The Business Fundamentals section takes students through the traditional MBA subjects ranging from strategic planning through marketing and donor relations to microeconomics and the management of resources, providing graduates with a sound base from which to compete successfully with other MBAs for private-sector employment. 

This section places a special emphasis on the role of social entrepreneurship as a new strategic space, where cutting edge market-based mechanisms are leveraged to create a positive change, and which is increasingly seen as a powerful alternative to traditional social policy and development interventions. 

Courses in this section include:

• Strategy in the Global Environment
• Social Entrepreneurship 1
• Business Mathematics
• Business Economics
• Financial Accounting and financial management
• Management Accounting
• Finance for Managers
• Marketing and Public Relations / Fundraising
• Business Simulation Game
• Social Entrepreneurship 2

Strategy in the Global Environment

STRATEGY IN THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENT is an IOMBA course in management. It is designed to acquaint the student with the delineation of business policy by the firm, and the development and implementation of a business strategy that will allow the firm to achieve its goals and objectives. The pursuit of these goals and objectives usually occurs within a competitive context, in which rival organizations often seek similar if not the same ends (e.g., market share, profits, control of scarce resources, etc.). Accordingly, the essential drama of the marketplace is how one firm attempts to "win" vis-à-vis its rivals-- that is, how it develops and implements a competitive strategy.

The basic perspective of the course will be that of the "general manager" of the firm, or that person charged with overall responsibility for competitive performance. We shall apply the concepts of the course to firms that compete in single businesses as well as multiple lines of activity, to firms that compete in domestic markets as well as international venues, and to firms that engage in production sector activity as well as the service sector of the economy.

This offering of STRATEGY will be highly participatory, relying heavily on class discussions of case and related readings. Students must be willing and ready to engage in classroom discussion of the subject matter if they expect to pass the course.

Social Entrepreneurship (part 1)

This course takes a strategic perspective on social change. It asks how emerging leaders(social entrepreneurs, social intrapreneurs and high-impact philanthropists(can stimulate systemic change through local interventions and collaboration. A social entrepreneur is a special type of leader. Social entrepreneurs draw on professionalism and market-based mechanisms to create positive change in the domains of education, enterprise development, the environment, fair trade, healthcare, human rights and other social fields. Combining their passion to solve social issues with an entrepreneurial outlook on life, they find innovative ways to leverage scarce resources in the pursuit of social value. Representing the vanguard of civil society in terms of effectiveness and adaptive leadership, social entrepreneurship has recently emerged as a major promise. It is becoming a new strategy space that is increasingly seen as a powerful alternative to traditional social policy and development interventions.

To help to turn the tide on the great challenges of the twenty-first century as exemplified in the Millennium Development Goals however, a quantum leap in terms of scale and impact is required, creating many more socially entrepreneurial institutions in a short period of time. This requires strategic action, capitalizing on core levers. One of the main constraints which social entrepreneurs face in scaling up is the availability of adequate sources of capital. They turn to multilateral agencies, governments, and the private sector. In addition, democratization, deregulation and the information revolution have greatly enlarged the space of options available to philanthropists. The course therefore analyzes the emergence and prospects for collaboration with a new type of actor, the high-impact philanthropist. Not captive to the path dependency and risk aversion of multilateral agencies and governments, philanthropists can afford to take the long view and direct their efforts toward financing innovative approaches to the resolution of specific issues. Provided successful pilot efforts multiply, their global rollout can be accelerated in collaboration with established players in the development industry and social policy.

A major challenge consists of devising a mechanism that enables change agents on the ground and philanthropic financiers to collaborate effectively, as well as making more transparent what performance excellence means for social change initiatives, and how it can be measured.
 
Business Mathematics

The course provides a specific knowledge of the techniques and the mathematic models which can be used for decision-making purposes in public and private enterprises. How to evaluate the convenience of an investiment? How to calculate the return on investiment of a new project? Is it a new organisation economically viable? These are some questions the Business Mathematics course intends to give an answers to participants.

The course will approach the following main topics:

• sensitivity analysis
• risk analysis and simulation
• forecasting
• optimisation under constraints

The course will approach the theoretical topics with a constant attention to the practical implications, through case studies, simulations and excercises.

Business Economics 

The first part of the course introduces the participants to basic microeconomics tools: demand and supply relations, origins of demand and supply schedules, individuals' consumption optimization problems and optimal choice of inputs and production by firms. This part of the course ends introducing the basic market structures of perfect competition, monopoly and monopolistic competition.

The second part of the course will go further the simple market strucutres previously presented through the concept of strategic thinking. The question being asked is the following: "How do firms act when their choices are interdependent ?". In particular,  the concepts of Nash equilibrium and sub-game perfection will be defined and utilized. These concepts will then be used in the discussion of basic oligopoly models providing participants with an overall picture of how firms' behaviour depends on and determines market structure.

The third part of the course will focus on optimal pricing, in both static and dynamic contexts; in particular, price discrimination, predatory pricing and other means of entry in a market will be examined.

