Programme Overview

Course Description:

This course focuses on the nature and scope of using accounting information for economic decision making. The first half of the course focuses on financial reporting. The emphases are on the nature of accounting information and its uses and limitations. While the focus of the course is on the users' perspective, it is essential that the user understands the building blocks of accounting, the process by which the information is generated and the incentives underlying the preparation of the accounting information. A proper understanding of the accounting process would enable the user to understand the limitations of the accounting information, and to ask the appropriate questions when using the information. 

In the second half of the course, we seek to understand how accounting information is used in planning, costing, decision making, and management control. The organizational architecture will be used as the organizing framework. The major topics covered include activity-based costing and management, tools for decision making such as cost-volume-profit (CVP) analysis, and performance evaluation and measurement including a discussion on sustainability issues and measurement of these objectives. 

Quantitative skills are important to measure and quantify the financial effects of business strategies. 

Thus, good financial analysis of business issues is critical to improve business decisions. 

Course Description:

This course introduces to the participants the key concepts of analytics, which are of growing importance within the modern organization. Participants will be introduced to the process and tools relating to business analytics. Using real-life case studies, participants will be given the opportunity to have hands-on experience on building analytical models that will guide decision marking for common business problems such as profit and revenue forecast, customer segmentation, and consumer trend analysis.

This course systematically introduces the process of developing a strong business analytic case starting from the exploration of the data context to finally obtaining the explanatory or predictive results. The participants will learn how to ask the right questions and how to draw inferences from the data by using the appropriate statical and data mining tools.

Overall, the course will enable participants to approach business problems data-analytically, envision business analytics opportunities in organizations, and follow up on ideas or opportunities that present themselves.

Course Description: 

This course is an intensive introduction to the principles and practice of financial management that managers should understand. The course orientation will be from practitioners’ point of view to make the content applicable to daily business decisions. The course will be taught through lectures, class discussion and case studies. Topics to cover include: 

1. Time value of money and its business applications 
2. The importance of cashflows and how to calculate cashflows 
3. Capital budgeting decision 
4. Cost of capital usage in financial strategy and how to estimate it 
5. Financial planning 
6. Management of short-term assets and liabilities 

Course Description:

If I had my way, this course would be re-titled “Revolutionary Marketing in the Age of Turbulence, Hyper-competition, and Disruption”, because the environment in which businesses operate today is businesses (and even entire industries) face. In such an environment, marketing practices need to be nothing short of revolutionary. And in these extraordinary times, marketing can (and should) no longer be taught in a traditional manner. Gone are the days when companies could simply rely on efficient manufacturing operations to mass-produce products and on predictable processes to mass-advertise and distribute those products. Gone are the days when marketing was the job of a department whose executives could simply examine broad customer segments within well-defined product markets using structured survey reports. And gone are the days when the only “customers ”; brand owners needed to deal with and worry about were the distributors and resellers who did most of the nitty-gritty work of serving the end consumers and/or end users. Marketing today is much less predictable, much more cross-functional (and, indeed, much more a direct responsibility of the CEO), and much more fundamentally about, interacting and connecting with the end consumers and users.

But at the same time, marketing today is more important, exciting, and fun!

This course will approach the study of marketing from highly contemporary perspectives. Course activities will include discussions of marketing issues that have emerged “just yesterday” and marketing events that have occurred “this morning”. We will discuss the latest marketing challenges that companies face, and many examples of successful and unsuccessful marketing strategies, particularly of companies/brands in Asia. There will also be a “live” project sponsored by a company that will offer a unique opportunity for participants to work on solving a live marketing problem. In addition, as part of the “Marketing 2022 Case Study” series, we will examine companies’ marketing strategies from a future-oriented perspective. Participants, whether they are already experienced marketing professionals or are complete novices at marketing, can look forward to gaining profound insight into the role of marketing in today’s business organizations as well as practical knowledge of how to successfully lead the marketing function of a progressive, thriving, and growth-oriented business.

Course Description:

On August 20, 2021, email from McKinsey & Company titled Planting the seeds of progress with stakeholder capitalism, refers to a statement issued two years ago by the Busines Roundtable, a non-profit lobbyist association based in Washington, D.C. whose members are chief executive officers of major United State companies. The statement on the Purpose of a Corporation, is a commitment signed by 181 CEOs to lead their companies for the benefit of all stakeholders.

In the wake of the global pandemic and societal outcry for racial justice, consumers, employees, and society at large are expecting more from organizations than ever.

On Sep 14, 2021, renowned academician Aswath Damodaran, Professor of Finance at the Stern School of Business at New York University said that the trend of ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) investing that has caught on rapidly around the world would end up costing companies and investors dearly.

"I believe ESG is not just a mistake that will cost companies and investors money, while making the world worse off. It created more harm than good for society."

What do you think? What is ethics? What are standards of corporate governance?

