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Stanford MBA Program

Curriculum—First Year

AUTUMN
General Management Perspectives
Accounting Information
Critical Analytical Thinking
Ethics In Management*
Global Context of Management
Managerial Finance
Managing Groups & Teams
Organizational Behavior
Strategic Leadership
Individual Assessment
Faculty Advising (continues throughout school year)
WINTER/SPRING
General Management Foundations
Data Analysis & Decision Making
Finance
Financial Accounting
Human Resources
Information Technology
Managerial Accounting
Marketing
Microeconomics
Modeling for Optimization & Decision Support (MODS)
Non-Market Strategy
Operations
Required International Experience
Faculty Advising (continues throughout school year)

*Taught in winter quarter

First Year: Rigorous and Engaging

Your time at Stanford begins with a unifying academic experience to build community within your class and to give you a shared base for approaching general management problems.

Every student in your class will study General Management Perspectives, comprising seven required courses in your first quarter and one required course in your second quarter.

The goal of this coursework is to give you insight into the perspective of a senior manager and leader.

For most of the remainder of your first year, and in some cases into your second year, you will complete your General Management Foundations requirements.

In Foundations, you will study eleven disciplines that provide the base for your general management education.

Collectively, the Foundations courses will provide you with foundations and tools for further study (e.g., Microeconomics or Modeling), and offer you insight into the key functions of management (e.g., Marketing or Operations).

General Management Perspectives

Through the Perspectives experience, your faculty advisor will get to know you and your experiences, abilities, and aspirations.

He or she will guide you in choosing the most challenging course of study to maximize your personal, intellectual, and professional development. You begin to shape your future here.

  • Accounting Information
    This course gives you perspective on key accounting concepts and role of accounting in markets and firms. You will learn the structure of financial statements, including balance sheets and income statements, and the accrual basis of accounting. In addition, you will cover the role of accounting numbers in providing information to investors and managers. Finally, you will assess the value created by a business or business segment, and the distinction between economic and accounting profitability.
  • Critical Analytical Thinking
    Critical Analytical Thinking (CAT) will address issues that transcend any single discipline or function of management. In 14-16 person sections, you will analyze, write about, and debate fundamental issues, questions, and phenomena that arise in many forms in management. You will explore these critical issues broadly, as well as hone your analytic and persuasive skills. CAT will enhance your ability to identify critical questions when exploring a new business issue, to parse issues, to develop reasoned positions, and to make compelling arguments. CAT also will help you explore the principles and ideals that you will seek to uphold as a leader.
  • Ethics in Management
    In the winter quarter, you will take a course on ethical analysis. This course emphasizes frameworks for conducting ethical analysis (on what basis can you say that a course of action is or is not ethical), the analysis of ethical dilemmas (how do you think about situations in which different ethical precepts collide), and how to deal on a day-to-day basis with the practical issues of ethical behavior in organizations.
  • The Global Context of Management
    The objectives of this course are twofold: to help develop your understanding of the cultural, economic, financial, and political forces that drive the global marketplace and individual markets within the broader market, and to provide you with a framework for, and experience in, learning quickly about specific markets. You will understand the important questions to ask and answer when contemplating entering or allying in a new market.
  • Managerial Finance
    The aim of this course is to enable you to apply the fundamental ideas of financial economics to problems in the area of corporate finance. You will gain an overview of valuation principles, and how financial decisions – capital structure, dividend policy, investments, etc. – can affect valuation, learn basic principles of corporate finance from the perspective of a financial manager, and analyze many of the important financial decisions made within firms and other institutions.
  • Managing Groups and Teams
    This course introduces you to the structures and processes that affect group performance and highlights some of the common pitfalls associated with working in teams. Topics include team culture, fostering creativity and coordination, making group decisions, and dealing with a variety of personalities. You will participate in a number of group exercises to illustrate principles of teamwork and to give you practice not only diagnosing team problems but also taking action to improve total team performance.
  • Organizational Behavior
    Building on the discipline of social psychology, this course helps you cultivate mindsets and build skills to understand the ways in which organizations and their members affect one another. You will learn frameworks for diagnosing and resolving problems in organizational settings. The course relates theory and research to organizational problems by reviewing basic concepts such as individual motivation and behavior; decision making; interpersonal communication and influence; small group behavior; and dyadic, individual, and inter-group conflict and cooperation.
  • Strategic Leadership
    This course examines fundamental issues of general management and leadership within an organization. You will learn about setting an organization’s strategic direction, aligning structure to implement strategy, and leading individuals within the firm. You will master concepts, frameworks, and tools to assess an industry and a firm’s competitive environment, and to craft alternatives. You will study the interplay among formal structure, informal networks, and culture in shaping organizational performance. By integrating leadership theory, the lessons of practical application, and your own experience, you will develop skills and capabilities essential to leading others. And you’ll gain a better understanding of your own leadership preferences, strengths, and weaknesses.

General Management Foundations

As you near completion of your first quarter, you and your faculty advisor (who is also your Critical Analytical Thinking instructor) will formulate a personalized plan for your General Management Foundations courses, calibrated to your background and interests.

For each Foundations discipline, you will have at least three course options. Some options will vary according to the level of the course, to challenge you regardless of your prior background. Other options will vary in the learning methodology or topical material, to help you shape your experience and future.

