Curriculum

This course presents the fundamental concepts of micro and macroeconomics and integrates them from a managerial decision-making perspective. The first half of the course emphasizes applying microeconomic theory to decision-making to help achieve a firm’s objective – increasing profit. In contrast to traditional economics course, this course emphasizes practical implementation and not calculus to solve sophistical abstract problems. The focus in how Managerial Economics affects businesses, and the homework will apply economic concepts to a business you choose (either your business, or one you are potentially interested in learning more about). The second half of the course discusses macroeconomics and factors that affect the economy. What determines GDP, inflation and trade deficits? Lastly, we discuss how Macroeconomics affects Microeconomics and firm profits.

Leadership in these uncertain and volatile times is a primary challenge for all who seek success in business. Today’s business environment is increasingly characterized by complex questions without obvious or clear answers. Managers must now be leaders, whether they are managing just a few people or the entire enterprise. Traditionally taught analytical skills alone will not meet the challenge of our times; leading with integrity requires managers to understand numerous social and environmental challenges facing businesses along with the monetary challenges. Evaluation of your leadership style, and how ethical integrity can be incorporated into that style, will expand your impact as a leader and as a follower working with others.

The course focuses on formulating and implementing marketing management strategies and tactics, a task undertaken in most companies at the strategic business unit level. The marketing management process is important at all levels of the organization, regardless of the title applied to the activity. Typically, it is called corporate marketing, strategic marketing, or marketing management. For our purposes, they all involve essentially the same process, even though the actors and activities may differ. The course will provide you with a lens through which you may view the world as a marketer, relating marketing principles to consumer and business actions. You will learn to develop a marketing strategy and select the appropriate tactics to successfully implement it and deliver value to the target market.

In this course, students will gain a strong understanding of the financial statements issued by companies to external parties, such as shareholders and creditors. The course covers the fundamentals of accounting from recording economic events through the preparation of a company’s financial statements. In addition, the course examines the complexity of accounting policy choices and the financial statement impacts of those decisions. Students will also gain significant experience analyzing Form 10-K annual reports of publicly traded companies.

Every organization has to answer two extremely important questions: how do we acquire dollars, and what do we do with those dollars? This course addresses the different sources of acquiring dollars, identifies the costs associated with each source and the benefits associated with the use of each source, and looks at the decision regarding how much of each source to use. The course addresses performance measures to determine how well the dollars have been spent and used and the decision-making techniques behind the decisions of exactly to what purpose the organization’s dollars were spent and used. These are the financial decisions that any type of organization has to make with frequent ethical challenges in the context of an uncertain economic environment.

The goal of this course is to give you the tools and skills to develop and execute an effective strategy. You’ll learn how to (1) evaluate a strategy, including that of your current organization, (2) locate sources of potential competitive advantage using a perspective that encompasses the internal, external, and dynamic fit of your strategy and (3) identify and leverage strengths, as well as how to overcome organizational barriers to strategic implementation.

Management accounting is in transition, moving from a quantitative procedural focus to include a qualitative strategic focus that uses accounting to facilitate the organization’s success. Changes include a renewed focus on the customer, aggressive cost reduction, and increased use of information technologies, among others. Motivation for the changes in management accounting is driven by evolving business processes in response to increased competition, both global and domestic. The management accountant is no longer a reporter and analyzer of financial facts only but a business partner—developing the financial and nonfinancial information the organization needs to be successful. The concepts of management accounting are used in manufacturing and service organizations and are increasingly applied to government and not-for-profit organizations to help them succeed in their service missions and to be responsible to the citizens and funding agencies.

In this course, students will learn how the management accountant plays a strategic role in the organization, developing and presenting the information that is critical for the organization’s success. Students will use higher-order thinking to apply accounting information to the types of strategic decisions organizations make for long-term sustainability.

The political and legal risks confronting business are among the most serious and can affect corporate survival, as demonstrated by the scandals and crises of the past three decades. This course equips managers with the tools and perspectives to manage such enterprise risks, prevent conflicts from escalating into crises, and properly respond to legal challenges and political controversies when they do occur. In particular, this course provides a background and foundation in the fundamental concepts of law and public policy. It elevates a student’s ability to (1) analyze important legal questions and problems facing business, and (2) analyze trends and forces in public policy that affect business.

Making high quality business decisions is hard. Using data to make business decisions makes the process better. This course introduces students to a variety of techniques in analytics and statistics that facilitate data driven business decisions. Time will be spend identifying appropriate techniques to apply in various scenarios, applying in detail some of the quantitative techniques, and using analytic outputs to inform business decisions. Both technical skills and clear communication of results and decisions will be covered. Choosing proper techniques, technical work using Microsoft Excel, proper interpretation of results, and decision making are skills practiced in this course.

