DAS in General Management

In the Financial Accounting Master Class, we discuss the different types of financial information that stock market companies prepare. Financial Accounting creates transparency in financial markets and helps capital providers make good decisions when allocating funds. After the course, you will understand the different financial statements (balance sheets, income statements and cash flow statements) that a company publishes externally. You will also understand how estimates impact the financial information that companies publish externally.

This Master Class aims to provide the main tools for understanding the macroeconomic environment in which a company operates. It covers the key concepts for addressing a wide range of macroeconomic questions. We emphasize intuition and application of the concepts. Furthermore, we try to give an overview that covers the most important macroeconomic areas and topics such as growth, business cycles, monetary policy, exchange rates, and financial crises.

The Managerial Accounting Master Class uses case studies to show how managers can apply internal information within companies to make better decisions and create value. One of the key contributions of the finance function in companies is strategic decision-making and strategic performance measurement. After the course, you will understand how reports prepared by financial managers can help other managers make better decisions and how financial managers can measure the strategic process of a company.

Strategic management takes the perspective of the general manager involved with managing a business unit in its totality. The Corporate Strategy Master Class focuses on the underlying conditions that permit a firm to develop, sustain, and capture the value of a superior strategic position. At the end of the course, you will have gained an actionable understanding of the strategy concept, enabling you to participate confidently in the strategic dialogue within your organization.

The Company Valuation course provides the conceptual framework necessary to help managers decide what investment decisions make best sense when it comes to the exciting topic of computing the value of companies and negotiating agreements about the acquisition and sale of companies. The perspectives presented in the course cover both theoretical and practical issues.

More than ever before, technological innovation and disruption affect the way business is conducted and new wealth is created. How to master technological change and profit from innovation are therefore key questions for business leaders. They are essential for developing a competitive advantage and boosting performance in all company types – new and old, large and small – across all industries. In this course, you will not only be exposed to the latest thinking about entrepreneurship, technological change and innovation but also apply new business tools that allow you to master technological disruption. Furthermore, you will develop an individual strategic innovation project for your company.

The Project Valuation Master Class provides the conceptual framework necessary to help managers decide what investment decisions make best sense. We take a look at investment projects, such as replacing machines, launching new products, or building new factories. The perspectives presented in the course cover both theoretical and practical issues. While the course’s focus is on investments, the principles we develop apply to management decisions in general with a view to helping you make better choices.

In this course, you learn how firms interact with capital markets and why that is relevant. At the core of our considerations are three financial policies:

• Financing policy: How should firms finance their business activities?
• Investment policy: Which factors should guide a firm’s investment activities?
• Payout policy: How much and how should firms return capital to their investors?

You learn how financing instruments can be used to bridge disagreements, make deals more valuable, set the right incentives, and even serve as a “truth serum”. You discover the power of these tools in financing decisions throughout the lifecycle of a firm, including seed financing, venture capital, mergers and acquisitions, and initial public offerings. Finally, we extend this logic to financial risk management and learn how different financial instruments can be used to mitigate risk.

The Managerial Economics Master Class applies the fundamental tools and concepts of microeconomics – economic behavior, marginal analysis, opportunity cost, supply and demand analysis, and alternative market structures – to managerial decision-making. The course also uses economic analysis and tools to provide insights into internal organizational policies, including decision-right assignment, performance evaluation, and compensation plans. The course aims to help you develop your economic intuition about a broad range of problems related to business and everyday life, so that a business approach becomes second nature.

In the era of data science and artificial intelligence, managers need a solid grasp of the foundations of uncertainty modeling, business analytics, and AI tools. This course begins with fundamental concepts of uncertainty management and decision-making under risk. You will explore both the power and limitations of data analysis in business contexts. Special emphasis is placed on regression analysis, which continues to be one of the most important and interpretable tools in management analytics. The course will also include forward-looking discussion of modern AI, including an accessible introduction to large language models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT, and their potential role in enhancing managerial insight, productivity, and decision-making.

