The Fall 2008 semester heralds the launch of a revised core curriculum. The new core will blend the best of the old — retaining all of the foundational elements of the Columbia MBA — while allowing greater flexibility for students to pursue individual interests. Under this new approach, the core will be divided into 2 parts: the Required Core (6.5 courses) and the Flexible Core (1.5 courses). The reduced size of the core permits two electives in the second semester, negating the need for deferrals. Several of the new courses being developed for the core will be offered as electives in Spring 2008, and all new courses will be offered as electives in Spring 2009. It is the School’s policy to review the core program every 7-8 years, and the new Core emerged out of the most recent review. In November 2006, Dean Hubbard formed the Foundations Curriculum Committee, composed of a tenured faculty member from each division, as well as Senior Vice Dean Paul Glasserman and Vice Dean Amir Ziv. The Dean’s mandate to the Committee was twofold: 1) to evaluate the current core in terms of its flexibility, size and content, and 2) to propose modifications, without changing the academic calendar or jeopardizing the cluster system. (The Committee relied heavily on student feedback from surveys and focus groups to conduct their review.) In May 2007, after weekly deliberations, the Committee voted unanimously to recommend the split Required/Flexible Core model, which was approved by the full faculty for implementation. In addition to the Required and Flexible course offerings, the revised Core will also include a non-credit Corporate Governance course, which will be woven throughout the MBA experience, beginning in orientation. The course is currently under development. The Required Core courses will apply to all students, although students will be encouraged to continue to seek exemptions where appropriate. The Flexible Core will permit students to gain greater depth in one specific area, by choosing one course in each of three categories: Organizations, Performance and Markets. There will be no exemptions from the Flexible Core courses. As mentioned above, some courses in the Flexible Menus will be offered as electives to all current students beginning in Spring 2008.  The revised Managerial Economics half-course paired with the Game Theory and Business course will replace the current Managerial Economics course for students entering in January 2008. The below chart contains a complete listing of the new courses. To see a brief description of a new Flexible Core course click on its title in the Flexible Core Menus chart. First Semester Corporate Finance Financial Accounting Managerial Statistics   Managerial Economics Strategy Formulation     Marketing Strategy   Operations Management Leadership   Second Semester Global Economic Environment Decision Models Managing Marketing Programs Elective 1 Elective 2 Menu 1: Organizations Menu 2: Performance Menu 3: Markets         Flexible Core Menus     Organizations Performance Markets Organizational Change Operations Strategy Game Theory   Power and Influence Performance Measurement Global Economic Environment II: Business Cycles and Financial Markets Social Capital   Strategy, Structure and Incentives     Offered as an elective Spring 2008 Offered as an elective Fall 2008 Currently offered in the core as Managerial Accounting. Organizations Organizational Change This course is focused on how organizations change, and how to be a change agent in an organization.  It emphasizes the forces for change, the change implementation process, the qualities and skills of successful change agents, and the behavioral theory of how individuals and organizations change.  Finally, it will help students better diagnose the organizations they will be entering in terms of the change agenda for them and for the company and help prepare them for their role as implementers and agents of change. Power and Influence Power and influence processes are pervasive and important in organizations, so leaders need to be able both to understand power and to act on that knowledge.  Organizations are fundamentally political entities, and power and influence are key mechanisms by which things get done.  Therefore, this course has three objectives: 1) to increase students' ability to diagnose and analyze power; 2) to expose students to effective and appropriate methods of influence; and 3) to explain how power and influence can be used to build cooperation and promote change in organizations. Social Capital Having effective social networks is the key to important business outcomes, whether finding jobs, earning early promotions, harnessing creativity, or ensuring survival of the organization.  This course shows how to understand, measure, and develop these key resources.  The approach is hands on and will involve diagnosing students' own social networks to identify career opportunities as well as analyzing corporate networks to better identify business opportunities such as IPOs and mergers.  