Mostly as a recap for myself, here's a quick overview of the courses I took in my first term and what I learnt from each. This page will also act as a memory trigger to recall in the future all that I learnt in this term.

World of Management (core); Paul Dainty
The two-week long intensive (9am-5pm every day!) World of Management (WoM) course was designed to introduce students from varying backgrounds and experiences to, as the name implies, the world of management. The course started two weeks before the full-time MBA classes commenced and "emphasised four key strands" (i.e. it had four modules):

1. The personal develpment of us as managers, in which we covered topics such as time management, stress management, career management, communication skills, presentation skills, and the manager’s world (a historical and current overview of management). The point of all this was for us to create our own "personal management strategy" that would help us get through our MBA as well as our future careers.
2. Learning processes, in which we learnt about learning cycles (i.e. how we learn); different types of learning situations that the MBA and life in general present to us (basically: lecture-based, case-based, and experiential); and useful models that help break down cases and situations for more thorough and effective analysis.
3. People and group processes, in which we learnt about diversity, team building, working in teams (including syndicates), negotiation, and presentation skills.
4. Business perspectives, in which we were presented with marketing, finance, accounting, economics, operations, strategy, organizations, and historical-economic perspectives of the business world.

Overall, this course set the pace and the tone for the rest of the MBA and, ultimately, its point is to make all of us intelligent users of the MBA program and not just students who let the MBA happen to them! It helped, of course, that Paul and all the other lecturers that taught us parts of the course were excellent teachers :)

Accounting for Managers (core); Jim Frederickson
This is possibly the hardest course in the MBA -- not because the content itself is hard, but because there is a great deal to learn in very little time and, unfortunately, things don't come together into a cohesive whole till the last week or two of the course.

The course covers accounting theory, accounting practice, and the basics of financial statement analysis. Content-wise, we went through a lot of stuff:

1. Accounting basics: the accounting equation, double-entry bookkeeping, account titles, etc.
2. Financial statements basics: how to make them and how to read them (i.e. infering economic events from statemtents)
3. Financial accounting theory: revenue recognition; loss contingencies; cost accumulation assets (inventory, long-lived operating assets, and debts and leases); revaluation assets; and debts and equity investments.
4. Financial statement analysis: using ratios (ROA, ROE, DuPont model, etc.); using various turnovers; assessing earnings quality and persistence; creating common-sized and trend statements; carrying out constructive capitalization; and recognizing when financial statements are being "managed".
5. Various accounting issues: the different GAAPs in use around the world, how they are changing, etc.

Data and Decisions (core); Chris Lloyd
This was one of my favourite courses and I really like Chris and how he teaches. In it, we basically learnt how to convert all kinds of data into useful, reliable, accurate, and understandable information. We were trained to think probabilistically about numbers, quantify tradeoffs (risks vs. returns), identify key drivers of decisions (i.e. what information to use and why), and detect problems and opportunities (could the data be wrong or biased, how can we improve it or make the most out of what we have). Specifically, we learnt:

1. Generic Excel skills: calculations, formulas, structuring/ordering data (stacking, unstacking, using pivot tables, etc.), and presentating data (charts, graphs, histograms, etc.).
2. Probability and distributions: means, standard deviations, standardization (z-values, etc.), marginal and conditional probabilities, Bayes method, probability distributions (normal, binomial), and hypothesis testing (error types, p-values, significance levels).
3. Statistics and variation: the law of large numbers (data distribution with an actual mean and an actual standard deviation versus a probability distribution with a sample mean and sample standard deviation), standard errors, the normal limit theorem, T-statistics, P-values, and confidence interval, (note: these were all for one sample, multiple samples, or proportions).
4. Regression: correlation (including auto-correlation and partial correlations), hedging and risk, least-squares regression (the linear regression model), making predictions, checking residuals, multiple regressions (fitting curves and quadratics), using dummy variables, using lagged variables, and accounting for seasonal fluctuations.
5. Decisions analysis: using decision trees (mean values, payoffs, risk profile, etc.) and, basically, using all that we've learnt to make real life decisions.

The entire course was taught using Microsoft Excel, which is incredibly useful. We also used two excellent Excel plugins: Statpro and Lumenaut Decision Trees. You can read Chris' blog posting on teaching statistics using Excel in the statistics blog that he runs, by the way.

