International Business
Master of Business (MBA)

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.

In this course you'll probe the psyche of consumers worldwide. Go beyond the 'act of buying' by examining consumers' diverse attitudes and personalities and the experiences of buyers and owners. Find out how products, services and consumption activities contribute to the broader society. Discover how consumers as individuals, as decision-makers and as members of subcultures behave, develop opinions, act and react; and use this knowledge to formulate workable marketing strategies.

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.

Marketing globally presents exciting challenges due to its reliance on the marketing environment variances of foreign countries. This course focuses on the cultural dimensions that directly impact key marketing decisions. Theoretical foundations of market segmentation, competition and positioning are complemented with a close look at export options; licensing; research methods; emerging markets; global product and service standardization; and global pricing, distribution, advertising and e-commerce issues.

Stay competitive through internationalization. Globalization has challenged the competitive advantage of organizations, demanding the transfer of know-how not only from the parent company to the developing world, but among subsidiaries in an international network. This course establishes this premise and examines how human resource managers can respond to global challenges in socially responsible ways and develop innovative leaders for tomorrow.

A close, in-depth exploration of practical strategies for building, measuring and managing brand equity. Based on the premise that brands are among a company's most valuable assets, this course focuses on concepts and techniques to improve the long-term profitability of brand strategies. Using an integrated marketing approach, current thinking from academia and industry is examined, providing insights to assist managers in day-to-day and long-term brand decisions. Case studies based on contemporary brands illuminate successful tactics and results from a consumer perspective.

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.