Corporate Governance & Ethics (CG&E) aims to further stimulate the mindset of managers and leaders to balance the key, often conflicting priorities faced in leadership, in business, government and/or the not-for-profit work environment. The aim is to help develop and/or strengthen an effective governance structure to allow the organization to meet increasingly challenging goals aligned with different stakeholders' sometimes conflicting needs. We will discuss pertinent and topical issues to provoke participants to think about what accountability and responsible risk-taking really mean and foster an understanding of incorporating and embedding ethical practices in your strategy.

We will cover Ethical Leadership; Corporate Social Responsibility; Anti-Bribery & Corruption and Corporate Governance.

Course Description:

The aim of this course is to determine and understand forces impacting the global financial market. It treats central banking policy as a major force in shaping capital movements and market dynamics. Some of the questions the course will attempt to answer are: How do central banking policies impact the global financial market? What are key economic and market indicators that can help us determine the direction of the financial market. Participants interested in a career in of asset and wealth management, capital markets and trading should take this course.

Course Description:

Operations is the core of the business that is concerned with the design, operation and improvement of systems concerned with the production of goods and services. Operations account for a significant percentage of the value added and cost in any business. Therefore, even a small advantage in operations can make the difference between winners and losers in a competitive marketplace.

Content Description:

This course focuses on the strategic thinking process that helps companies achieve sustained high performance. It includes a continual and integrative process of "making sense" of internal and external situations, "making choices" to capture value at the corporate and business levels, "making it happen" to achieve the desired future status of the company, and "making revisions" to adapt to unexpected situations. It thus deals with the essential issues for short and long-term competitive positions and the primary responsibility of senior decision-makers in a company.

The course begins with a fundamental strategic question of what it takes to build a sustained high-performance organization. A review of classic studies on the subject leads to the first task of "sensing strategic situations", which introduces tools to analyse external and internal situations facing a company. While the external analysis helps managers to understand the trends in macro environments, competitive situations and competitors' behaviours, the internal analysis tries to identify and develop the source of core competences and sustained advantages. The course then moves to the task of "making strategic choices" at the business and corporate levels that are to secure competitive advantages in a specific market and to expand the boundary of the firm for sustained long-term growth, respectively. The next topic addresses strategy implementation, involving the tasks of "making it happen" and "making revisions". This subject discusses the content of strategy execution, organizational structure, and strategic transformation. The course concludes by discussing how to manage sustained firm growth in emerging markets that are much different from the developed markets in institutional settings, market dynamics, and consumer behaviours.

• Corporate purpose and high-performance organizations
• Industry and competitive analysis

Course Description:

The course is organised and presented from the perspective of managerial end users of IT. It is designed to prepare future business executives for proactive leadership roles and responsibilities in a world which is being constantly challenged and shaped by IT and other digital technologies. 

The course focuses on concepts and applications rather than on specific technologies, techniques, or methodologies. The emphasis is on the development of enabling frameworks and conceptual models for better understanding of the deployment of IT and the Internet. The course makes liberal use of examples, case studies and other illustrations to provide examples of best practices and success stories. In this regard, the participants, who come from diverse backgrounds and disciplines, are encouraged to share their own experiences and views. 

Course Description: 

Corporate Sustainability deals with strategies, activities, processes and structures that can help organizations sustain themselves as well as their people, natural resources and communities for the long run. 

The negative impact created on the society and environment by industrial operations has resulted in increasing pressures from NGOs, civil society, and other stakeholders on corporations to adopt more sustainable and socially responsible practices in all their activities - right from sourcing to distribution, and to how the products and packaging is handled at the end of a use cycle. Corporate sustainability and responsibility have therefore become a key concern for the board members, shareholders as well as market regulators. Sustainability reporting is now a requirement in many countries, including Singapore. 

Though climate change is one of the biggest challenges facing humankind, the United Nations in consultation with various stakeholders have developed 17 Sustainable development goals that firms are encouraged to pursue. A firm can mitigate the negative impact of its operations on the environment and the community through innovation and by adoption of appropriate technologies and methodologies. 

Course Description:

Colonization and annexation of other states through military conquests were used historically to extend a nation’s theatre of influence, and to extract maximum benefits from its subsequent vassal states. Today, a country can exert its influence on other nation states through various methods beyond the conventional military option. This, in essence, is what geopolitics is all about, and it has tremendous implications on the relations among nation states as well as on how business corporations operate, especially in this highly inter-connected world.

The conventional “within-the-box” decision-making for a company is no longer tenable nor sustainable. With the fast changing and increased influence of politics into business (e.g. the Huawei saga, the blacklisting of many Chinese high-technology companies by the US government, the formation of new blocs like AUKUS, increased tension in South China Sea, etc.), companies that have international operations have realized that they need to be aware of the mega trends and geopolitical factors that can impact their corporate strategies. The need and urgency to take a holistic and long- term view, especially to factor in political “interventions” by various foreign governments, is now a reality that business corporations must learn to face. The increased conflict between China and the US is a very illustrative example. Started as a trade conflict between the two countries, it has escalated to other areas of conflicts, and a new cold war is fast developing. Under President Joe Biden, the US have lobbied aggressively Western countries like Britain, Australia, and Canada, and even Asian countries like Japan and India, into their “fight” against China. All these, inevitably, have boiled down to geopolitical wars between these Western allies against China, and the latter has also stepped up its campaigns and lobbies against the Western world.

