Course Descriptions

BA 500 (1): MBA Bridge

Quantitative skills, and business communications. Quantitative skills provides a refresher in basic business calculus and probability used in quantitative courses of the MBA Program. Business communications provides strategies for effective written and oral business communications.

Core Business Knowledge Courses

BA 602 (2): Statistics for Business Decisions

Statistical inferences emphasizing applications to business decision-making. Include estimation, hypotheses testing, analysis of variance, goodness-of-fit and regression.

MGMT 604 (2): Human Resource Management

Introduction to the principles and practices of human resource management including employment law, HR planning/recruiting, selection, training, performance management and compensation/benefits. Presents theoretical and practical information relating to the “most important asset” in organizations today – people.

MKTG 602 (2): Marketing Management

Application of the basic concepts introduced in MKTG 502 using case studies focused on strategic decision-making. Case analyses focus on decisions related to products and services, pricing, distribution, promotion, and market entry.

MGMT 606 (2): Managing the Sustainable Enterprise

The role of business in building a sustainable world, what sustainability means to business, how it is measured and reported, and how to formulate and implement actionable value-generating strategies. Preparation for thriving in a changing business environment that values innovativeness and adaptability to current global challenges.

OM 602 (2): Coming Soon

MIS 602 (2): Coming Soon

ACCT 601 (1): Coming Soon

FIN 601 (1): Coming Soon

BA 675 (2): Strategic Management in Global Environment

How firms make strategic decisions, and how organizational structures, resources and capabilities, and strategic positioning enable firms to achieve competitive advantage in an increasingly dynamic, hypercompetitive and globalized environment. Several aspects of a firm’s strategy are emphasized, including business-level, corporate, international, and cooperative strategies.

FIN 602 (2): Corporate Finance

Provides students with a continuation of their exploration of the basic concepts and analytical techniques utilized in the field of financial management. Focuses on the financing decisions made by firms’ financial managers in their attempt to maximize shareholder wealth. Include advanced real investment proposal analysis, operating leverage, financial leverage, long-term capital structure, dividend policy, and financial engineering fundamentals.

ACCT 602 (2): Accounting for Managers

Includes financial accounting and managerial accounting modules. The financial accounting module discusses advance topics in preparing financial statements of its operating results. The managerial accounting module covers the use of managerial accounting information to make short-term and long-term business decisions. Also includes financial reporting for operating transactions, long-term assets and investments, financial reporting for financing activities, pricing decisions, activity-based costing, capital budgeting and other long-term decisions, budget planning and control, and decentralization and performance evaluation.

*Course is optional for Certificate of Advanced Study in Core Business Knowledge.

Business Analytics Option Courses

OM 612 (2): Business Analytics

Introduction to the tools used extensively in business organizations to solve managerial problems. Such methods generate results that support decision-making at all levels of the organization over various time horizons. Includes deterministic such as linear, integer, and network optimization using Excel Solver, and probabilistic models such as decision analysis and Monte Carlo Simulation using Crystal Ball.

OM 613 (2): Descriptive Analytics

This is the first course in a series of three courses including descriptive analytics, advanced predictive analytics, and advanced prescriptive analytics, to provide an introduction to business analytics concepts and tools that are used in various business functions. Business analytics refers to skills, technologies, and practices used by enterprises such as businesses, non-profits, and governments that can transform data into insights and make better decisions. Descriptive analytics encompasses the set of techniques that create a summary of historical data to generate beneficial information and prepare the data for further analysis. This course consists of three distinct parts: data warehousing, business reporting, and visual analytics. Subjects include data warehousing, data query, descriptive statistics, data visualization, dashboard design, and descriptive data mining. R, a free statistical and data analytics software environment, will be adopted in the course for analytics implementation.

OM 614 (2): Business Forecasting

Methods used to predict the uncertain nature of business trends in an effort to help managers make better decisions and plans. Study and manipulation of historical data in the search for patterns that can be effectively extrapolated to produce forecast. Includes exploring data patterns, moving averages and smoothing methods, regression with time series data, ARIMA methodology, and judgmental forecasting and forecast adjustment.

OM 615 (2): Advanced Predictive Analytics

This is the second course in a series of three courses including descriptive analytics, advanced predictive analytics, and advanced prescriptive analytics, to provide an introduction to business analytics concepts and tools that are used in various business functions. Business analytics refers to skills, technologies, and practices used by enterprises such as businesses, non-profits, and governments that can transform data to insights and make better decisions. Predictive analytics consists of techniques that use models constructed from past data to predict the future or ascertain the impact of one variable on another. This course consists of two distinct parts: data mining and predictive modeling. Subjects include classification, clustering, association, artificial neural networks, and an introduction to machine learning. R, a free statistical and data analytics software environment, will be adopted in the course for analytics implementation.