Financial Accounting and financial management

The first part of the course presents the fundamentals of private sector and public sector accounting:

• The nature and purposes of accounting;
• The basics of budgetary accounting;
• The basics of financial accounting with specific respect to the preparation, use and interpretation of general purpose financial statements.

The course will focus on the student's ability to recognize and read different types of accounting systems (cash accounting, accrual accounting) and their relative financial statements.

The second part of the course focuses on:

• Analysis of the financial statements issued by private and public organizations;
• Advanced topics of financial management, such as transition to international accounting standards by private companies and public organizations and result-based budgeting and reporting;
• Budgeting process in international organizations.

Management Accounting

Accurate, timely and relevant financial and non-financial information is crucial to the successful running of all organizations, whether they be business or not-for-profit. This information should be tailored and relevant to the needs of all the internal and external stakeholder or an organization.

This course  focuses on:

• Understanding internal and external financial reports and how information on performance can be effectively designed, realized and communicated;
• The efficient and planned use of resources;
• The role of financial information in decision making;
• The knowledge of management accounting techniques (i.e direct or full costing) and their use in different organizations and market contexts;
• The use of management accounting and reporting tools, for example the balanced and strategic scorecards.

Finance for Managers

This course covers the main concepts and tools of finance. In particular we focus on the methods used for investment decision making as well as project assessment. It also discusses some issues in modern corporate finance. These tools are widely used in corporate entities, but are also very useful for managers in international organizations facing investment decisions. The various financial instruments and markets are also discussed.

Marketing and Public Relations / Fundraising

The module is designed to blend an understanding of the principle theoretical precepts associated with marketing, social marketing and non-profit marketing with practitioner skill development in the fields of non-profit marketing, public relations and fundraising practice.

Having grounded the theoretical approach to marketing (both commercial and non-profit) the course then precedes to analyse the primary theoretical marketing concepts and practitioner skills required in the determination of an integrated strategic marketing plan.

As the formulation of the plan is developed, course participants are introduced to both strategic and tactical planning disciplines, the significance of marketing research, integrated marketing communications, brand management and services marketing, each applied to the INGO context.

A detailed analysis of donor motivation introduces the key elements in fundraising strategy and enables course participants to explore the distinctive nature of fundraising practice across individual, corporate, trust/foundation and governmental constituencies of giving.

The module concludes with the integration of theory and practice through an understanding of the contribution of social marketing and relationship marketing/fundraising approach to the distinctive nature of non-profit marketing activity grounded as it is in moral rights and accountabilities alongside issues of efficiency, effectiveness and transparency.

Business Simulation Game

This module will be a capstone simulation in Strategic Management and International Business that will put you in control of a company and have you make decisions that affect product quality, shareholder value, profitability and more. In groups of four, students will manage a company over several financial periods (quarters) with a long-term viability perspective.

The principal objective is to design tools of control and information adapted to an international company.
The resolution of the case calls upon the determination of an internationalization strategy, which includes four stages:

Stage 1: Analysis of the situation (strategic analysis of both the external and internal environment of the company
Stage 2:  Determination of objectives and strategies, which span three dimensions:

• space strategy: carrying out a choice concerning the priority country or zone of countries in which the company wants to operate, as well as the appropriate modes of engagements (or presence) in these locations.
• marketing strategy: translating strategic decisions into operational strategies regarding technological development, targeting customers and/or zones product development.
• structure strategy: putting in place organizational measures to accompany international expansion

Stage 3:  Defining an action plan concerning resources and budgets.
Stage 4: Taking quarterly decisions and controlling (i.e. compare the results carried out compared to those which were envisaged and to make the decisions necessary to maintain the desired course).

Social Entrepreneurship (part 2): Bringing Business Skills to Social Causes

This course builds on the materials presented in Social Entrepreneurship Part I, by Dr Martin. In this, Part II, we will focus on social entrepreneurship in healthcare using a case study method which integrates a presentation by a world-recognized social entrepreneur, members of the venture capital community in the United States and Europe, and leaders in the healthcare industry. The course will end with a business plan competition.
 
Governments around the world are beginning a long term process that reviews and redesigns its healthcare systems addressing concerns of cost, equitable access, and sustained quality of healthcare.
 
As global healthcare systems begin to reevaluate the healthcare needs of its citizens, entrepreneurs are playing increasingly vital roles by leveraging the sophisticated business skills and global networks of the private sector to solve healthcare problems in the public sector.
 
These models for entrepreneurial collaboration are unique in history. They create sustainable businesses which do not rely on traditional philanthropy, but instead align the interests of traditional competitors and empower citizens by building foundations of economically sound revenue generating clusters that can organically grow and adapt to solve today's and tomorrow's healthcare problems.
 
In our increasingly interdependent world the challenges we face to improve healthcare cannot be solved by government, corporations, or individuals working alone. To effectively solve our global healthcare crisis it is essential to develop an integrated decision making chain by engaging national and world community leaders, inspiring them with strategic insights, and, enabling them with creative synchronized strategic plans developed in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team from industry, the private sector and government.