Financial Management (core); Sam Wylie
The financial management course was a lot of fun -- even as it was really hard -- and Sam Wylie is an awesome lecturer. The course was all about value. In it we learnt:

1. How to value assets (e.g. shares and bonds)
2. How to value (i.e. the current value) of future cashflows from projects in which firms invest (called the Net Present Value)
3. How to choose projects that increase the value of a firm (for shareholders)
4. How to finance those projects so that shareholder value is maximized

And we did all that by learning about: the time value of money (NPV, etc.), diversification and risk, capital markets (including the CAPM), the weighted average cost of capital (WACC), and a firm's capital structure and dividend payout choices. It sounds simple and straightforward when I write about it here, but believe me, it's not all that easy.

Managerial Economics (core); John Asker
I really enjoyed the Managerial Economics course. Our lecturer, John Asker, was a visiting professor for NYU's Stern School of Business and the course was basically a broad overview of microeconomics. In it we learnt how to distinguish between market and strategic decisions and which tools to use in either situation. We learnt a lot of things in this course. These included:

1. Basic decision-making: decision trees for making both non-strategic and strategic decisions (i.e. without considering and considering your competition), basic decision rules (expected value, sunk cost, considering alternatives, etc.), and the concept of economic profit.
2. Value creation: Understanding the value creation process through the value net (from Game Thoery), willingess to pay (based on utility), willingness to sell, the time value of money, and surplus creation and division.
3. Bargaining: bilateral bargaining (the BATNA approach) and multilateral bargaining (core bargaining and added value concepts from game theory).
4. Basics of Game Theory: sequential games (using game trees, making credible commitments in bargaining) and simultaneous move games (normal form, best response, Nash equilibria, dominant and non-dominant strategies, etc.).
5. Monopolies: demand curves, choosing prices, thinking on the margin (marginal revenue, marginal cost, etc.), elasticity, and price discrimination (versioning, bundling).
6. Oligopolies: types of competition (Bertrand, Cournot), demand curves, reaction curves, hard commitments (limiting stock, limiting capacity), and soft commitments (product differentiation, etc.).
7. Cooperation and competition (Co-opetition): collusion, price wars, relevant laws, and repeated pricing games.
8. Information economics: games with imperfect information, problems (principle/agent, adverse selection, moral hazard), and signaling.
9. Auctions: common auction mechanisms (comparisons, strategic issues), bidding strategies, and the winner's curse.
10. Externalities and networks: classification, critical mass, inertia effects, path dependence, standards wars, and public policy.

What made this course more interesting was the use of the online teaching tool called Aplia that helped us apply a lot of what we learnt in class.

Managing People for High Performance (core); Carol Gill
The basic idea of this course was to (a) understand how organizations work, change, and solve problems and (b) learn how to communicate well and be an effective team player and leader. We did this by studying and discussing various cases, by understanding how our own syndicate was working, and by analyzing an external organization that had recently been through some organizational change. The topics we covered included:

1. Creating a competitive advantage through people: high performance work practices, the Congruence Model, virtuous cycles, the three lenses approach (strategic, political, cultural), and the effects of organizational design
2. Organizational change: why it doesn't work, how to make it work (scope, Force Field Analysis, steps).
3. Levels of behaviour: individual (emotional intelligence, ladder of inference, mental models, diversity, Myers-Briggs Type Indicator), team processes (context, operations, effectiveness), and team leadership (norms, working with temporary teams, boundary management); and power, influence, and conflict.
4. Decision making: the normative model of individual decision making (bounded rationality, satisficing, shorts cuts and heuristics, cognitive biases) and group decision making (advantages, disadvantages).
5. Culture: identifying (artefacts, core values, underlying assumptions), performance models (strong culture theory, culture fit theory, adaptive culture theory).
6. Motivation and Rewards: reinforcement theory, motivators, needs theories (Maslow, Herzberg, McClelland, etc.), goal-setting, equity theory, and expectancy theory.

I enjoyed this course as well, especially since we got to apply a lot of the stuff we learnt both in our own syndicates, to all our cases, and in the organization that our syndicate was working with.

[Last updated: 12 May, 2007]