The course is organized in three parts: (1) evaluating and building students' own social networks to achieve career outcomes; (2) understanding social capital in organizations and industries as it affects organizational performance; and (3) developing interpersonal skills for building productive social relationships. Performance Operations Strategy In this course, students learn: 1) why a firm’s operational strategy is a key determinant in its ability to achieve and sustain economic profitability and 2) how that strategy can be leveraged to improve economic performance.  The course builds on the foundational core classes in operations, finance, economics and strategy to analyze the impact of operations on the overall business strategy.  It is intended for students whose work requires strategic analysis of a firm’s operations, including those interested in consulting, entrepreneurship, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, fundamental investment analysis and general management.  A major theme throughout the course is the importance of alignment.  In other words, are a firm’s operational choices consistent with how it competes, both now and in the future?  To this end, the course will consider operational decisions within three broad categories: Resource decisions -  capacity investment, entry decisions, facility configuration/operational footprint decisions, operational hedging Internal activity decisions -  product-process alignment decisions, technology adoption decisions, achieving and sustaining best practices, inter-functional coordination External activity decisions - vertical integration/outsourcing decision, distribution strategy, sourcing strategy and supplier management decisions The course is case intensive, but there will be specific assignments with quantitative analyses.  Analytical concepts, including the basic economics behind modern strategy theory, added value analysis, real options analysis, etc., will be introduced as needed.   Performance Measurement This course introduces students to modern tools and techniques designed to generate performance measures used for decision-making, management and control purposes.  Accounting based performance measures are used for a variety of managerial decisions such as product pricing, and profitability analysis (e.g., activity-based costing for customer lifetime value).  This course further illustrates how performance measures are integrated into incentive systems so as to align the objectives of (division) managers with those of the shareholders.  Key building blocks of such incentive systems are cost allocations, transfer pricing and compensation schemes.  At a time where performance measurement is one of the fastest-growth areas for consulting firms, this course illustrates the strengths and weaknesses of commonly-used performance metrics, e.g., Economic Value Added (EVA), Balanced Scorecard.  It serves as an important background for a variety of electives in management and accounting as well as for consulting-related courses. Concepts taught in this course: Product costing and pricing Activity based costing/management (ABC/ABM) Profitability and variance analysis Transfer pricing including tax considerations for international transactions Performance measurement and incentives ROI, EVA, and other performance metrics Non-financial performance measures (“Balanced Scorecard”)   Markets Game Theory and Business In most business circumstances, managers and organizations take decisions that affect each other.  We call such situations "games."  Game Theory provides a framework for analyzing and predicting behaviors and outcomes in situations of strategic interaction.  The goal of this course is to provide students with the essential tools of game theory, and demonstrate their use by applying them to a variety business situations and cases. Global Economic Environment II: Business Cycles and Financial Markets This course is a sequel to the core course Global Economic Environment I.  Building on the fundamentals introduced in that course, we develop a conceptual framework to explain business cycle fluctuations and their implications for financial markets.  In particular, we examine macroeconomic forecasting, determinants and implications of budget deficits, the conduct and implementation of monetary policy, and the determinants of inflation in the U.S. and other market economies around the world.  Special attention is given to the interactions between macroeconomic forces and financial markets. Since an important goal of this course is for students to become informed and sophisticated consumers of economic news, the issues discussed in this course draw heavily from current events and real-world examples. Strategy, Structure and Incentives This course uses the tools and frameworks of economics to analyze how firms create and sustain competitive advantage. After introducing a general framework that shows how creating and sustaining barriers to entry is the key to maintaining competitive advantage, the course focuses on how the internal organization of the firm serves the overall competitive strategy.  We will study how different types of decisions – from the design of incentive contracts to M&A decisions – are crucial for the long-run profitability of the firm. This course is recommended for students interested in a career in consulting, corporate strategy, or one that requires skills in evaluating company performance (e.g. corporate finance, hedge fund managers, equity analysts, value investors).