General Management 2

This subject has the following teaching availabilities in 2015:

For the purposes of considering request for Reasonable Adjustments under the Disability Standards for Education (Cwth 2005), and Student Support and Engagement Policy, academic requirements for this subject are articulated in the Subject Overview, Learning Outcomes, Assessment and Generic Skills sections of this entry.

It is University policy to take all reasonable steps to minimise the impact of disability upon academic study, and reasonable adjustments will be made to enhance a student's participation in the University's programs. Students who feel their disability may impact on meeting the requirements of this subject are encouraged to discuss this matter with a Faculty Student Adviser and Student Equity and Disability Support: http://services.unimelb.edu.au/disability

Finance:

This is an introductory course of valuation and financial management. The course is designed for all MBA students with career interests in managing any organizations where cash flows matter. It is based on the principle that firms should be managed to increase the wealth of their shareholders, subject to the fulfilment of their contractual and legal obligations to other stakeholders. To this purpose, this subject will focus on the valuation of financial assets and selection of investment projects. It provides a good foundation for those who want to specialize in finance. Furthermore, students will find that the principles learned here can be readily applied to their own personal financial planning and investments.

Marketing Management:

This subject focuses on the challenges faced by organisations in managing demand, and how to address those challenges with optimal demand-side strategies. To be successful, organisations have to be able to recognise, create, grow, and protect market-based assets that influence demand. Brand equity, the installed base of customers, and support from channels (e.g., intermediaries such as retailers) constitute the most important market-based assets that help produce market outcomes such as sales growth, price premiums, market share, customer share, customer retention, customer referrals, and addressable markets. In this subject, students will learn how (and which) marketing investments help develop market-based assets, how market-based assets translate into market outcomes, and how market outcomes in turn help in ensuring the long-term survival and success of organisations.

Process and Operations Management:

In fiercely competitive global and dynamic environments, companies face increasing pressures to exceed customer expectations along multiple performance measures, such as cost, quality, flexibility and innovativeness. To outperform their competitors, many firms make the mistake of mimicking their rivals, rather than focusing on developing the organizational capabilities that competitors will find difficult to match over the long term. And although operations are at the core of a firm’s value adding activities, few firms have sought to build a sustainable competitive advantage around these capabilities.

Operations deals with the design, management and continuous improvement of business processes. It aims at providing some of the core concepts in operations that are essential for leveraging a firm’s operational capabilities to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. This course provides a logical and rigorous approach to plan and control process structure and managerial levers to achieve desired business process performance.

Leadership:

Organizations face many adaptive challenges to survive and thrive in a context of a complex and uncertain environment driven by forces such as globalization and technology. Managers maintain the status quo efficiently but leaders help individuals, teams, organizations, and societies to do adaptive work. Leadership has been defined as “the process of influencing others to understand and agree about what needs to be done, and how to do it, and the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to achieve shared objectives” (Yukl, 2006). Leadership is not a position but a process and it is often emergent and shared by individuals who choose to be leaders and have developed leadership capability. Leadership is particularly important in new organization structures that are flat, flexible, diverse, and global rather than hierarchical, stable, and homogenous. There is substantial evidence that leadership can be learned and this introductory subject is aimed at developing the capability to lead individuals and teams through intrapersonal (i.e., self-awareness and self-management) and interpersonal (i.e., social awareness and social skill) development. This subject is a five day intensive that includes theoretical and conceptual content alongside solo and group exercises designed to prepare students for leadership experiences in the MBA program and their future careers.

Social Responsibility and Ethics:

In this subject, students learn about the societal context in which business operates, together with the skills for reasoning about ethical problems that arise in this context. The course examines the various stakeholders of business and discusses the obligations of corporations to those stakeholders. It considers strategies for achieving corporate social responsibility goals – such as environmental sustainability and social outcomes -- taking into account both the ethical case and the business case for such strategies. The course also examines a range of alternative approaches to moral reasoning as well as the applications of those approaches to the complex and dynamic ethical problems that confront leaders of modern organizations, both in Australia and in other cultures.

Personal Effectiveness 2:

The “Personal Effectiveness Program” (PEP) runs across the three core modules and is designed to help students develop the skills and knowledge required to effectively manage the early stages of their career. PEP identifies specific needs of each individual student and then provides ongoing support, training, and opportunities to practice and perfect these skills. PEP focuses on three core areas.
1. Communication skills: These skills include effective presentations, verbal communication, written communication, and public speaking
2. Career development skills: These skills include case practice, interview skills, CV writing, networking, and business etiquette
3. Team skills: These skills include managing conflict, cultural awareness, giving and receiving feedback, and resilience.

Entrepreneurial Mindset 2:

The “Entrepreneurial Mindset Program” (EMP) runs across the three core modules and is designed to help students develop an entrepreneurial mindset. EMP helps students develop the knowledge, skills, and attributes to identify and evaluate value creation opportunities, view obstacles, problems, and failure as opportunities, modify opportunities to make them viable, and sell ideas to others.

