Core Courses
AUGUST CORE
Your core curriculum begins in August with “Foundations of Teamwork and Leadership”: MGMT 652. The first week of the fall term, August 28 - September 3, is dedicated to this formative and foundational experience.
MGMT 652 (.5 cu)
Foundations of Teamwork and Leadership
(cannot be waived)
Description: At every level of an organization, teamwork and leadership are required for organizational success. Teamwork and leadership have always been critical to society, but they have acquired new significance in recent years during this era of heightened uncertainty, restructuring, and change. The tenor of leadership has changed as well. Many organizations are flattening their hierarchies and building work teams, with “command and control” leadership giving way to facilitation and empowerment.
Format: This course focuses on developing your knowledge and skill set for teamwork and leadership. This course is meant to be an intense immersion experience that draws strongly on the pedagogy of the “Wharton Teamwork and Leadership Simulation,” a team-based, highly interactive, simulation that was designed specifically to allow you to “experience” the core concepts you will learn in this class. The simulation is based on research evidence and on specific business cases and outcomes.
FALL AND SPRING CORE
ACCT 620
Financial Accounting
Description: The role of accounting is the accumulation, analysis, and presentation of relevant financial data of an enterprise to serve the needs of creditors, investors and other external decision makers. The objective of this course is to familiarize the student with the basic concepts, standards and practices of financial accounting. The course is devoted to the basic financial statements, the analysis and recording of transactions, and the underlying concepts and procedures, with an eye toward financial statement analysis. The course begins with an overview of the procedures necessary to prepare and understand the balance sheet, income statement and statement of cash flows. The remainder of the course examines the accounting for the most common and significant transactions of a firm, such as inventories, long-term fixed assets, bonds and other long-term debt, income taxes, and stockholder’s equity.
Format: Lecture, discussion, three examinations, problem sets, cases.
Prerequisites: ACCT 603.
ACCT 621 (.5 cu)
Accelerated Financial Accounting
Description: The intended audience for this course is students with prior knowledge of financial accounting who understand: (1) the recording of economic transactions in the accounting records; (2) the basic financial statements that summarize a firm’s economic transactions (the balance sheet, the income statement and the statement of cash flows); and (3) the fundamental concepts needed to prepare or understand published financial statements (e.g. use of accrual accounting). Relying on prior knowledge, the course aims in six weeks to help students become effective users of financial statements. The first day of the course reviews the preparation of the statement of cash flows and assumes the student can prepare a balance sheet and income statement. The remainder of the course examines the major asset liabilities and shareholders’ equity accounts using examples and problems extracted directly from published financial statements. The goal of the course is to allow students to begin interpreting and analyzing real financial statements.
Format: Lecture, discussion, and problem solving.
Prerequisite: Waiver of full semester requirement and ACCT 604.
ACCT 622 (.5 cu)
Fundamentals of Managerial Accounting
Description: This course emphasizes the use of accounting information for internal planning and control purposes. This orientation contrasts with financial accounting where the focus is on accounting disclosures for parties external to the firm. This course is intended as an introduction for individuals who will make business decisions and evaluate the performance of business units using data obtained from the accounting system. The course will cover the basic vocabulary and mechanics of cost accounting, basic issues involved in the design of a cost accounting system, and the role of management accounting in decisions concerning resource allocation and performance evaluation.
Format: Lecture, class participation, three group cases, problem set, problem-based final exam.
Prerequisite: ACCT 620/621 or equivalent.
FNCE 601
Corporate Finance
Description: This course serves as an introduction to business finance (corporate financial management and investments) for both non-majors and majors preparing for upper-level course work. The primary objective is to provide a framework, concepts, and tools for analyzing financial decisions based on fundamental principles of modern financial theory. The approach is rigorous and analytical. Topics covered include discounted cash flow techniques, corporate capital budgeting and valuation, investment decisions under uncertainty, capital asset pricing, options, and market efficiency. The course will also analyze corporate financial policy, including capital structure, cost of capital, dividend policy, and related issues. Additional topics will differ, according to individual instructors.
Format: Primarily lecture, one or two midterm exams and final. Additional assignments at discretion of instructor; they may include cases and homework problems.
Prerequisites: ACCT 620 or ACCT 621, MGEC 621 and STAT 621 prerequisite or concurrent.
