Electives serve to either develop a student's selected area of expertise or broaden their general business knowledge. Many elective courses at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management focus on topics that incorporate social, environmental, governance, and ethical issues.
To excel, managers and entrepreneurs must understand the legal environments which impact all businesses and should know how to operate within such legal constraints. The course will address the legal aspects of business relationships and business agreements. The focus of this course is to teach students to identify and manage legal issues, hopefully before the same become legal problems. The subjects to be covered include forms of business organizations, duties of officers and directors, intellectual property, antitrust, contracts, employment relationships, criminal law and debtor-creditor relationships including bankruptcy proceedings.
MGT 216 - MANAGING PROFESSIONALS: BUDGETS, CONTROLS, AND ETHICS
Professional organizations, such as engineering departments, medical centers, law offices and consulting groups, whether in the private or public sectors, are increasingly regarded as businesses subject to the same budgetary and productivity disciplines as non-service business. This course deals with budget allocation, performance control-to-budget and ethical issues in the managment of professional operations. Topics addressed include control of budgetary performance in the face of market uncertainty; ethical issues in the process of allocating resources adn the pricing of services; workplace issures such as privacy, safety, downsizing, outsourcing, conflicts of interest; ethical dilemmas in introducing innovative products and services; productivity and quality measures; ethical problems in international business.
This course examines the bases of formal and informal power in organizations and the way these kinds of power can be built and translated into influence in organizations. Out of twenty class sessions, two sessions consider the pros and cons for organizations and their members of engaging in power oriented behavior and two consider the ethical implications of engaging in this type of behavior.
We devote a part of one class to discuss some of the ethical issues encountered in advertising industry (e.g., promoting cigarette sales, targeting underage customers, etc).
This course is about innovation - not just of technology, but of ideas, of how people act, and how they think. It is about changing worlds in which we operate and using what we know to push where we are going. As such, innovations discussed in this class range into the social and environmental. In addition, there is a key ethical discussion about the problems of trust and collective interests when doing innovating – when is it valuable to both the individual and others to collaborate on the creation of innovations and the issues of ownership around these ideas.
MGT 260 - FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT
The focus of the course is on financing decisions of a firm. Throughout the topics issues are raised about the tension that can arise when the actions needed to please the short-term expectations of the stock market are in conflict with long-term managerial decisions (for example, in dividend payments, adding debt to the capital structure). One case in particular highlights the behavior of corporate raiders (Ronald Perelman and Carl Icahn) – the case of Marvel Corp going bankrupt. This case provides a rich setting for discussing financial structures that create conflicts of interest between management, shareholders and debtholders.
MGT 261 - INVESTMENT ANALYSIS
The class covers such ethical issues as executive compensation, information asymmetry in the IPO process, corporate governance and the protection of individual investor welfare. The class also discusses mutual fund late-trading scandals, the financial analyst scandals, the NASDAQ dealer scandals to illustrate the jeopardy of running institutions without the needed monitoring. The class also uses examples of hedge fund manager compensation to emphasize how compensation scheme can influence investors’ risk-tolerance and alter their fiduciary duty to their clients.
This course is designed to provide a student with the tools to identify and understand tax planning opportunities. The course begins by developing a conceptual framework for analyzing tax planning transactions and then applies these tools to various tax planning scenarios. Several issues of social impact management are addressed. The equity and efficiency of tax systems is expanded upon in significant detail. Differential tax burdens across differing income sectors of society are discussed in detail, along with their ramifications. The nonprofit sector of society is examined and relative value vs. tax preferences are weighed. Integrity and accountability of tax planning transactions plays a central role in the course. Each student (in small groups) is required to “sell” a tax planning scheme to the rest of the class. The rest of the class role plays as boards of directors whose job is to determine the legality and morality of the given tax plan. These discussions get to the heart of economic substance and business purpose vs. tax avoidance goals of tax planning.
MGT 266 - INTERNATIONAL FINANCE
In this course, we discuss the wealth and income distribution implications of importing goods previously produced in the home country (outsourcing), cross-border capital flows and differential access to capital, international financial subsidies, direct foreign invest, and many other effects resulting from extending a firm’s business internationally.
MGT 270 - CORPORATE FINANCIAL REPORTNG
Critically analyzes and evaluates contemporary issues in corporate accounting and financial reporting, and develops implications of those issues for managers, investors, independent accountants, and policy makers. In addition to standard ethical and governance concerns, the course includes a discussion of accounting and reporting for environmental liabilities.
The following topics and themes are addressed within this course:
- Ethics of information gathering and analysis; use of inside/privileged information
- Regulatory compliance issues
- Earnings management and aggressive disclosure practices
- Securities disclosure rules and litigation; auditing judgements
- Environmental liabilities
- Pension disclosure and (excessive) management compensation
The course talks a lot about values and ethics from the perspective of each CEO. We have extensive discussions on integrity, values and life balance issues. The students have a lot of personal dialogue with the professor and business leaders on social and ethical issues of leaders.
As a balance to class discussions about start-up companies that are focused on achieving the highest value for their company, I use a HBS case about the start-up company Honest Tea. This company is dedicated to socially responsible business and the students are challenged to think about how a company can find financing that is in keeping with its ethical goals. In addition, other topics that are covered in the class include negotiations with venture capitalists and which deal structures are fair to all parties. When start-up companies receive external equity capital, issues of corporate governance come into play and we discuss how outside board positions can help monitor performance and align incentives of both the entrepreneurs and outside equity holders.
Discussion of pricing laws and ethics. In particular, discussions relating to price fixing and its effects on consumers, competitors, and innovation. Address the issues of the morality of setting prices to extract all of consumer surplus. Alternative approaches to pricing, like fair pricing, and their implications. For example: discussion of the right price to charge for health care and life saving drugs, and the consequences of deliberately not serving some consumers. Discuss the practice of grey marketers, and the pro/con of allowing such markets to operate.
