Learning Model

This course enables the student to gain an understanding and insights into the functions of government and business in dynamic and complex societies.

This course provides students with an understanding of behavioural science tools needed to solve organizational problems and influence the actions of individuals, groups, and organizations. It offers you an opportunity to gain valuable learning in understanding yourself, working in a team, and approaching organizational change.

The course will highlight the components of an effective negotiation and will teach you how to analyze your own behaviours during a negotiation. The course will be largely experiential, providing you with the opportunity to develop your skills by participating in negotiation exercises and integrating your first-hand experience with key concepts and principles presented in the assigned readings, lecture and course discussions. This course is designed to foster learning through doing, and to help you to explore your own talents, skills, and shortcomings as a negotiator.

In this introductory course, we will cover the basic vocabulary and mechanics of financial accounting.  This course will focus on understanding the identification, measurement, recording, and summarization of business transactions for financial statement purposes. The course will also demonstrate how managers can use financial statement information to understand and improve business performance. Emphasis will be placed on how managers and external users can deploy accounting data to evaluate a firm’s financial performance and financial position.

The course introduces you to the economist's way of thinking about problems and making decisions for small and medium enterprises. The objective is to teach you the process of critical and integrative thinking. A central component of economics methodology involves running controlled thought experiments called models. These are toy versions of real situations in which the less critical aspects of the problem are stripped away to focus on understanding the primary issue under consideration. Beyond appreciating this technique, learning economics necessarily entails engagement and arguments with the logic.

Financial Capital Management is a core course in the ISB PGP MFAB Program that addresses financial decisions relevant to managers of family-owned businesses. The first half of the course develops the basic tools of financial management while the second half applies them to real-world applications. Focus will be on the analytic tools and methods of modern finance rather than institutional issues.

This course is built around the premise that providing superior value to customers is a central means of creating value for the firm’s stakeholders. The course focuses on marketing strategy – the strategic decision of what value to provide, how to provide it, and how to provide it profitably. The main learning objective is to give you a research-based, company-tested, and usable framework for customer-based execution and strategy.

Quantitative methods and analytics tools are important for marketing decision making. The collection, analysis, and inference of data is crucial for managers to be successful in the current business environment.

This course is designed to provide a foundation of marketing analytical methods to students. Specifically, the course will help the participant to:

• Understand the importance of data-driven marketing decisions.
• Learn basic analytical methods used in marketing.
• Learn the basics of predictive modeling.

This course focuses on the competitive strategy of the firm, examining issues central to a firm’s long- and short-term competitive position. You will be placed in the role of key decision makers and asked to address questions related to the creation or reinforcement of competitive advantage. This course will also examine the choice of an appropriate level of scope and diversity and the logic of resource allocation in a diversified firm to enhance competitive advantage in each business.

This course will introduce students to concepts and techniques that are essential for the design, planning, control and improvement of service and manufacturing operations. The course will provide you with quantitative and qualitative tools to analyse and optimize operations and allow you to see the role of operations management in the overall strategy and innovation at a firm. We will cover topics in capacity, inventory, and supply chain management. In each class of the course, we will introduce basic tools for analysing operations problems, methods for managing that aspect of operations in a real situation, as well as provide a strategic view of that aspect of operations.

This course serves as an introduction to some specific areas of Human Resource Management in the context of the family-owned businesses. Students will learn about effective ways of managing human capital in their organizations by designing and deploying effective HRM programs & interventions in areas like: Recruitment of Talent: Hiring and Selection, Performance Management & Feedback, Compensation Benefits & Rewards, Employee Motivation & Engagement etc. Additionally, students will practice two specific skills of effective interviewing and performance feedback.

In this course we will view the supply chain from the point of view of a general manager. Our goal in this course is to understand how logistical decisions impact the performance of the firm as well as the entire supply chain.

The course will explore the business drivers of technology-related decisions in firms and stimulate thought on new applications of technology for commerce, including new products, processes, and business models (that are often very disruptive). The course is divided into three parts – one part of the course focuses on the industry impacts of technological innovation. Here, we will explore competition and business models in the high-tech industry using examples of companies like Google, Apple, and Facebook. We will also explore the competitive dynamics of traditional industries such as music, media, and education that have been disrupted by technology-enabled business models. Another part of the course focuses on how incumbent firms in traditional industries have leveraged technology to transform their business models and strategies. The final part of the course focuses on how an increasingly networked economy is changing fundamental business functions and the underlying nature and basis of decision-making.

This course is a Marketing elective designed for students interested in learning more about professional sales force management and personal selling by firms engaged in business-to- business and consumer goods/services marketing. The course emphasizes a data-based, analytics approach to decision-making for sales management. An appreciation of the complexities of sales management, which are only increasing over time, and a good understanding of the extant knowledge of how to successfully deal with them is essential not only for those MBA students pursuing a sales and marketing career but also for all those who aspire to run or head any kind of business organization. This Sales Management course aims to impart such knowledge.

This course focuses on the capital raising and financing strategies of entrepreneurial ventures. Some emphasis will be put on examples and case studies related to family firms. It covers a wide range of financing transactions from private equity and venture capital to IPOs. Also covers instruments that combine financing with an element of a risk management strategy.

Review the most common definitions and applications of power, influence and leadership. For power and influence, participants will draw from psychology and consumer behavior theory to understand human behavior in abstract from a cognitive perspective and in business/marketing situations.

Then participants will review the concept of leadership, what is it, why it is important and some common theories. Then they will focus on transformational leadership as a leading-edge theory related to agile organizations. Finally, participants will be led into positive leadership. Positive Leadership (PL) is about training key workplace behaviors that can help you distinguish yourself and support your long-term success.

PL is based on three key pillars:

Mindware Training: rewire the way we think.

Positive Development: reconsider the way we lead and manage. And,

Habit-hacking: rethink how to change behaviors

In this course on Organizational Growth Strategies participants will analyze the basic logic of value generation and how firms may leverage these ideas to grow profitably.

Based on the discussion of cases and articles, the seminar focuses on strategic analysis at the business and corporate level and the firm’s options for growth through its diversification into new business and internationalization. Key models and tools for managing growth and corporate strategy will be discussed.

The PGPMFAB Course “Managing Growth” is designed as a practicum. It involves carrying out a short individual project. The project should help students to integrate and apply the program learnings in addressing a managerial issue in their own business context. As a part of the course, student will act as an internal consultant and develop a solution to an existing challenge their business faces. It may be related to any part of the business but should be drawing lessons from one or more of the courses students have attended to help address the specific challenge.