FNCE 602
Macroeconomics and the Global Economic Environment
Description: This course is required of all students except those who, having prior training in macroeconomics, money and banking, and stabilization policy at an intermediate or advanced level, can obtain a waiver either by credentials or by passing an examination. The purpose of FNCE 602 is to train the student to think systematically about the current state of the economy and macroeconomic policy, and to be able to evaluate the economic environment within which business and financial decisions are made. The course emphasizes the use of economic theory to understand the workings of financial markets and the operation and impact of government policies. Specifically, the course studies the determinants of the level of national income, employment, investment, interest rates, the supply of money, inflation, exchange rates, and the formulation and operation of stabilization policies.
Format: Classroom lectures and discussion – one or two midterm exams and a final exam. Additional assignments at discretion of instructor.
Prerequisites: Introductory knowledge of economics is strongly recommended, either through a college level economics course or private reading. The course materials, while starting at a basic level, rapidly progress so that the bulk of the analysis is conducted at an intermediate to advanced level; the range of topics covered is also quite extensive. Suggested texts for private study: (1) Parkin, Economics, AddisonWesley, (2) Samuelson and Nordhaus, Economics, McGraw-Hill, (3) Mankiw, Principles of Macroeconomics, Dryden. You should emphasize the macroeconomic parts of these books, but the rudimentary parts of microeconomic concepts of supply and demand, price determination, and market clearing, etc. should also be covered.
FNCE 621 (.5 cu)
Accelerated Corporate Finance
Description: This course is intended for people with prior knowledge of financial analysis or with strong analytical backgrounds. It assumes that students are completely familiar with the material covered in the pre-term placement preparation course, FNCE 604. As a result, it is only available to those students who successfully passed the FNCE 621 placement exam at the end of Pre-Term. The course forms the foundation for subsequent courses in corporate finance, security analysis, investments, and speculative markets. Its purpose is to develop a framework for analyzing a firm's investment and financing decisions and will provide an introduction to capital budgeting techniques under uncertainty, asset valuation, the operation and efficiency of capital markets, and the optimal capital structure of the firm. Furthermore, the course will exploit the students' prior knowledge and/or quantitative backgrounds (as demonstrated in the FNCE 621 placement exam), and will cover all the topics of a typical semester-long finance introduction class in six weeks.
Format: Lecture, midterm, final exam and regular homework assignments.
Prerequisites: FNCE 604. Since the emphasis is on the fundamental concepts underlying modern finance, the approach will be analytical and rigorous, and requires some familiarity with accounting, mathematical and statistical tools.
LGST/BPUB 621 (.5 cu)
The Governmental and Legal Environment of Business
Description: This course provides students with a basic understanding of how the law and the political process affect business strategy and decision making. It is co-taught by faculty from the Departments of Legal Studies & Business Ethics and Business & Public Policy. Topics include how legal infrastructure (contracts, intellectual property, antitrust, etc.) affect business strategy, and how businesses deal with challenges involving government agencies, legislation, or the press. The course presents broadly applicable frameworks that will help students to manage and advise clients more effectively in a world heavily influenced by legal concerns and governmental forces.
Format: Lecture and class discussion – participation (30% of grade), session summary (10% of grade) – and two exams (60% of grade).
Prerequisites: None.
Ethics and Responsibility
(cannot be waived)
Description: LGST 652 considers the ethical responsibilities of managers and corporations. It is designed to raise difficult ethical conflicts and dilemmas, and to provide plausible frameworks for dealing with those conflicts. It is also designed to reveal common patterns of success and failure in managing ethics. A successful module engages students in a critical evaluation of managerial and corporate ethics, and encourages each student to develop a perspective about the role of ethics in business. Class sessions will consist of collaborate case discussions, exercises, and discussions of theoretical frameworks for interpreting business ethics
• To foster an understanding of the ethical responsibilities assumed in becoming business managers.
• To improve individual and group skills in identifying and analyzing a select number of ethical issues that managers face in the context or situation in which they arise.
• To encourage the development of action plans that resolve ethical conflicts and dilemmas.
• To critically examine the assumptions and values that everyone brings to complex business decisions that raise ethical issues.