This half-module course will cover real-life and current geopolitical issues of the day, and how they impact business policy. As China and US are the two major and most significant players that will influence the future of the world, including how they are extending their respective global influence, a significant portion of this course will pivot towards addressing issues between these two super-powers. The course will conclude with some pointers on how companies could respond to the various geopolitical challenges.

The contents of the course will include, but not limited to the following topics:

1. Understanding geopolitics and the impact on business operations
2. Understanding the different kinds of geopolitical risks and how to manage them
3. Developing effective business policies via insightful geopolitical world
4. Assessing the changing trends and landscape in the geopolitical world
5. Analysis and implications of the China-US conflict and their impact on the rest of the world and business operations
6. Understanding the tools/vehicles that can be used for geopolitics
7. Develop a holistic and long-term perspective of the symbiotic relationship between business and geopolitics

As part of the learning process, each group of participants will be given the opportunity to "deep-dive" into specific geopolitical issues/topics that affect business operations and will present their findings in allocated class discussions/presentations during the course. This will form a very rich and insightful learning experience for all participants.

Course Description:

Change is the only constant in our uncertain and volatile global environment. Successful organizations skilfully, initiate, embrace, and crystalize the learning that comes from change. The result is competitive advantage that can be sustained from the short to long term. This course is designed for aspiring change agents: People who lead, manage, and facilitate the change process as decision makers, managers, and consultants. We will adopt a mix of business case experience and theoretical frameworks to understand how businesses succeed or fail in initiating, navigating, and sustaining change. We will analyse both regional and international business contexts and the human, systemic, economic, and environmental forces that both necessitate and impede the change process within them. Our journey will take us into the minds of leaders of some of the world’s most prominent and recognized organizations, where we will examine their cultures, systems, decision, and psychology at work. In-class exercises will expose individual mindsets and approaches to managing change, to improve self-awareness of the type of change agents we can be. Participants will be challenged to analyse change as a complex multi-faceted phenomenon, learning to consider issues related to (a) recognizing the need for change; (b) targeting what needs to be changed; (c) dealing with people issues related to change; (d) planning, implementing, and evaluating change; and (e) sustaining change.

Course Description: 

The objective of this course is to study corporate mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and restructurings and the strategic, valuation, financial, governance and other issues related to these activities. The course is case study based. The cases to be discussed in the course include those involving mergers and acquisitions, leveraged buyouts/management buyouts, divestitures, spin offs and privatisations.

Course Description: 

The course will examine the rights and obligations of the board directors in a corporation and the roles that they play in the corporate decision-making process. We discuss board composition, duties and the decision-making powers of the board as well as the power-sharing relationship between the board, shareholders, and senior management. We also look at the key concerns and rights of shareholders and how this may impact corporate decision-making. The final segment of the course will highlight issues that may be peculiar to listed corporations such as corporate disclosure rules and securities offences. 

Course Description:

This course is designed to help participants develop strong conceptual foundations for understanding design thinking and identifying opportunities in the latest technologies such as Blockchain and AI. It is important to recognize the different types of technology innovations and the role that they play in organizations and society. The latest technologies bring about many opportunities for firms. Recognizing business opportunities and learning to leverage such technologies are important for today's managers.

Course Description:

With the growing threats of technological disruption, the race for digital transformation has begun. However, many organizations are struggling to develop an effective approach to realize the value of their digital transformation efforts. Executives have diverse perspectives as to what “going digital” really means. 74% of respondents in a Forrester survey feel that their companies do not fully understand the potential of digital to change value creation. How do you reimagine the future to craft the digital business strategy? How do you drive digital transformation to get there?

This course seeks to deepen the understanding on various aspects of digital transformation. We will consolidate the state of digital transformation landscape and explore new opportunities and threats arising from emerging new technologies. We will also discuss the implications for business strategies and organizational transformation. Through discussion of actual cases of digital transformation, the salient features of these strategies are explicated. Issues such as organizational structuring for digital transformation, building of digital capabilities, cultivation of digital culture, and the measurement of digital value creation are also addressed. Executives need to realize that successful digital transformation requires more than the pursuit of the latest technological innovation.

This course thus aims to deepen the understanding on digital transformation and unpack its variation under different contexts of technological disruption. Executives should develop a good appreciation that digital transformation requires much more than the pursuit of the latest technological innovation, and gain new insights on how they can embark on the digital transformation journey to begin building a more agile enterprise to be future-ready.