Executive MBA Curriculum

The courses for this 21-month Executive MBA program in Kansas City focus on building business skills and knowledge as well as personal and professional development. In addition to the Core Curriculum and Leader Formation courses listed below, Executive MBA’s take an elective course.

Core Curriculum

This course examines accounting systems for executive decision-making, including a general, theoretical description and analysis of the financial statements, how they relate to one another, and how information is presented for financial, managerial and tax reporting. The course uses current and actual companies to illustrate how theory and practice work and, at times, do not work.

MK 7000. Strategic Marketing Management (2 credit hours)

This course examines the processes executives use to create, communicate, capture, and sustain value in their organizations. Using the case method, students analyze a variety of companies in different industries in order to gain insight into the process of value creation, and to provide them with management tools for sustaining it. Students learn how to use a market opportunity analysis in order to choose the right customers to target, find the best distribution channels for their products, price to capture value, and manage customers for profit.

EC 7200 Analytics & Economics (2 credit hours)

This course will prepare students for courses in finance, competitive analysis, and economics. The course will survey critical data concepts and skills such as descriptive statistics, regression, and data analytics, including use of Excel. It will also cover specific concepts in micro-economics and address the broad macro-economic environment.

MG 7510 Executive Development (3 credit hours)

This course tees up the leadership sequence of the EMBA. Using standardized leadership assessments, and other relevant self-reflection and peer-feedback tools, students develop a Professional Development Plan to focus their EMBA program learning goals. A one-on-one executive coaching relationship is used to create clear focus for executive development and support the student’s ability to meet the day-to-day challenges of leadership. Students will also learn how to develop executive presence and practice the professional communication skills critical for successful executive leadership.

FN 7100. Financial Management (3 credit hours)

This course enables student to complete an accounting and finance project by assessing his or her own organization. Students also practice accounting and financial decision-making at a senior-management level using a financial simulation, cover the theories and tools, and develop the skills necessary to understand finance from a senior management/leadership perspective. The project and simulation will allow the student to practice and learn about all the finance functions including treasury and cash management, capital budgets, pro forma financial statements, capital structure, working capital and growth issues.

EC 7000. Economic and Competitive Analysis (3 credit hours)

This course explores the interplay of managerial economics and strategic management. It is designed to provide students with an understanding of the competitive analysis tools underlying strategy formulation. Based on an analysis of the factors shaping the industry environment, firms assess their positioning relative to their rivals, and formulate strategies in order to achieve a durable competitive advantage. The course covers various topics in strategy formulation, such as product positioning and differentiation, diversification, vertical integration, scales and slope, pricing, strategic commitments, entry deterrence and creative destruction.

MG 7851 Key Topics in Executive Intelligence (1 credit hour)

Business success often hinges on the art of executive decision. This course takes a topical look both internal skills for building executive intelligence as well as various tools of decision making, including but not limited to strategic uses of business analytics, financial analysis, personnel and HR recruitment, and business growth. The course will be seminar based and application focused borrowing on both scholarly work and the experience and work of proven practitioners.

MG 7120. Leadership and Organizational Behavior (3 credit hours)

This course studies personal, social, technological, and organizational aspects of human behavior and examines effective leadership and management processes within organizations. The student will learn to integrate the cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, physical, moral and spiritual components of effective leadership. Competencies of leadership, communication, conflict management, and team development will be explored through experiential learning activities including simulations, cases and small group activities, and supplemented by various instruments.

BIA 7100 Business Intelligence (2 credit hours)

Business leaders must have the ability to collect and interpret information concerning customers, suppliers, competitors, and make decisions that affect their company’s performance. Business Intelligence explores the strategic significance of big data capability so business leaders can compete effectively. How to manage data and how to leverage it for things like predictive analytics will also be a focus.

MG 7301 Strategy & Innovation (2 credit hours)

Course explores various theories regarding corporate and business strategy.  The idea of being able to identify and plan for opportunities will be learned and practiced. The nexus of strategy and innovation will also be explored, including the areas of design thinking, business innovation, market innovation, and social innovation. Managerial practices that encourage and support innovation practices will also be explored.

MG 7786 Global Markets (2 credit hours)

Globalization presents both new opportunities and new challenges, and executives must gain experience in evaluating and analyzing these new developments. This course focuses on two broad themes: the globalization of production and the globalization of markets. Participants will develop an understanding of the key cultural, legal, political, financial, and economic forces that shape how firms enter new markets and how firms manage their increasingly complex supply chains.