MGEC 621 (.5 cu)
Managerial Economics
Description: This course deals with applying microeconomic theory to the management of the firm in markets where the firm possesses market/monopoly power. Sophisticated pricing policies, transfer pricing, strategies in dealing with competitor firms, cooperation strategies, managing under uncertainty, asymmetric information, auctions, and externalities will be covered. The course will concentrate on the way that microeconomics may be utilized to enhance decision making within the manager’s organization. The student will develop an understanding of the economic environment in which the firm operates and how to think strategically within it. Students who have earned an A or better in an intermediate microeconomics, managerial economics, or industrial organization course in the last seven years may request a waiver by credentials. Others who have taken a large number of economics courses are encouraged to take the waiver exam.
Format: Classroom lectures and discussion, midterm quiz, final examination, and homework problems.
Prerequisites: MGEC 603 (the August review of basic microeconomic theory) or equivalent. Please note: The material covered in MGEC 603 will not be covered again in MGEC 621 and the last two lectures of MGEC 603 (price discrimination and bundling) will be considered as MGEC 621 material. Students taking MGEC 621 will be expected to be proficient with the material covered in MGEC 603. MGEC 621 assumes completion of Wharton math requirements (as covered in August). Students waiving MGEC 621 are responsible for its contents as they pertain to other core and elective courses.
MGMT 621 (.5 cu)
Management of People at Work
Description: Work is a dominant theme in the lives of most people. The way people are managed at work affects the quality of their lives as individuals, the effectiveness of organizations, and the competitiveness of nations. The material in this course develops some of the basic themes associated with managing people. In many cases, these themes make use of basic concepts that transcend the work place, such as the psychology of individual behavior or of work groups. The basic issues associated with managing employees include issues associated with motivation and job satisfaction, the design of jobs and employee empowerment, group behavior and teamwork (including arrangements such as quality of work life programs), and leadership. The course concludes with a discussion of alternative models or systems of managing employees – for example, the dominant Japanese employment system as contrasted with traditional U.S. practices.
Format: Cases, exercises and other materials that provide an employment context for these concepts, class attendance and participation in discussions.
Prerequisites: None.
MGMT 654 (.5 cu)
Competitive Strategy
Description: This course focuses on the competitive strategy of the firm, examining issues central to firms’ long- and short-term competitive position. The course develops a set of analytical frameworks that enable students to explain performance differences among firms and that provide a structure for strategic decisions to enhance firms’ future competitive positions. The first module of the course analyzes strategy at the business unit level, introducing tools of industry analysis and competitive positioning. The later part of the course considers corporate strategy, examining the economic logic for firms to diversify across businesses and for vertical integration decisions across stages of the industry value chain.
Format: Participation in class discussions, case assignments and a final exam.
Prerequisites: None.
MGMT 655 (.5 cu)
Global Strategic Management
Description: This course deals with the strategic and organizational management of multinational corporations (MNCs), focusing on the creation of competitive advantage in a global context.
Format: The class will include lectures and class discussions - class participation, some form of midterm exam or reaction paper, and final exam.
MKTG 621 (.5 cu)
Marketing Management: Program Design
Description: This course addresses the management challenge of designing and implementing the best combination of marketing variables to carry out a firm’s strategy in its target markets. Specifically, this course seeks to develop the student’s skills in applying the analytic perspectives and concepts of marketing to such decisions as segmentation and targeting, branding, pricing, distribution and promotion. The goal is to understand how the firm can benefit by creating and delivering value to its customers and stakeholders. The course uses lectures and case discussions, case write-ups, student presentations, occasional guest speakers, and a comprehensive final examination to achieve these objectives.
Format: Case analyses, lecture, and class discussion, and final exam.
Prerequisites: None.
MKTG 622 (.5 cu)
Marketing Management: Strategy
Description: In common with Marketing 621, the primary objective of this course is to introduce the student to the concepts and theories underlying marketing decision making. Marketing 622 builds upon Marketing 621 with a stronger emphasis on the strategic considerations that drive and integrate the decisions made for each element of the marketing mix. Principal topics include resource allocation, market entry/exit decisions, and competitive analysis. In addition to a mix of cases and lectures, the course relies on a comprehensive computer simulation game that helps highlight these issues and provides the class with a rich set of realistic examples for discussion and analysis. This game allows students to appreciate the real power and value of marketing concepts, develop a disciplined approach to the analysis of marketing situations, and to further enhance their abilities to communicate and interact with peers in solving problems.
Format: A computer simulation, case studies, lectures, and assigned readings are used. Much of the grade is based on the computer simulation (i.e., team performance and strategy reports). Class participation and a final exam play significant roles.