  • Data Analysis and Decision Making
    General managers require a sophisticated understanding of what you can (and cannot) infer from data, and how to use those inferences to make good decisions. Courses on Data Analysis and Decision Making provide you with analytical techniques for making smart decisions. If you have limited prior background, the base-level course covers topics such as probability theory and decision analysis (including decision trees, decision criteria, the value of information, and simulation techniques) and statistical methods for interpreting and analyzing data (including sampling concepts, regression analysis, and hypothesis testing). If you have more extensive background and/or quantitative exposure, you can select courses that cover topics such as advanced regression and other statistical methods. These choices enable you to leverage your background by applying statistical techniques to specific applied topics.
  • Finance
    Building from the fall-quarter course in Managerial Finance, you have two basic paths: you can learn more about investments and financial markets or you can hone your skills in the use of financial markets by individual corporations. Advanced courses allow students with more extensive background and experience in finance to extend your knowledge of financial markets and corporate finance.
  • Financial Accounting
    Business leaders must read, understand, and use corporate financial statements. The base-level options in this area orient you to using financial accounting data (rather than preparing such data) and emphasize the reconstruction and interpretation of economic events from published accounting reports. If you have the requisite background, advanced options allow you to pursue the nuances of global financial reporting.
  • Human Resources (HR)
    We will provide you with a framework for understanding and thinking strategically about employment relations and the management of human resources in organizations. This area draws on insights from the social sciences to explore how employment relations are influenced by cultural, economic, legal, psychological, and social forces. The base-level option emphasizes four fundamental topics: (1) the selection of employees; (2) the development of their skills (human capital); (3) the use of pay to motivate workers, and other types of incentives; and (4) the organization of the workforce into teams, hierarchies, and so forth. Options allow you to specialize in HR practices for high-skill “knowledge” workers or how HR practices vary across the globe.
  • Information Technology (IT)
    Knowledge of technology – computing, networks, software applications, etc. – is a prerequisite for a successful manager. In this area, you will learn the implications of technology for managers and organizations. A meaningful course that focuses on particular technologies is difficult because rapid changes in any technology quickly render today's lessons obsolete. Therefore, you will learn fundamentals and trends, rather than a snapshot of the current status of different technologies. The base-level course in IT offers you a broad survey of technology, while more specialized and advanced options include courses on the uses of IT in manufacturing supply chains, electronic exchanges, and electronic commerce.
  • Managerial Accounting
    To evaluate business strategies and outcomes, you need to understand the many ways that firms account for, control, manage, and utilize costs. In this area, you'll learn about alternative costing methods, and how the resulting cost information can be used for decision-making. One of the base-level options emphasizes performance measurement and executive compensation. Another emphasizes strategic cost management and control. If you already understand cost accounting and alternative methods for determining the cost and profitability of different products, and you have career interests in either management consulting or general financial management, an advanced option emphasizes frameworks for “value-based” management.
  • Marketing
    These courses introduce you to the substantive and procedural aspects of marketing management. You'll learn about analyzing the needs and wants of potential customers, and creating and delivering goods and services profitably. Beyond the base-level option, one alternative uses learning-by-doing (through simulations), with an emphasis on business-to-business marketing; a more advanced option stresses the use of advanced statistical techniques in the practice of marketing.
  • Microeconomics
    The discipline of microeconomics is the foundation of much of what you study in business school, as well as being a tool of analysis of specific market and non-market interactions. The base-level course provides you with the essential frameworks and concepts to study market equilibrium, firm and consumer behavior, and competitive interactions through the lens of microeconomics. More advanced options spend less time on the basics and instead apply those basics to specific contexts, such as auctions, price discrimination, and business strategy. A very advanced option, for students with extensive background, teaches you to analyze difficult microeconomic issues empirically.
  • Modeling for Optimization & Decision Support (MODS)
    Disciplined thought is often based on analytical models: simplified, quantitative depictions of a complex reality that allow you to focus your attention on a few key issues. Management runs on numbers and models. Whatever your current level of modeling skills, improving those skills is a key to success. Even if you never construct models yourself, as a manager you will be a consumer of them; to be an intelligent consumer, you must know from experience the strengths and weaknesses of quantitative models. The base-level course focuses on models built using spreadsheets and, in particular, concentrates on optimization of spreadsheet models. A more advanced option focuses on the use of discrete event simulation to model phenomena subject to random influences. And if you have very strong modeling skills, two options explore the use of quantitative models in specific contexts such as models' use in revenue and yield management, as practiced by, for example, the civilian airline industry.
  • Non-Market Strategy
    Markets and the business environment are increasingly interrelated; conversely, the profit-maximizing activities of firms often give rise to issues that involve governments and the public. As a business leader, you will need to participate in complex decision-making involving the legal, political, and social environments of business. This area considers the strategic interactions of firms with important constituents, organizations, and institutions outside of markets. Beyond the base-level course, an extended option of the course uses analytical models to enhance your understanding of political institutions, while a second alternative concentrates on business law.
  • Operations
    This area addresses basic managerial issues arising in the operations of both manufacturing and service industries. You will learn about the problems and issues confronting operations managers and gain language, conceptual models, and analytical techniques that are broadly applicable in confronting such problems. The base-level course gives a broad introduction to operations. If you have some background in the subject, you can elect a course that is focused on business process design. If you have a very strong background, you may choose an alternative that is focused on the latest developments in global manufacturing.