MBA Core Courses

This course helps students understand how business decisions affect and reflect society. Because the decisions of managers not only influence but are also influenced by public policy concerns and moral issues, students learn how to integrate economic, social, legal and regulatory, and moral considerations in decision making. Topics include contracts, agency agreements, partnerships, corporations, the role of law in society, business regulations and antitrust policy in the global environment, and ethical and social values in different cultures, and employment and labor relations

This course provides students with the knowledge of typical personnel management decision faced by managers, including job analysis, selection development, disciplinary actions, appraisal and compensation issues, and global human resource issues.

The course focuses on the use of accounting information in reporting managerial performance and making business decisions. The course covers the preparation and use of managerial accounting information for use in planning, budgeting, control, break-even analysis and pricing, including the impact of taxes. Completion of the course will enhance the student’s ability to understand managerial accounting reports and use this information in making decisions.

The focus of this course is on the application of quantitative analysis techniques for strategic business decision making. Topics will include probability and descriptive statistics, survey construction, project management tools, forecasting methods and statistical process control. These quantitative decision support techniques assist managerial decision making in the world of business, including applications to finance, marketing, engineering, manufacturing, quality, service, and human resources problems.

This course examines the behavior of individuals and groups in organizations, focusing on the interaction of human, technological, and structural factors that shape organizational effectiveness. Students explore key theories of communication, motivation, decision making, and organizational design, along with reward systems and approaches such as employee motivational programs, participative management, and cooperative decision making that aim to improve performance and efficiency. Building on these foundations, the course develops students’ knowledge and skills in teamwork and leadership. It provides a critical review of major concepts, models, theories, and practitioner approaches to leadership, with emphasis on translating theory into practice in complex organizational environments. Illustrations and applications of leadership principles are reinforced through experiential exercises and skill-development activities.

This course examines the microeconomic environment of business and its impact on management planning and decision making. It focuses on how individual decision-makers—consumers, firms, and other economic agents—behave and interact in markets. Students explore core microeconomic principles, including supply and demand, market structures, pricing, production decisions, and resource allocation. Emphasis is placed on applying these concepts to managerial decision-making in domestic business contexts. By the end of the course, students will gain a solid understanding of the main principles of microeconomics and their practical relevance to business strategy and operations.

Addressing the culture, principles, and basic techniques of project management, this course provides a comprehensive overview of project management. This course develops a foundation of concepts and solutions that supports the planning, scheduling, controlling, resource allocation, and performance measurement activities required for successful completion of a project. Tools and concepts such as project charter, scope statement, work breakdown structure, project estimating, and scheduling methodologies are studied.

This course is designed to help future business leaders across all functional areas appreciate and understand the rules and regulations, processes and procedures, and significance of financial accounting statements and reports. The course initially demonstrates the accounting process and resulting generation of financial statements. Building on these core accounting concepts, the course emphasizes the understanding of financial statements and the analysis of these financial statements including common size analysis and ratio analysis. In addition to text-oriented materials, the classes also include cases so that students can discuss applications of basic concepts and actual financial reports.

The goal of the course is to learn how a corporate manager can evaluate prospective investments and projects and make operational and financial decisions. This involves two major parts. Discounted cash flow analysis, introduces concepts and techniques necessary to evaluate cash flows of securities or projects. Sample topics include time value of money, stock and bond valuation, and interest rates. The second part focuses on the relation between risk and return. Sample topics cover concepts of risk, an introduction to portfolio choice, asset pricing models, equity valuation, and market efficiency.

This course is designed to provide students with a systematic approach for making marketing decisions and to give students practice in the analysis, design, implementation, and control of marketing strategies. Topics include how individual and organizational consumers make decisions, segmenting markets, positioning the firm's offering, effective marketing research, new product development, pricing strategies, communicating with consumers, estimating advertising's effectiveness, and managing relationships with sales force and distribution partners. The course also studies how firms must coordinate these different elements of the marketing mix to ensure that all marketing activities collectively forge a coherent strategy.

This course examines how contemporary organizations leverage information systems and artificial intelligence to achieve competitive advantage in national and international markets. Students explore the foundational principles of information technology—including hardware and software components, database technologies, telecommunications and networking, e-commerce and e-business, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and Decision Support Systems (DSS)—while placing particular emphasis on the strategic integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI).The course covers modern AI applications in business, such as machine learning, generative AI, intelligent automation, predictive analytics, and AI-enhanced decision support. Topics also include systems development and implementation in AI-driven environments, as well as the ethical, societal, and organizational implications of deploying AI and advanced information systems. By the end of the course, students will understand how to align information systems and AI capabilities with organizational strategy to drive innovation, efficiency, and sustainable competitive advantage.

This penultimate course focuses on the perspective and skills of the general manager. Its purpose is to provide practice in diagnosing and identifying realistic solutions to complex strategic and organizational problems. The course builds on previous coursework by providing an opportunity to integrate various functional areas and by providing a total business perspective. Since the focus is on pragmatic, action-oriented general management skills, the course will be taught primarily through the case method and will require both written analyses and case presentations.

In this capstone course, students will individually prepare a thesis which requires preparation of a case study and analysis report based on their company. The case study will focus on a description of events in the company surrounding a specific decision made by the firm. Writing the case will allow the student to explore the situation in depth, looking at such issues as linkages and causality. The analysis report will provide an analysis of the key issues, recommendations and relevant theoretical linkages. Copies of completed cases and analysis notes would be maintained by AUIS for faculty consideration for adoption in subsequent offerings of their courses. Top ranked cases may be submitted to case conferences such as the North American Case Research Association’s (NACRA) annual meeting or for publication in case journals such as the Case Research Journal or the Business Case Journal.