Prerequisites: MKTG 621.
OPIM 621 (.5 cu)
Decision Models and Uncertainty
Description: The applicability and use of management science models have increased dramatically in recent years due to the extraordinary improvements in computer, information, and communication technologies. Personal computers and friendly interfaces have become effective “delivery vehicles” for powerful decision models that were once the exclusive province of experts. This core course in management science has a twofold purpose. First, it seeks to introduce simple models and ideas that provide powerful (and oftentimes surprising) qualitative insights about a large spectrum of managerial problems. Its main topics include linear and integer programming, decision making under uncertainty, and simulation. Second, it aims to give a feeling for the kinds of problems that can be tackled quantitatively, the methods and software available for doing so and the difficulties involved in gathering the relevant data. The emphasis is on models that are widely used in diverse industries and functional area, including finance, operations, accounting and marketing.
Format: Lecture and discussion, with occasional case studies and problem assignments (including several using computer packages).
Requirements: Final exam, case projects, problem assignments.
Materials: Custom book, website.
OPIM 631 (.5 cu)
Operations Management: Quality and Productivity
Description: This course emphasizes processes. A process is a set of interrelated work activities characterized by specific inputs and value-adding tasks that produce specific outputs. In the first part of the course we will see examples of a number of processes and learn how to describe a process with a flow diagram. We will also learn to measure key process parameters like capacity and lead time, and to improve a process through approaches like finding and removing bottlenecks or better division of the work among the people involved in the process. The second part of the course focuses on process improvement and will examine some classic ideas in quality management as well as recent ideas about restructuring processes for increased performance.
Format: Lectures, cases, class discussions. Grading is based on a final exam, a take-home exam, and class participation.
OPIM 632 (.5 cu)
Operations Management: Supply Chain Management
Description: Matching supply with demand is a primary challenge for a firm: excess supply is too costly, inadequate supply irritates customers. Matching supply to demand is easiest when a firm has a flexible supply process, but flexibility is generally expensive. In this course we will (1) learn how to assess the appropriate level of supply flexibility for a given industry and (2) explore strategies for economically increasing a firm’s supply flexibility. While tactical models and decisions are part of this course, the emphasis is on the qualitative insights needed by general managers or management consultants. We will demonstrate that companies can use (and have used) the principles from this course to significantly enhance their competitiveness.
STAT 621 (.5 cu)
Statistical Analysis for Management
Description: This course explores the use of the key statistical methodology known as regression analysis in solving business problems. Regression analysis permeates most of applied statistics. This course considers the application of regression in various contexts, such as the prediction of future sales and the response of the market to price changes. The use of regression diagnostics and various graphical displays supplements the basic numerical summaries and provides insight into the validity of the models. Specific important topics covered include least squares estimation, residuals and outliers, tests and confidence intervals, correlation and autocorrelation, collinearity, and randomization. The presentation relies upon computer software for most of the needed calculations, and the resulting style focuses on construction of models, interpretation of results, and critical evaluation of assumptions.
Format: Lecture and discussion, assigned and graded individual and group exercises, data analysis project, and a final exam.
Prerequisite: In addition to basic mathematical skills (algebra and calculus), students beginning this course should be familiar with random variation and outliers, the normal probability model, confidence intervals and hypothesis tests, p-values, and univariate data displays such as histograms and normal plots. (Content of STAT 603)
WHCP 653 (.25 cu)
Management Communication
(cannot be waived)
Description: WHCP 653 is designed to prepare business leaders for the communication challenges of the workplace. It enables students to develop and demonstrate effective, business oriented, verbal communication skills. This course is required of all first-year MBA students, and meets once a week for six weeks. WHCP 653 enables each student to improve his/her oral presentation skills, regardless of current skill level. Students may select from one of two course offerings: the basic communication course or a course designed specifically for non-native English speaking students. Communication topics covered in both courses include: persuasion, organization and delivery of speeches, defending one’s view before adversarial audiences, impromptu and prepared speeches, effective use of PowerPoint, visual display of data, and dealing effectively with the media. Each student will learn successful communication strategies, and gain confidence using these strategies. Students have the opportunity to receive instructor and peer feedback in the classroom, as well as one-on-one feedback and coaching from instructors and second-year Wharton-Omnicom Communication Fellows. The small class size - maximum of nine students per section – allows each student to present five taped speeches. The course is offered in Quarters 1-4.