Master's of Business Administration (MBA) Program Outline

This non-credit orientation is a foundation-building experience that introduces and refreshes the skills necessary for success in your Master's Degree Program. You'll learn how to navigate ProQuest, Ashworth College's online library, and review the distinguishing characteristics of academic journals and other publications. Internet research skills are polished enabling you to identify credible and unbiased Web sites for your research. Emphasis is placed on submission requirements, project structures, and writing formats used throughout your coursework, and APA writing style. The final portion of this course provides you the opportunity to research and explore the various career fields in the world of Business Administration.

Plan for increased productivity. Learn about the organization, its structure, and its relationship to the economic, political, and social environments surrounding it. Examine theories and guidelines for dealing with geopolitical events, consumer trends, and new developments in information technology. You'll study a model of strategic management using the "strategic audit" as an approach to addressing complex organization-wide issues.

Discover how marketing serves as a foundation for making critical decisions related to identifying customers, delineating which needs to satisfy, developing products and services that satisfy these needs, setting prices, using appropriate communications, staging sales promotions, managing the sales force, selecting channels of distribution, maintaining funding and coordinating partnerships. Concepts presented are directed to the marketplace realities of the 21st century, including global marketing.

Integrate accounting data into your decision-making process. Managerial accounting is an essential tool that enhances managers' abilities to make sound decisions. You'll examine concepts and procedures of managerial accounting from the user's viewpoint, how they are typically applied in real-world situations, and see the role they play in improving the decision-making process within all types of organizations. Also discussed are issues in cost basics, cost management systems, planning and control, and product costing.

Develop your leadership potential. Discover the qualities, talents, and vision that leaders need to survive and grow in a changing world. You'll examine how today's theories of leadership and motivation have evolved, and how leadership concepts and motivational techniques are applied in a wide variety of business environments. Case studies reveal how executives and other decision makers lead, motivate and succeed.

Link human resource activities to business strategies. Examine specific management challenges faced by actual firms and the role of human resources. Learn about recruitment, employment planning and forecasting, testing, interviewing, training, organizing teams, appraising performance, compensation, financial incentives, benefits, labor relations, collective bargaining and more.

Use financial data to your advantage. Learn what financial disclosures contain and how they effect management decision-making, plus the principles and economic factors behind publicly reported disclosures, their limitations and constraints, and how to analyze them. You'll examine research methods and how they help you convert raw data into useful information that influences decisions about financial performance, wealth creation and economic valuation.

An in-depth view of the impact of public interest and government regulation on business activities. Emphasis is placed on the legal ramifications of corporate governance, citing court cases and judicial decisions that reveal the law's interface with business actions. Thought-provoking examples further demonstrate the law's broad influence on the day-to-day decisions involved in business operations and management.

This course will spark your interest in starting a new endeavor by introducing you to the basic tools and processes of launching a new venture. Begin with the start-up phase and the entrepreneurial mindset … establishing a vision … and evaluating industries. Then, conduct a feasibility analysis; analyze the risks and benefits; and form strategic alliances. Next, develop a business plan; determine the most effective legal form of business; form a personnel team; devise a marketing strategy; and prepare a complete set of financials. Then, plan for growth and the inevitable operational changes.

Learn the requirements and challenges of doing business in other countries. A thorough review and analysis of international business and globalization that reveals the effects companies have on the economy, politics, laws, and cultures of other countries. Find out what's necessary to establish an international business, and survive competition in situations where the rules are radically changing.

Organize teams for achievement. Investigate the theory and practice of project management, culminating in the analysis of real-world examples taken from manufacturing, service, and construction businesses. Learn how to organize and manage effective project teams... how to document and communicate project development within and outside the team... and how to integrate people and technology successfully.

Create a strong corporate and personal value system. Learn ethical theory, principles, and language, and how each applies to managerial decision making. Analyze how a business establishes, maintains, and lives by its ethical foundation. Assess the traits of a company and how they affect employees, investors, and consumers. Create a business ethics manual for a new business.

Use your business skills and knowledge in thought-provoking case studies. You'll begin by learning the fundamentals of economics—the study of the allocation of resources to satisfy both needs and wants. Then, you'll analyze case studies on a variety of businesses from a small company to an entire industry - set in the environments of local, national, and global economies. Conclude with a Capstone Project and Exam.