MK 7900. Business Capstone (3 credit hours)

This capstone course gives students experience integrating the concepts of marketing, accounting, finance, supply chain, organization behavior, communication, leadership, ethics, information analysis and global awareness. Central to the course is a comprehensive simulation, international in scope, in which the students develop products, test-market products, develop business plans, secure venture capital, launch strategies, and monitor their performance. The simulation emphasizes the application, synthesis and integration of all functional areas for the successful development and execution of marketing strategy.

MG 7825 Strategic Management (3 credit hours)

This is an executive development course from the perspective of thinking strategically and managing and leading as the person in charge. The course is a comprehensive exploration of the role of the general manager and the specific mindset and skills required to lead units and companies. The course will look at the skills of delegation, managing performance, gaining cooperation, and aligning people in order to get results. The course takes a comprehensive look at being in charge and the requisite management and leadership skills necessary to do so effectively.

MG 7920. Worldviews and Ethical Principles in Business (2 credit hours)

This course is concerned with the general understanding and application of ethical principles in business. The aims of the course are to explain the nature of a worldview, and various philosophies of the human person, in order to provide an overall structure for an understanding of ethical approaches to business; to learn how to identify and apply these ideas both in life generally and in the business world; and to help students to clarify, develop and support their own worldviews in order to cultivate a moral compass in business practice and decision-making. Many related issues will be discussed along the way including moral objectivism vs. moral relativism, freedom and pluralism, morality and law, issues of liability and practice, and consumerism and materialism and their effects on society, and on our understanding of the human person.

MG7910 Executive Project I (1 credit hour)

This course establishes a comprehensive project for students to apply strategic planning, research, and analysis skills.  Students identify and articulate an organizational issue or specific business situation to be analyzed and addressed in the form of an Executive Project.  This will lead to a prospectus of a project that will be completed in Executive Project II.

MG7915 Executive Project II (3 credit hours)

This course represents the culminating project where students identify, research, plan, and begin implementation of an opportunity identified in Executive Project I course taken the prior semester.  The main deliverables for this course are 1) a formal, comprehensive report articulating the opportunity, detailing the literature, and representing the findings and 2) a presentation of the main part(s) of the report.

MG 7812 Leading Change (3 credit hours)

This course initiates the EMBA leader formation learning sequence by introducing state-of-the-art influence strategies and the skills prerequisite to designing, implementing, and leading change in complex organizational environments.  Leadership development topics include: creating vision, soliciting involvement, catalyzing action, transforming resistance, and tracking/evaluating change results.

MG 7091 Global Residency (2 credit hours)

This course immerses EMBA students in an international learning experience.  Students will participate in selecting the destination country (countries), recruit target organizations to visit, research target countries and companies in the Wall Street Journal, maintain a daily trip journal, and design a website for communicating their residency experience.

Leader Formation

Leading Change

Building on the leadership curriculum from the first year focused on self-awareness team management, students in the second year focus on practical application for how to lead change. Students will learn the essential skills – communication, gaining cooperation, and providing direction – for making change happen on projects and for organizational units. These are essential skills for managerial and executive action.

Strategic Management

Closely connected to the leadership outcomes is management development. Students will learn skills for planning, thinking strategically to exploit opportunities, and working through others. The Executive MBA program has partnered with  third-party firms that bring focused expertise on management and leadership competence and development. In addition, students will take part in both live case projects and case study analysis to hone critical thinking required of general managers.

Executive Projects

Each student in the second year will identify, plan, and begin implementation of a strategic/change project. These projects will allow students the change to apply tools of management involving analysis, but are significant projects that are tied to the leading change and general management framework taught in the second year. Students are provided coaching and other resources for them to focus and extend their effort that makes for significant outcomes that will improve results of the firm and lead to growth for the student.

Personal Reflection

A strong pillar of Jesuit education and a bedrock principle in the field of learning, students are required to reflect on their experiences to gain lasting insight and understanding. To help facilitate this, students will create their own worldviews that guide them to ethical leadership behaviors. In addition, our students gain reflection skills that they can apply as part of their professional lives.  The motto here is to “reflect and learn” during and after your academic program.