On completion of this subject, students should be able to:

Finance:

• Apply a variety approaches to identify profitable investment projects
• Value financial assets (such as stocks and bonds)
• Build portfolios of financial assets based on the optimal balance of risk and return
• Estimate cost of capital of the firm and apply it in project selection decisions

Marketing Management:

1. Develop and manage the demand-based growth strategies for the firm. To achieve this objective, students need to:

• Understand the value of market-based assets, including brands, customer bases, and channel support.
• Identify and evaluate the vulnerability (risk) of, and opportunities in, their market-based assets.
• Understand how their market-based assets translate into demand outcomes for the firm.
• Identify and evaluate sources of demand-based growth (e.g., retention, share of wallet, share of market, referral, margin and addressable markets).
• Identify and evaluate strategies that will help a firm succeed along each of the growth dimensions.

2. Manage demand-side strategies for the firm. To achieve this objective, students need to able to apply the following activities:

• Value management: Understand the concept of value from the customer’s perspective; be able to measure value and develop products/services that provide value.
• Segmentation: Segment a market based on the differences in value (perceived and desired) across customers
• Targeting: Identify and evaluate what makes a segment of customers attractive to the firm,
• Positioning: Create a unique and attractive selling proposition for the firm’s brands
• Marketing mix management: Capture, communicate, and deliver value via pricing, communications, and channel management.
• Product management: Manage portfolios of brands
• Customer management: Manage portfolios of customers.

Process and Operations Management:

• Analyse real-world processes and evaluate their consistency with the firm strategy.
• Apply process analysis techniques for identification of bottlenecks and suggest approaches for de-bottlenecking.
• Identify managerial levers for controlling inventory and apply simple analytical models for estimating needed safety stock for a desired service level.
• Identify the drivers of variability in processes and propose solutions to mitigate its ill effects using simple queuing theory concepts.
• Use robust statistical process control techniques to ensure capability and control of a process.
• Apply six-sigma and lean concepts to a wide range of business processes.

Leadership:

• Integrate into the MBS community and begin the creation of a cohort culture
• Appreciate and work with diversity and discover the value of collaboration
• Heighten their self-awareness and self-knowledge
• Develop, lead and participate in teams
• Enhance their ability to relate to and influence others
• Improve their ability to communicate effectively and manage conflict
• Work effectively in cross cultural groups
• Enhance their ability to manage their emotions to more effectively interact with others
• Develop power bases and use influence tactics appropriately
• Intervene strategically in dyadic and group settings

Social Responsibility and Ethics:

• Apply the different approaches to moral reasoning and appreciate the limitations of these different approaches;
• Apply various ethical frameworks in the analysis and resolution of ethical problems
• Recognise potential pitfalls of individual moral judgment;
• Describe the different forms that corporate social responsibility can take;
• Demonstrate a critical understanding of the business case for corporate social responsibility;
• Appreciate the ethical dilemmas that arise in persuasion and communication with stakeholders, including customers, workers, and shareholders;
• Respond to the ways in which consumers’ purchase decisions are influenced by their ethical frameworks.

Personal Effectiveness 2:

• Appreciate the importance of communication, career development, and team skills in career success.
• Have improved their communication, career development, and team skills.
• Be more comfortable making—and effective at giving—public presentations.
• Be more comfortable giving feedback.

Entrepreneurial Mindset 2:

• Identify potential business opportunities
• Evaluate the viability of potential business opportunities
• Identify ways to modify business opportunities to increase their viability
• Articulate and justify why a business opportunity is worth pursuing

Finance (20% of overall subject):

• 3 x syndicate assignments (150 words each), due weeks 2, 5, and 7 (30% of the component);
• Mid-term test (1 hour), week 4 (25% of the component);
• Final exam (2 hours), at end of subject (45% of the component). Hurdle requirement.

Marketing Management (20%):

• Contribution to class learning, throughout the subject (10%);
• 5 x syndicate case preparation and discussion (100 words each), throughout the subject (10%);
• Mid-term test (1 hour), week 4 (15%);
• Final exam (2 hours), at end of subject (65%). Hurdle requirement

Process and Operations Management (20%):

• Contribution to class learning, throughout the subject (10%);
• 5 quizzes (15 minutes each), throughout the subject (best 4 out of 5) (20%);
• 2 x syndicate case assignments (equivalent to 300 words per student per assignment), weeks 4 and 6 (25%);
• Final exam (3 hours), at end of subject (45%). Hurdle requirement.

Social Responsibility and Ethics (20%):

• Contribution to class learning, throughout the subjects (10%);
• Case preparation and discussion (equivalent to 250 word individual assignment), throughout the subject (10%);
• Syndicate presentation (equivalent to 500 word individual assignment), throughout the subject (20%);
• Individual assignment (1200 words), due at end of subject (60%). Hurdle requirement.

Personal Effectiveness 2 (10%):

• Contribution to class learning, throughout the subjects (10%);
• Syndicate presentation (equivalent to 400 word individual assignment), throughout the subject (40%);
• Individual assignement (500 words), at end of subject (50%). Hurdle requirement.

Entrepreneurial Mindset 2 (10%):

• Contribution to class learning, throughout the subjects (10%);
• Syndicate presentation (equivalent to 400 word individual assignment), throughout the subject (40%);
• Individual assignement (500 words), at end of subject (50%). Hurdle requirement.

Hurdle requirement: students are required to pass each component.

This subject is not available as a breadth subject.