Data has become an essential asset for companies to be able to operate and compete effectively. In fact, four of the six top companies in market valuation – Amazon, Alphabet, Facebook, and Alibaba – base their business models exclusively on the use of data to optimize advertising. Moreover, SMEs are starting to benefit substantially from analyzing data about their operations, finances, clients, and employees. It is therefore essential that business managers understand data as a production factor and know how to extract the value it contains. This Master Class introduces data as a production factor, explaining its unique attributes, and examines how data can transform existing organizations and give rise to new business models. Once you understand data as a production factor, this course shows you how to generate insights and gain value from it by means of various analytical and graphic tools.

The Marketing Strategy Master Class will focus on contemporary areas to improve marketing strategy decisions. During the course, you will: learn how to use marketing analytics; understand the various elements in marketing mix; learn return of investment analysis for each communication channel, particularly digital advertising; integrate market research into marketing strategic decision making and learn contemporary branding evaluation techniques.

This course is part of the International Trip to Rochester, New York (U.S.).

Pricing is one of the most difficult decisions managers make and the one with the most direct and immediate impact on the firm’s financial position. Many firms do it poorly, primarily by using inappropriate rules of thumb. Doing it well requires knowledge, analysis, discipline, and creativity. The Pricing Policies Master Class will explore the fundamentals of pricing strategy, drawing on business-to-business and business-to-consumer examples and discussions. This course aims to equip participants with proven concepts, techniques, and frameworks for assessing and formulating pricing strategies. The goal of the course is to enhance students’ economic intuition related to pricing strategy.

This course is part of the International Trip to Rochester, New York (U.S.).

Information technology is transforming firms, markets, products, and processes with remarkable speed. Recent developments in AI have the potential to further accelerate the transformation. This presents managers with new challenges and valuable opportunities. This course dives into the strategic use of IT within a business context, focusing on how IT can enable competitive advantage, enhance business processes, and drive innovation. The course interweaves theory and practice, with students acquiring useful frameworks for analyzing the use of IT in organizations.

The Leadership & Empowerment Master Class takes you on a transformative journey from Leading yourself to Leading Teams and Leading Change in organizations. You will learn how to lead with greater impact, authenticity, and effectiveness. Starting with self-discovery, you’ll use a personality assessment to enhance self-awareness and understand your strengths, gaps, and motivational drivers, setting the stage for more authentic leadership. Experiential learning will deepen your understanding of team dynamics and organizational culture, while the course concludes with ambidextrous leadership, a proven strategy for leading dual transformations and driving enterprise-level success.

The Sales & Distribution Management Master Class is designed with the objective of understanding distribution channels and how organizations can leverage them to create value, differentiate themselves in their markets, and gain a competitive advantage. Product proliferation, media fragmentation, intermediary power, e-commerce, omnichannel strategy, among other things, have converged to place a premium on effective channel design and management. The success of Apple, Alibaba, Amazon, Coupang, Mercado Libre, Rakuten, Reliance, Walmart, BlaBlaCar, Uber, Grab, Airbnb, Expedia, etc., indicates that careful attention to distribution can be tremendously rewarding.

The course covers channel issues that are internal (salesforce management, account management, sales-marketing-organization interface) and external (retailing, wholesaling, trade relationships, channel conflict, channel coordination) to a firm. The contexts used to explore these issues are a mix of B2B and B2C settings. At the end of the course, you will be able to appreciate the complexity and central role of the sales and distribution functions and the vital part they play in implementing the marketing strategy.

Operations & Supply Chain Management is at the core of any organization when it comes to designing, producing and delivering products and services that satisfy external and internal customer needs. Throughout the Master Class, you will develop an understanding of the complex and crucial interactions between operations and other functions, particularly marketing and finance. You will identify effective measures to improve operational performance and show how this in turn improves the organization’s financial results.

This Master Class prepares you to manage organizational transformation across structural, cultural, and technological dimensions. You will explore the key drivers and success factors of change management and examine the roles and dynamics that drive transformation. Drawing on organizational design frameworks, you will develop effective structures and processes that support lasting change. With a strong focus on practical application, you will evaluate how emerging technologies such as AI can enable innovation and generate value.