Data can help businesses better understand their customers, improve their advertising campaigns, personalize their content and improve their bottom lines. The advantages of data are many, but you can’t access these benefits without the proper data analytics tools and processes. While raw data has a lot of potential, you need data analytics to unlock the power to create value. This class will provide you with a basic introduction to the concepts, methods, models, tools, and abilities used in business data and analytics so that you will develop an appreciation not only for its capabilities to support and enhance business decisions, but also for the ability to use business data and analytics in your work. The principal content elements are:

We live in a complex, uncertain and diverse world. Leaders need to be skilled in navigating these challenges, especially when it comes to leading people and organizations. Effective leaders build and sustain employees’ knowledge, skills, commitment, creativity, and effort to create sustained competitive advantage. Ethical leaders build a collaborative culture, foster high performance and realize the benefits of a diverse workforce. This course focuses on the effective leadership of employees, every organization’s most critical resource.

Almost all business is impacted by global trends. This course will help students develop a global mindset and understand challenges and opportunities arising from doing business across national boundaries and cultures. Addressing such issues as diverse cultures, laws, languages, currencies and economic contexts, the course will help students make well-informed decisions giving due consideration to the local and global context in which a given business operates.

The MBA@Denver Capstone course will help you integrate your learning experiences while you have pursued your degree at Daniels. It is designed for you to draw from and apply the technical business, management and leadership competencies, skills and knowledge covered in this program to help a client solve a problem they are currently facing.

You will work as a team to conduct a project for a non-profit organization. Your project will begin with a discussion of your client organization’s issues and opportunities. Using this information, you and your client will jointly arrive at a scope of work and a contract for that work. Then you will conduct an organization assessment. Finally, you will develop a set of recommendations, which you will provide to the client in a presentation via ZOOM.

Students will learn how households, institutions, firms, and governments interact in financial markets to channel funds from savers to productive uses of capital and provide firms with opportunities to hedge certain risks. This comprehensive understanding of how markets function is essential for anyone with a finance or high-level management role. We will begin by identifying the key institutions in financial markets and how securities come into existence and subsequently trade. We will then learn to measure the risk and return of financial assets while identifying techniques to improve and assess the performance of investment portfolios. Finally, we will introduce derivatives and techniques to wisely hedge firm risks. Understanding how financial markets work is essential for anyone in a finance or high-level management role.

Developing skills for making sound corporate investment and financing decisions is crucial for any professional who wants to become indispensable for their organization. To successfully plan for a sound financial future, you need to how to manage growth, how to identify value-creating projects and how to effectively finance these projects.

This course integrates financial decision-making tools, techniques and theory in order to allow students to better understand and analyze corporate finance activities. The main objective of this course is that students can critically analyze corporate issues from a financial perspective so that they are able to provide financial analysis and financial planning inputs to support major corporate decisions. Students will acquire the financial analytical knowledge, skills and abilities required to deal with new problems that arise in the ever-changing business environment.

Specific topics will include cost of capital and capital structure, financial planning, business valuation, as well as an introduction to corporate events such as mergers and acquisitions or IPOs.

What is the value of a share of stock? Learning the equity valuation process provides a deeper understanding of financial markets and improved personal financial planning decisions. This course teaches students how to implement objective, unbiased valuations through an understanding of the valuation process in theory and how it is implemented in practice. Students will learn to apply valuation approaches that include discounted cash flow, price multiples, and newer approaches that are more useful in a knowledge-based economy. To choose the best approach for valuation, one needs to understand the key value drivers for a company and how investors use these drivers to calculate the intrinsic equity value. Students can maximize the value of their organization by improving these key value drivers and effectively benchmarking to competitors.

Business valuation is at the heart of intelligent decision-making for many areas of finance – corporate finance, investment banking, investment management, private equity, venture capital, personal financial planning, and financial litigation. It is no easy task, but a good understanding of valuation and skill in using valuation to guide business decisions are prerequisites for company success.

In this course, students will learn theoretical development, analytical tools and practical approaches to analyze and tackle business valuation issues at the core of the financial professions. The theoretical section of the course provides in-depth coverage of the financial theories and models essential to value businesses. The application section provides students with opportunities to apply the valuation principles and techniques to assess business value and develop strategies to create value in a real-world context.

Integrated Marketing Communication is a critical component of marketing strategy and is vital to any business’s success. Organizational, technological, and societal trends of the past few years have disrupted traditional marketing communications by necessitating digital delivery in addition to traditional strategies. It’s essential to integrate all marketing communication activities into one master plan. This course is based upon the notion that marketing communications include much more than just advertising. The course provides students with a foundation in the development and execution of communications strategies for any organization (large, small, public, or private). We’ll bring clarity to the current ecosystem of digital tools and promotional strategies through data-driven decision-making.

Supply chains are everywhere, from the local store to a large multinational electronics manufacturer operating halfway across the world. From cradle to grave, it is the supply chain management system that links all of the numerous stakeholders into one strategic plan for us as customers in markets. These systems link processes such as product design, sourcing, supply chain planning, manufacturing, fulfillment, and reuse. In today’s fast paced markets driven by globalization and technology, knowledgeable professionals in supply chain management are increasingly important for companies to achieve their business objectives. Some of the most successful manufacturers (e.g., Apple and Samsung) and retailers (e.g., Wal-Mart and Amazon) are winning as a result of their supply chain strategies. Especially as markets change rapidly, supply chain management professionals will be integral to a company’s success. The purpose of this course is to provide a student with a baseline of knowledge, skills, and abilities to succeed in the various functions of supply chain management at a managerial level of an organization.