MKTG 612 (2): Customer-Focused Marketing Intelligence

Determining what data is necessary and how it can be monitored and used to better understand consumers to improve marketing decisions. Includes 3600 view of the customer, sentiment analysis, network analysis, anthropological analysis, survey analysis, and integrating disparate forms of data to understand an individual company’s customers and joint customers when partnering with another company.

OM 617 (2): Advanced Prescriptive Analytics

MASTER'S EXPERIENCE

BA 685 (3): Supply Chain Management Master’s Project

Applications of Supply Chain Management theories and methods are implemented to investigate a wide range of managerial issues. Each project is conducted in collaboration with a local company. Projects are 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.

International Business Option Courses

OM 612 (2): Business Analytics

GBM 612 (2): International Culture and Negotiations

Understanding of how business practices of other countries are essential for creating relationships, reducing conflict, and developing more effective strategies with businesspeople in other cultures. Focuses on how to use an understanding of business behaviors, assumptions, values, and attitudes to negotiate and conduct business successfully in other cultures.

FIN 612 (2): International Finance

A guide to financial management in an increasingly globalized world, and in particular, to the financial management. Introduces foundational knowledge of international financial management, including international financial environments, foreign exchange markets, exchange rate determinants and currency derivatives. Includes analyses of foreign exchange exposure, hedging of foreign exchange risk, making financing and investing decisions for MNCs.

MKTG 614 (2): Global Marketing and Sales

Challenges of marketing and sales in a global economy, difficulties that arise when buyers and sellers come from different national or cultural backgrounds. Covers the impact of cultural, political and economic differences in international marketing, and the challenges of face-to-face personal selling efforts, particularly for industrial products in global markets.

GBM 614 (2): Executive Seminar: Doing Business in a Selected Country/Region

Involves a series of guest lectures from scholars and business leaders with expertise in particular countries or regions of the world. Potential countries/regions are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS), Latin America, the EU, and other emerging markets throughout the world.

OM 616 (2): Global Supply Chain Management

Managing material and information flows in multi-stage production-distribution networks. The knowledge and tools for developing, implementing, and sustaining strategies for managing global supply chains. Basic supply chain issues are reviewed, followed by more advanced themes related to coordinating global supply chain players and the incentive problems related to this topic.

MASTER'S EXPERIENCE

GBM 685 (3): International Experience

This culminating experience lasts 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.

Supply Chain Management Option Courses

OM 612 (2): Business Analytics

GBM 612 (2): International Culture and Negotiations

OM 634 (2): Global Procurement & Strategic Sourcing

Global procurement has become a way for organizations to meet the challenges of new marketers and global competitors while also creating shareholder and customer value. CEO’s and CFO’s recognize that their competitive success is linked to the performance of their procurement and strategic sourcing function. This course will focus on the tools, techniques, strategies, and processes used by world-class global procurement organizations. Role-playing simulations and case studies will be used. Topics include: make vs. buy analysis, strategic sourcing process, negotiation of supplier pricing and terms, contract management of commercial and government contracts, supplier management, risk management, and the Procure-to-Pay (P2) Process.

OM 632 (2): Sales and Operations Planning

Sales and Operations Planning (S7OP) is a senior management decision-making process that ensures that the tactical plans in all business functions are aligned and support the business plan. S&OP is the vital process to balance customer demand with supply capacity S&OP aims to better match supply and demand by managing supply using capacity, inventory, and outsourcing backlogs by managing demand using short-term price discounts and trade promotions. This course particularly focuses on three main concepts: demand planning, supply planning, and sales and operations planning. Topics include, but are not limited to, Demand Forecasting, Demand Shaping, Capacity Planning, Inventory Management, Material and Production Planning, Outsourcing, Aggregate Production Planning, Supply Chain Integration and Coordination, Consensus Forecast (Tactical S&OP), Collaboration (Sales/Operations/Finance/Business Development), Management review and KPI measurement, and S&OP simulation game.

OM 636 (2): Governance, Risk Management & Compliance

To successfully execute an organization’s strategy, directors and senior management benefit greatly from a system of Corporate Governance integrated and supported by programs of risk management and compliance. Laws, regulations, and rules of regulatory bodies as well as internal policies influence these systems. This course will focus on what and how effective governance systems are designed, implemented, operated, and monitored within all forms of organizations: public, private, and not-for-profit. Thus, this course is designed to enable students to understand both the theoretical and practical aspects of risk management, compliance, and regulation as it relates to the linkage between the capital markets and the governance of an organization. Discussion Forums, company assessments, and case studies will be used.

OM 616 (2): Global Supply Chain Management

MASTER'S EXPERIENCE

BA 685 (3): Supply Chain Management Master’s Project