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MANAGEMENT
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MANAGEMENT
Master of Business Administration (MBA)

Course Descriptions

Required Courses

BA 611  Financial Accounting (3 UNITS)

Introduces a set of financial statements used by stakeholders for decision-making. The course examines procedures developed by accountants in the preparation of the income statement, balance sheet and statement of cash flows in accordance with generally accepted accounting principles. Building on the basic understanding of financial reporting, the course presents a framework for corporate managers to analyze a firm’s performance and its financial position. Use of accounting information for firm valuation will also be emphasized.

Prerequisite: Admission into the FEMBA Program

BA 615  Statistics for Management (3 UNITS)

Methods of statistical inference emphasizing applications to administrative and management decision problems. Topics include classical estimation and hypotheses testing, regression, correlation, analysis of variance, nonparametric methods and statistical probability.

Prerequisite: Admission into the FEMBA Program

BA 616  Organizational Behavior & HR Management Concepts (3 UNITS)

An expansive inquiry into human resources issues from both the Organizational Behavior and Human Resources perspectives. Incorporates many practical applications, as well as an understanding of employment practices and policies from a strategic standpoint.

Prerequisite: Admission into the FEMBA Program

BA 617  Leadership and Business Ethics (3 UNITS)

Focuses on aspects of leader-follower interaction including ethical decision-making, effective use of power, politics, and influence; understanding what motivates followers both individually and in teams and managing diversity and business ethics.

Prerequisite: Admission into the FEMBA program

BA 621  Managerial Accounting (3 UNITS)

Focuses on how corporate managers use managerial accounting as a tool for internal decision-making and control. Examines concepts and techniques of cost allocation, performance evaluation, and compensation to support corporate strategies. Topics discussed include capital budgeting for long-term projects, contracting,  transfer pricing, performance evaluation for corporate executives, and control issues in business organizations based on managerial accounting information.

Prerequisites: Admission into the FEMBA Program and successful completion of BA 611

BA 625  Business Analytics (3 UNITS)

Provides students with insights and improving of business performance based on data and optimization techniques. Makes extensive use of quantitative analysis, predictive modeling, and fact-based management to drive decision making. Examines modeling issues and uses state-of-the-art software packages. The main focus is on decision-making applications in Finance, Marketing and Operations.

Prerequisites: Admission into the FEMBA Program and successful completion of BA 615

BA 626  Financial Decision Making (3 UNITS)

Introduces the theory and practice of corporate finance. Provides students with understanding of essential risk and return relationships. Presents concepts and information on which sound financial decisions are based.

Prerequisites: Admission into the FEMBA Program

BA 630  Marketing Management (3 UNITS)

Introduces students to the issues and challenges of successfully marketing  products, services or intangibles within the context of changing environments.

Prerequisite: Admission into the FEMBA Program

BA 635  Information Technologies & Management (3 UNITS)

This course offers future business managers a rigorous study of information technologies that support the operational, administrative, and strategic needs of the organization, its business units, and individual employees. Topics include fundamental concepts of information technology, major types of business information systems and their roles in organizations and, current issues in identifying, acquiring and implementing new technology applications. Primary focuses are on the managerial aspects of information technologies for improving productivity and gaining competitive advantage in the global e-commerce environment. The societal and ethical impact of information technologies on organizations and human behavior will be analyzed. Future trends of new information technologies will also be discussed.

Prerequisite: Admission into the FEMBA Program'

BA 645  Operations and Supply Chain Management (3 UNITS)

This course provides a multi-industry study of operations, with an emphasis on integrated design of the supply. We view operations through the framework of business processes at various levels, from an individual process to an entire supply chain and discuss process improvement through the management of capacity, throughput, inventory, lead-time and quality. Focus will be on analytical decision support tools that allow companies to develop, implement and sustain collaborative strategies and coordinate supply chain players and strategic partnership.

Prerequisites: Admission into the FEMBA Program and successful completion of BA 615

BA 650  Strategic Management in the Global Environment (3 UNITS)

Capstone course taught from a global strategic manager's perspective. Focuses on the diagnosis of problems and the implementation of solutions. 

Prerequisite: Advancement to candidacy

BA 671 Essential Knowledge and Critical Skills Workshops (1 UNIT)

Covers essential knowledge and critical skills in business such as business writing, business calculus, managerial ethics, cross cultural negotiation, external environment and globalization, entrepreneurship, and cohort-specific topics.

Prerequisite: Admission into the FEMBA Program

BA 673 Meet the Leaders (1 UNIT)

This is an executive seminar for the Fully Employed MBA (FEMBA) students. Guest speakers include executives of local and global companies, successful entrepreneurs, and leaders in government and not-for-profit organizations. The leaders share insights about their career, what worked, what didn't, challenges, opportunities, successes and failures. The seminar is held twice a month for a total of 24 during the five terms of Program.

Prerequisite: Admission into the FEMBA Program

BA 680  Master’s Project (3 UNITS)

Practical applications of management theories and methods will be implemented to investigate a wide range of organizational issues. Subject matter may include development of a new venture, product, or process, or improvement of an existing organization’s operations with the intent of achieving significant cost reduction, service enhancement, etc. Each project is proposed, researched and reported culminating in a written report that includes problem identification, evaluation of potential solution, discussion of the selected implementation, and evaluation of the results.

Prerequisite: Advancement to candidacy

Elective Courses

Select one of the following courses:

BA 600 Managerial Economics (3 UNITS)

This course teaches us how to use microeconomic analysis to understand the economic environment in which a firm operates and how to make optimal decisions within the firm.  Topics may include: demand and supply analysis; production and cost theory; the impact of market setting; price discrimination; moral hazard and incentives; strategic interactions among firms using game theory; and transaction cost economics. 

Prerequisite: Admission into the FEMBA program.

BA 643 Consumer and Customer Insight (3 UNITS)

Introduces contemporary methods for generating consumer and customer insight for decision making.  Applies popular techniques used to collect and analyze information. These include attitude measurement, questionnaire design, online survey methods, online focus groups and online experimentation.  SPSS software used consumer and customer insight research analysis. 

BA 649 Forecasting for Managers (3 UNITS)

This course is concerned with techniques used to predict the uncertain nature of the future events and conditions with forecasts, which help managers, make better decisions and plans.  We study the historical data in search for patterns that can be used to produce a forecast.  Today's business problems tend to be very complex, approaches such as business experience, intuition, and thoughtful guesswork can no longer be applied to resolve managerial situations.  The methods discussed in this course are implemented in a user-friendly computer software package and are them applied to complex problems. 

Prerequisite: BA 615

BA 690 Selected Topics in Business Management (3 UNITS)

A course of selected topics in business management.

GBM 685 International Experience (4 UNITS) 

This culminating experience last ten weeks.  Students spend the first five weeks at CSUSM preparing for the international experience.  The second five weeks has two different tracks.  International students remain in Southern California and engage in company visits and projects.  Domestic students travel to one of the locations where the College has relationships (Denmark, Taiwan, China, Ecuador, India, etc.).  There will be in-class lectures by local faculty and business leaders as well as visits to local Businesses.