International MBA for Executives

Katz MBA students with Professor and IEMBA Director Lawrence Feick

Katz employs interactive learning methods that work best with executives: a minimum of chalk and talk with a maximum of discussion, case analyses, team projects and small-group work, computer simulations and personal skills workshops. The IEMBA curriculum covers all the basic business and management subjects as well as specially selected electives that focus on management issues particular to international business environments. (To view the course schedules, click on "Sao Paulo" or "Prague" in the main menu and then go to "Schedule".)

International Trip
The Katz IEMBA Program includes three weeks of classes on the campus of the world-class University of Pittsburgh in the cultural heart of Pittsburgh, a major U.S. corporate headquarters city. Pittsburgh offers all the advantages of a large U.S. city with the friendly atmosphere of a small town. During the session in Pittsburgh, IEMBA participants from Prague and Sao Paulo come together to take classes, compete in a marketing simulation and attend guest lectures.

Course Abstracts
To earn your Katz IEMBA degree from the University of Pittsburgh, you take the same courses that you would take at Katz in the U.S. - a total of 20 courses that equal 51 credits. (Elective offerings depend on student interest and faculty availability.)

Click on the course title to see a description of course content.

International Project Course
Accounting: Financial Reporting and Control
Organizational Behavior: Leadership and Group Effectiveness
Economic Analysis for Managerial Decisions: Firms and Markets
Marketing Management
Statistical Analysis: Uncertainty, Prediction and Quality Improvement
Information Systems
Competing in a Global Environment
Financial Management
Strategic Cost Management
Decision Technologies in Manufacturing and Operations Management
Business Ethics and Social Performance
Human Resources for Competitive Advantage
Corporate Finance
Global Macoeconomics
Managing Strategic Performance
International Corporate Finance

International Project Course
The project course challenges participants to prepare, in groups, a detailed report on improving the effectiveness of an organization. The projects provide an in-depth learning experience that demands the use of technical and interpersonal skills. Participants are expected to deliver a detailed written report and to make an oral presentation in Pittsburgh to faculty members, other participants and senior company officials. We provide this opportunity within the IEMBA curriculum to give participants an opportunity over an extended period of time to apply various MBA skills to a specific organizational problem.

Accounting: Financial Reporting and Control
The major objective of this course is to help student understand the basic structure and substance of a firms reports from a users point of view. This includes what is (and what is not) included in the reports, how and when events affect the statements, and what can be inferred from these reports about the firms past activities, present position and the future prospects.

Organizational Behavior: Leadership and Group Effectiveness
The effective management of people is a critical component of organizational competitiveness. This course addresses problems and issues concerning leadership, interpersonal effectiveness, and challenges for managers in the 21st century. The student is prepared to manage him/herself and others in a rapidly-changing global environment. Topics covered include employee empowerment, teamwork, managing diversity, cross-cultural management and personal effectiveness.

Economic Analysis for Managerial Decisions: Firms and Markets
This course develops an understanding of how a market-based economic system reconciles the separate needs of consumers and producers, and provides an economic framework for managerial decisions. Additionally the course provides tools of analysis and concepts which are used in the MBA program's functional fields. Centering on the basic concept of the business firm, it integrates the analysis of market demand with that of production and costs in the context of a variety of domestic and global market structures. Topics include: pricing, output and quality decisions; the impact of productivity improvements on costs; quality-cost tradeoffs; transactions costs as a determinant of the boundaries of the firm; market imperfection and the role of regulation.

Marketing Management
This course introduces students to the basic concepts of marketing. Besides the traditional topics of developing marketing strategies and implementing them with proper choice of pricing, packaging, advertising, selling, distribution, etc., the course now emphasizes the role of marketing in an organization.

Statistical Analysis: Uncertainty, Prediction and Quality Improvement
Provides students with a set of integrated statistical tools and methodologies useful in a managerial environment. The emphasis is on the use of real data for modeling and solving problems in the areas of marketing, finance, human resources and operations management. Topics covered include data analysis and modeling, simple and multiple regression (estimation, testing and prediction), analysis and design of experiments, nonparametric statistics and statistical quality control.

Information Systems
This course provides an overview of how general managers can apply information technology (IT) to increase their effectiveness. A variety of systems, technologies, and approaches will be covered to provide a broad understanding of how IT can be used in organizations. A number of cases and other assignments will be used illustrate how IT can provide information to support decision-making, cooperative work, organizational competitive advantage and interorganizational communication.

Competing in a Global Environment
This course addresses the managerial opportunities and challenges of developing world-class capabilities in globally linked economies. The focus is on organizational prototypes, strategy formulation frameworks and systems in the context of national and international infrastructures, institutional relationships and diverse cultures.

Financial Management
The objective of this course is to introduce the student to the basic principles of the modern theory of corporate finance. These principles are applied to the investment and financing decisions of individuals and firms. Emphasis is placed on the role of time and uncertainty in making investment and financing decisions. The main topics are: the time value of money, capital budgeting, risk and return, basic financing instruments, and the choice of financial structure.

Strategic Cost Management
This course deals with strategic implications of alternative methods of product cost measurement. The discussions will primarily be case-based and will cover cost measurement issues in both conventional and modern manufacturing environments.

Decision Technologies in Manufacturing and Operations Management
This course provides a foundation in the use of decision technologies for solving complex management problems in a variety of functional areas. Emphasis is given to the utilization of optimization and simulation.

Business Ethics and Social Performance
This course examines concepts, issues, and tools related to the management of ethics and social responsibility in business. Students learn how to recognize and respond to ethical problems, to understand their personal responsibilities as business managers, to evaluate various ethical frameworks, to apply a process of moral decision making to ethical problems, to grasp relationships between ethical behavior and organizational structure and processes, and to manage the ethical and social problems and opportunities arising from organizational, institutional, societal, and global dimensions of the business environment.

Human Resources for Competitive Advantage
This course examines the design and use of organizational human resources strategies to achieve market advantage. Emphasis is placed on the strategic decisions managers must make to integrate human resources into a successful business. Participants examine the influences of changing technologies, public policies and international competitive on staffing, compensation, employee relations and human resource development.

Corporate Finance
Focuses on the investment and financing decisions of firms. Topics include capital budgeting, theories of optimal capital structure, dividend policy and agency theory.

Global Macoeconomics
This course focuses on the forces which drive or determine overall national/global economic activity. A study of macroeconomics is crucial for an appreciation of the set of factors at the national and global level which impact upon the business firms demand and cost patterns-factors which are largely beyond the firms ability to control directly, but which must be taken into account as part of the decision making and strategic planning process. Movements in major macroeconomic variables, especially interest rate patterns and foreign currency exchange rates, also exert significant influence on the performance of national and global financial markets, as will be easily confirmed by a daily perusal of such publication as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Financial Times.

Managing Strategic Performance
This course is concerned with the implementation of corporate and business-level strategies in a global environment. The class uses skills and information from the disciplines and functional areas to design and
implement strategies, administrative systems and responses to competitive moves, unplanned events and performance indicators are given particular attention. Students should be able to evaluate organizational problems, suggest feasible processes which provide strategic advantage for organizations, and defend the implementation of those processes with appropriate analysis.

International Corporate Finance
International Corporate Finance is predicated on the principal that the single most important objective of corporate management is to maximize shareholder wealth. This course focuses upon the managers challenge to achieve this objective in the face of complexities induced by a global economy. Specific topics and challenges include: value sensitivity to foreign exchange volatility; global risk management; cash flow measurement and estimation; the cost of capital; innovations in securitization; comparative corporate governance; and cross border mergers and acquisitions.