MBA Electives Spring 2015 The following courses are offered in English in cooperation with the international full-time MBA Courses offered in Aarhus: Organizational Anticipation (an extended version of the course “Tools of Corporate Foresight") The mobility of capital and ideas and the ability to grow businesses quickly towards a global scale, have lead to a new level of competitive intensity in many industries. Approaches that are based on the analysis of the current competitive environment are increasingly inadequate for building a lasting competitive advantage and to position organizations successfully for the future. In consequence it is vital for organizations to acquire the ability to perceive trends, systematically interpret change drivers, explore possible futures and actively drive towards a desired future. This ability is called organizational anticipation and is increasingly relevant for    governmental organizations that are confronted with societal challenges and disruptive change non-profit organizations that have to identify the needed ingredients for their future success and to understand how they can actively promote needed boundary conditions companies in industries with a high competitive intensity and the need to retain the ability to demand premium prices for their products and services In the course you will apply methods on real-life cases, you will have the opportunity to work with sophisticated IT tools, and you will learn how to design projects and systems on which organizational anticipation is built. Exam form: 6 hours written exam. To prepare for the final exam the participants need to hand-in three group assignments. All assignments need to be passed for acceptance to the final exam. Negotiation in Organizations Negotiations are an important part of every manager’s daily business life. Almost every management decision involves more than one person and has to be negotiated to a certain extent. In a globalizing world, negotiations also increasingly involve an important international dimension. The concept of the course is guided by the basic assumption that both goals can be best achieved by practicing exercises. Thus, the course mainly emphasizes on the simulation and critical analysis of different negotiation settings. More specificalyy, it aims at - learning how to get as much as possible out of a distributive negotiation without producing hard feelings, - understanding different negotiation gambits and know how to counter them, - being able to identify integrative potentials, - understanding the tension between trust and self-interests in all its complexity - being able to deal with cultural differences - understanding the structure of negotiation power and learn how to change it - learning how to act as - and deal with a mediator Exam form: Portfolio examination. Two written assignments (Journals) of two pages each plus one written assignment (mini case) of three pages during the course. Submission dates are the second and the third teaching block. Strategic Staffing Strategic staffing refers to attraction, selection and retaining the most suitable employees. The purpose of engaging in strategic staffing is to ensure that the company has the right human capital to achieve its strategic goals. With a clearly defined staffing strategy, top managers can address current and future organizational needs and fill holes where necessary. The course consists of two parts. Part one focus on strategic staffing from an organisational perspective with main focus on how organizations can develop a staffing strategy that reinforces business strategy, leverages staffing technology, and evaluates and improves staffing systems. The teaching will focus on the main components of strategic staffing, such as workforce planning, sourcing, recruiting, selecting, acquiring, deploying and retaining talent. The second part of the course introduces participants specifically to employer branding from a strategic, corporate communication perspective. Participants will learn about fundamentals, the origins and history of the employer branding concept, its domain and boundaries within a strategic communication context. Through the course, they learn how to apply employer branding externally as well as internally in a company in relation to the employee lifecycle, the factors influencing the internal branding process, and employer brand delivery mechanisms. Final exam is 6 hours written exam. Courses offered in Emdrup (Copenhagen) Business Model Innovation Business models have become increasingly popular as a tool to describe the value creation and value capture processes of organizations on an architectural level. They make it easier to explore why an organization is successful and how it needs to organize to create or sustain a competitive advantage in the future. The course aims to create the ability to - describe organizations by mapping their core elements in a business model - evaluate and judge business models - design and prepare business model change. Exam form: 6 hours written exam. To prepare for this final assignments there are short preparation assignments (after each day) that need to be handed in and passed: (1) describing a business model (2) discusing a business model (by pointing to its strengths and weaknesses) (3) proposing enhancements for a business model Nedenstående valgfag på MBA uddannelsen udbydes på dansk: Macroøkonomi for MBA: Konjunkturudvikling og økonomisk politik Den finansielle krise, gældskrisen, Eurokrise og de vedvarende økonomiske uroligheder på verdensplan understreger et behov blandt fremtidens ledere for generalistviden omkring den økonomiske omverden, som deres virksomheder og organisationer færdes i. ”Makroøkonomi for MBA: Konjunkturudvikling og Økonomisk Politik” er et omverdensfag direkte udviklet til MBA. Faget trækker på årtiers medvirken og erfaring af Aarhus økonomer omkring Danmarks økonomi i den globaliserede verden og økonomisk politik. Moderne virksomheder agerer i en kompleks omverden sammensat af konkurrenter, leverandører, konsumenter, nationale og internationale markeder, vækst og recession, samt foranderlige politiske og finansielle vilkår. Denne sum af økonomiske faktorer påvirker virksomheder og organisationer og dermed deres beslutninger og vilkår på to niveauer. På mikroniveau er effektivitets- og marginalbetragtninger, profitmaksimering, markedets forståelse, strategisk interaktion og brancheregulering, konkurrenternes adfærd og nationale og internationale konkurrenceregulering af afgørende betydning for virksomhedens strategiske beslutninger. På makroniveau er konjunkturcykler, renteudvikling, diverse økonomiske stød (f.eks. olieprischok eller husprisbobler), nationale og internationale finanspolitikker, monetær politik (f.eks. Euro-medlemskab), samt komplekse politikområder (f.eks. miljøøkonomisk regulering eller arbejdsmarkedspolitikker) af afgørende betydning for virksomhedens efterspørgsel, produktionsomkostninger, konkurrenceevne, fremtidsudsigter samt dens strategiske råderum. Fremtidens leder skal har viden og forståelse for disse problemstillinger. I MBA faget Makroøkonomi afdækkes det makroøkonomiske plan med fokus på praktisk anvendelige værktøjer og forståelse. Eksamensform: Portfolio eksamen