Consumer insights are a driving force of change for organizations and markets. It is becoming increasingly clear that the development of novel offerings requires the contributions of multiple stakeholders, including customers. This course explores the collaborative processes that drives value creation and innovation. Students will learn how consumer insights can enable the development and enhancement of compelling value propositions. They will also utilize a design-thinking approach and work with different types of data sources in developing innovative solutions and designing consumption experiences.

How do leading organizations create compelling brands that inspire trust, build a sense of community, and fuel loyalty? As consumers find their digital voice, how are brands co-created by firms and users alike? What can brand managers do to insure brand equity over time?

In this course, you’ll learn the underlying principles and theories from brand authorities, then apply them to real-world client challenges. Join us as we learn and apply strategies and tactics to build, measure, and manage brand equity.

The integration of Impact + Profit is one of the biggest trends in the startup world– influencing socially-responsible products and driving cause-related branding, customer choice, and loyalty. Marketing for social impact is multifaceted and requires an understanding of how Impact + Profit is essential to social enterprises, B Corps, and nonprofits. Through this course students will develop themselves as purpose-driven professionals knowledgeable in the latest trends of story-driven marketing, conscious capitalism, and social psychology. This course builds upon students’ understanding of Design Thinking to think strategically about value creation as it relates to Impact + Profit. Upon completion of the course, students will understand the relationship between business and social good, as well as acquire the necessary knowledge and skills to design a marketing campaign specific to a social enterprise, B Corp or nonprofit. Prerequisites: MKTG 4100 Marketing Concepts and MKTG 4580 Insights to Innovation.

You are required to attend two immersion experiences. BUS 4620-X, held in a U.S. city, includes domestic experiences that include visits with business leaders on various topics, experiential learning and/or specific topic discussions led by qualified faculty.

You are required to attend two immersion experiences. BUS 4614-X, held in a non-U.S. city, includes international experiences that generally include visits with business leaders on various topics, experiential learning and/or specific topic discussions led by qualified faculty.

Have you ever heard the quote, “Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life?” This course is designed to help you align your purpose in life with your organization’s purpose (your own organization or an organization for which you work). There are multiple parts to bringing this alignment about which will comprise the foundation for this course: (1) (re)evaluating your purpose in life, building on what you have learned about your leadership style, ethical orientation, values and beliefs, etc. from your earlier courses; (2) developing an entrepreneurial mindset, useful for starting your own organization or a new venture within the organization in which you already work; (3) exploring the Triple Bottom Line perspective of business in society; and (4) applying the core concepts of systems thinking to identify potential business ideas that align with your purpose. The course will culminate with the creation of a business idea and plan that aligns your purpose with a compelling business purpose. The plan for this business idea may involve creating your own business/organization or proposing the idea within your current organization.

As a business person, you can be part of solving global health issues through creative, innovative and new business models. In this course, you will gain a foundational understanding of global health by exploring the practical and contextual issues that may affect health, with a goal of improving health for all.

Incorporates content from the latest research in the fields of neuroscience and emotional intelligence and their applications in leadership and managing change. Students develop highly relevant leadership skills, strategies and tactics to lead successfully.

Explore evidence-based well-being and how it relates to the individual as well as the workplace. Identify practical and accessible ways to enhance personal well-being as well as effective corporate strategies and programs. Topics include health and well-being as they relate to productivity, resilience, creativity, work-life balance, corporate culture and return on investment.

Despite our familiarity with the services of healthcare, the organizational structure of U.S. healthcare is an increasingly complex and tangled mess. The spectrum of healthcare services is broad and includes preventive, primary, acute and chronic care. The current state involves a dynamic interplay between the major institutions of higher education, government, suppliers, insurers and payers.

Health innovation and technology is a rapidly growing area that bridges the fields of business and health. In this course, you will explore the landscape and future of health-related technology as well as the relationship between development, marketing, implementation, branding, customer/patient impact and technology delivery. Topics include virtual health care, telehealth, medical devices, emerging technologies and more.

Explore and evaluate the latest thinking on leadership and change, developing the strategies necessary to create teams with high levels of change capacity, motivate followers and overcome resistance to change, and achieve both incremental and transformative change.

Learn how to hire, understand, inspire, coach, mentor and sponsor a diverse and inclusive team. Students will explore storytelling—one of the hottest topics in leadership—and create a personal development plan to incorporate course elements into strong leadership.

Strategy is integral to a successful organization. But without strong execution, even a well-defined strategy can fall apart. Executive teams/leaders that combine actionable strategy with operational depth are the ones most likely to stay the course and deliver long-standing results. They understand the need to align strategy and operations to deliver on their objectives.

After taking courses on Strategic Management, Leadership, Leading Change, Culture, etc., you too understand the need for aligning strategy and operations, yet, in practice it’s often more difficult to do. Through this course, students will hone their skills by developing and using practical tools to deal with shifts and changes along their strategic journeys. This course will allow you to put theory into action.