europe in the medium to long run and what are the competitiveness challenges for US businesses of such changes? 6. What are the economic effects of wars and how should they be financed? These and other issues will come up in the course. The main goal of this course is to provide a coherent framework that you can use to understand economic events as you confront them in your work environment.
• GSM PL 837: Strategic Fundraising and Corporate Philanthropy
  This course is designed to help students develop a sophisticated understanding of the field of philanthropy and its role in building successful nonprofit organizations. The course is designed for students who want to become effective nonprofit managers and development professionals, securing financial resources for charitable organizations from foundations, corporations, and individuals. It is also designed to help students become thoughtful stewards of philanthropic funds as a foundation trustee or program officer, corporate giving officer, or individual philanthropist. Accordingly, the course will alternately adopt the perspective of the grant-seeker and the grant-maker. This approach will help prepare future leaders in the field, whether providers of funding or applicants for it, to understand the current and historical context of their work and to ask the right questions of prospective funders, prospective grantees, and their own organizations. The course will consider diverse viewpoints on philanthropy and explore some alternatives to traditional grant-making.
• GSM PL 850: Social Entrepreneurship
  The Social Entrepreneurship course is designed to: (1) explore the concepts, practices, opportunities, and challenges of social entrepreneurship; (2) provide frameworks and tools that will help students be more effective in this sector; and (3) provide an opportunity for students to create a business plan for a new social enterprise or an income-generating initiative of a nonprofit organization. In the business plan project, student teams will partner with external organizations. Students will identify and analyze opportunities, resources, and risks and apply skills from marketing, accounting, organizational behavior, strategy and other disciplines. Special emphasis will be placed on aspects of business planning and organizational strategy that are particularly challenging or distinctive in the social sector, including mission definition, leadership, organizational structure, raising capital, and measuring results.
• GSM PL 861: Emerging Issues in Business and Law
  You ask your outside lawyer or your company's legal department whether you can undertake some activity without violating the law. You are annoyed when you are told "Well, maybe. It depends". You want a yes-or-no answer, not a game of twenty questions. Why can't your lawyers give you a straight answer? Why do they make everything more complicated? What language are they speaking? Most business people ask these questions. If you do business you cannot avoid dealing with lawyers. You can allow your interactions with lawyers to frustrate you, or you can learn how lawyers think so that you can better manage them. Emerging Issues in Business Law introduces graduate business students to fundamentals of legal analysis by focusing on timely legal problems of particular interest to business. Students develop familiarity with substantive legal principles and leave the course with the ability to recognize legal issues, discuss them intelligently, and understand why the lawyers seem incapable of giving a simple answer. The course uses lectures to provide a common foundation of knowledge. It is primarily discussion based, using a question and answer format to engage students in the process of legal analysis.
• GSM PL 864: Managing Political, Economic, Social, and Technology and Country Risk
  This case-based course introduces students to conceptual tools and frameworks that allow them to think systematically about environmental changes that restructure companies, industries, and countries, preparing them to deal with those changes. The course explores political, economic, technological, and social change, as well as natural disasters and political risk. Students will map the flow of events and experiences that shape political or business leaders' attitudes and will be introduced to the analyses of countries, systems, trends, stakeholders, scenario developments, cross-impact, and payoff assessments. They will assess probable shifts in stakeholder power within the industry or country and suggest potentially successful leadership and change strategies.

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