Course content
Managers face issues that were not imaginable a few decades ago, from cyberthreats to social media reputation. While courses in business schools teach systematic ways to analyze the world, new issues such as cyber security, organizational stigma, and failure learning are oftentimes only cursorily touched upon.
In this course, students will learn more about a set of hot issues and how to analyze their impact on organizations and assess how managers design response strategies to address them. In this course, students will learn more about eight hot topics. By emphasizing how to seek information and think around action options, students will develop a method they can apply to address future such challenges and other related ones as future managers.
The course will be taught using a combination of (theoretical) material presentation and discussion of practical cases and issues. Each session is structured to allow as much interaction as possible between the students and the instructor(s). Questions are welcomed at any point in time in the class as they offer students the opportunity to learn from each other's curiosity and insights that complement the topics and the insights from the course. In-class exercises and activities will be used to allow students to directly apply, analyze, evaluate, and create content. We will use a 2+1 structure for the hot topics, with two classes covering readings and discussions about two different hot topics and the third class being a student-led tutorial whose focus is on the two hot topics. For each student-led class, students should select one of the two topics associated with that class and choose a task [not an overwhelming undertaking] associated with the selected topic. The idea behind each possible task is for students to conduct some research about the topic and be prepared to discuss the outcomes of their research in the class. The research for the student-led class should be seen as a lead-in to and might be used in the final written assignment for the course.
Examples of hot topics that might be covered in this course include:
- Cryptocurrency and blockchains
- Cybersecurity
- Emotional intelligence
- Energy and policy -- impact on the firm
- Failure learning
- Forecasting
- Intellectual property tools and strategies
- Leadership and Motivation
- Negotiations
- Organizational culture
- Organizational reputation and stigma
- Platforms and ecosystems
See course description in course catalogue