Breadth Courses & Corporate Responsibility

Flagship Courses - Core Subjects - Breadth Courses - Electives - Special Practicums - Non-GSM

In addition to the Core that all must take, students at the Graduate School of Management must also take 3 out of 7 "Breadth" courses that build upon the Core while refining a student's focus. Many of them cover topics and utilize cases based on social responsibility.

MGT 200B - MANAGERIAL ACCOUNTING

In this course, we consider two types of ethical issues. First, we look at problems in managerial accounting that involve ethical choices. These include, improper assignment of costs to jobs to hide the true cost, games playing in the budgeting process and fraudulent financial reporting. Second, I invite a guest speaker who has hands-on experience with white collar crime. Two years ago, this was a convicted fraudster. Last year it was a fellow who expected to be charged in a price fixing case against makers of DRAMs. In all, I spend about 20% of the class on ethical issues.

MGT 201B - ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND STRATEGY

In one of the sessions in this course, we explore the relationship between strategy and corporate responsibility. Consumers and investors, as well as a growing number of business leaders, are increasingly urging corporations to remember their obligations, not just to their employees, but to their communities and the environment. However, senior managers who want to make their organizations better corporate citizens often face significant obstacles. Initiatives that generate societal and environmental benefits are often at odds with the goal of profit maximization. In this session, we discuss these dilemmas, as well as analytical tools that have been developed to help managers think about how to successfully balance corporate responsibility and shareholder interests.

MGT 202B - BUSINESS, GOVERNMENT, AND THE INTERNATIONAL ECONOMY

Business managers need to understand the structure and behavior of the domestic and global economies in order to make sound business decisions. The same is true in our personal lives. Our job prospects, portfolio returns, standards of living and retirement security depend on current and future economic conditions. The objective of this course is to help you understand the economic environment in which we work and live. We will analyze the implications of the often interdependent decisions made by firms, households and governments. We will pay particular attention to the impact governments have on economic conditions, through their central banks, their taxing and spending decisions, and their trade, regulatory, labor and other public policies. We will focus on the most timely and topical issues of the day. We will become familiar with a variety of economic data and data sources so that you will know the "facts" about economic performance as well as the theory.

MGT 206 - DECISION MAKING AND MANAGEMENT SCIENCE

This course develops decision-making and problem-solving skills in conjunction with a quantitative model-building approach. Emphasizes how structured modeling techniques, probability forecasts, simulations, and computer optimization models are used in the overall process of making decisions in an uncertain environment. It has wide applications to both profit and non-profit organizations. For example, queueing models have been applied to reduce excessive waiting in a variety of service opertions (e.g., hospitals, airports, banks, etc.). Optimization models are often used to maximize social welfare (e.g., network design in transportation and communication systems). Models have also been developed to decide the allocation of limited resources such as flu shots, or even kidnetys to patients or transplant waiting lists. Many student projects concern social issues and there is some discussion of the ethics associated with proper reporting of models and solutions.

MGT 207 - MANAGEMENT INFORMATION SYSTEMS

The segment “how does IT create business value” uses the eChoupal case – which illustrates how firms can use information technology for socially beneficial purposes while, at the same time, enhancing their business and competitive environment. In this case the firm (ITC) deploys IT for the benefit of farmers (generally unsophistical, uneducated, and lacking good information necessary to make good farming decisions) – thereby improving the quality of ITC’s inputs, and hence ITC’s ability to sell high-value products in the global market.

MGT 252 - PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

There is coverage of the following:
a. reverse logistics and cradle to cradle operations, (environmental)
b. social impacts of layoffs (social and ethical)
c. inflated inventory (ethical)
d. facility siting (environmental, social)