Executive Master of Bus Admin (EMBA)

This required non-credit course is intended to provide opportunities to understand management skills and achieve a greater understanding of the role of the chief executive in an organization. Primarily, this course involved required attendance at a speakers series. Students will take this course every semester in which they are enrolled in the program.

This course is designed to improve students’ decision-making abilities as managers using accounting information within organizations, and as managers interpreting and using externally published financial statements from other organizations. The use of accounting systems for planning of activities and control of operations with emphasis on the human behavioral aspects will be studied. The course will also develop and further the student’s knowledge of accounting techniques and principles and their understanding of accounting data.

Students consider theories and concepts in strategic human resource management, employee relations, and industrial relations. Students build from the fundamentals of organizational behavior concepts and processes and labour relations frameworks and knowledge to a systematic and strategic approach to managing people and processes in organizational settings.

Students examine national economic policies such as fiscal and monetary policy including economic growth and social welfare. The course highlights how microeconomic entities interface in matters like natural resource usage, economic development and international trade. Students examine the phenomenon of globalization and the interdependence amongst the world’s various economic agents.

Students are introduced to using an evidence-based management approach to decision making in organizational settings. Students become familiar with the frameworks, methods, and tools of evidence-based decision-making and become familiar with the fundamentals of practice-oriented research methods.

In this course, students will develop the understanding and analytical skills needed to make strategic choices for achieving sustainable competitive advantage in the global market. Methods of instruction may include seminar discussions, case analysis, simulations, secondary research, and field research projects.

Today’s organizational leaders operate in increasingly complex settings, navigating legal, social, environmental and governance issues at the local and global level. Using a stakeholder engagement framework with a sustainability mindset, students analyze organizational dilemmas and identify decision alternatives that address the expectations of multiple parties and promote ethically responsible practice.

Students develop an understanding of business intelligence from a theoretical, conceptual, and practical perspective. Students consider the origins of business intelligence and data analytics in organizational settings, the application in various functional areas such as HR, marketing, operations, and finance, and software and tools used to conduct analyses. An understanding of the ways in which business intelligence contributes to decision-making processes in organizations at both a tactical and strategic level are considered with an emphasis on the ethical considerations and implications.

Students examine the physical, informational, and financial activities and processes surrounding the manufacture, distribution, servicing and recycling of goods and services. Students explore the concept that effective supply chain management involves a network of organizations including suppliers, shippers, intermediaries, and customers.

Students examine individual and group decision-making in light of complexity and uncertainty; systems thinking, heuristics, perception, attribution, bias, bounded awareness, the role of emotion and feedback in decision-making will all be explored. Contexts particularly susceptible to judgement errors will be highlighted (e.g. high reliability organizations and conflict situations).

This course focuses on some critical issues facing the manager in the international business arena. Introductory sessions examine issues of international trade and foreign market penetration strategies such as exporting, licensing and joint ventures. The multinational enterprise and organizational problems in international operations are also discussed, including the management of foreign exchange rate risk. After discussing issues of strategy and structure in the multinational enterprises, students will examine issues dealing with the nation-state, both in the developed world and in the less developed regions.

Students in this capstone course focus attention on the development and implementation of strategy in a variety of contexts. In developing the skills needed to provide overall direction for organizations, students learn how innovation and strategy are interlinked to form and change an organization’s competitive advantage.

Students are provided with an integrated view of the financing and investment decision of the firm by focusing on how the value of a company is affected by the trade-offs between the returns and risks inherent in all financial decisions. Topics include agency theory signaling and financial compensation schemes and their impact on financial decision making. Students complete the course having a more in-depth appreciation of the nature of the financial markets within which the firm operates together with a solid working knowledge of a wide variety of financial decision techniques.

The object of this research project course is to give the group the opportunity to examine a particular problem in depth. The individual student’s work will be supervised by a faculty member. Students will be required to present the findings of the project in the continuing Business Research Project II course, EMB 646.

Business research requires the scientific development, planning, execution and reporting of a business research project. The research will be conducted and reported under the guidance of a faculty advisor. The project must be well grounded in the current literature, and the report should include a delineation of the problem, method, results, and conclusions. In this course, students will be required to present their research projects to the EMBA students and faculty.

This course will cover the analysis of structure, functions, and government of the Canadian union movement; application of theoretical models to contemporary problems in labour and industrial relations in Canada; a study of the impact of environmental factors on union management relations. Emphasis will be placed on institutional and behavioral aspects of industrial relations. An attempt will be made to identify the objectives, values and motivations of the various parties involved in collective bargaining and the role of industrial conflict and industrial harmony will be examined in the context of collective bargaining goals.

Using lectures, group work, individual work, cases, and guest speakers, this course examines the key theories and elements related to the entrepreneurial cycle. The entrepreneurial cycle includes the idea generation and investigation phase, the start-up, the potential for rapid growth, and harvesting the value created by the firm at exit. The questions addressed specifically investigate: 1) whether it is viable to either start or purchase a business, 2) where and how to secure financing for either option, 3) how to marshal other resources critical for growth, and 4) how to position the firm to capture its wealth when the entrepreneur is ready to exit.

Intended to supplement or provide an alternative to the electives in order to meet the special needs and interests of students.