The Leadership Development course will create the opportunity for students to reflect on two key areas of leadership; managing themselves (self awareness and understanding) and managing relationships (the impact they have on others). These two aspects involve a high level of self-awareness, the willingness to risk new behavior and the capacity to be flexible and make changes as the environment changes.

This course provides students with a basic understanding of the state of the global economy and macroeconomic policy. Topics include national income accounting, unemployment, inflation, monetary and fiscal policies, and international economic interactions. Applications of economic theories to current macroeconomic phenomena will be emphasised.

The course develops a valuable set of core consulting skills and provides a rich appreciation of modern management consulting of value to both prospective management consultants and to other business students who expect to engage and work with management consultants during their future career.  The course complements the Business Practicum elective in which students have the opportunity to apply consulting skills in a real consulting engagement with a local company.  In a typical session, the first hour will be an overview lecture on the Topic, or a discussion of the assigned Readings.  A short ‘Industry interlude’ will cover aspects of the history and structure of the management consulting industry, including ethics, professional qualifications and recruitment practices.  The final ninety minutes will be spent on an assigned “caselet” (a short-form case) based on a real management consulting engagement.  Caselets will cover commercial organizations in China and overseas, as well as consulting interventions in not-for-profits and the Public Sector. Students will be placed into groups and each group will be asked to practice specific consulting skills and roles, with opportunities for each student to plan a consulting engagement, facilitate discussions with clients, and lead a consulting team.

Making decision is a fundamental life skill. According to multiple sources, an adult makes about 35,000 decisions every single day. Some decisions are ‘no-brainers.’ Most decisions you’ll face are tough and complex with no easy or obvious solutions. Such decisions affect you, your family, friends, colleagues, work teams, organizations and many other known and unknown.  An effective decision-making process may be more complicated than flipping a coin, tossing a dart or letting someone else to make a mediocre choice which depends on luck for success.

To understand the complexity and irrationality that arise in human decision making, you are going to answer many interesting questions in this course.  Answers to these questions will shed light on your decision-making process and outcomes. Throughout the course journey of lectures, business cases and interactive exercises, you’ll scratch your heads and learn how to critically make life and work decisions with evidence and effective process.

The objective is to know and understand the significant events and issues that affect the business of running an organization. To discover and understand the human processes that are essential for developing leadership and management skills. The course comprises two parts: a) An experiential programme whereby students will participate in structured outdoor exercises to develop problem-solving, team building, leadership and communication skills. b) A residential course with an integrative approach to understand the complexities of leading and managing a business organization in the new millennium.

Family business is a puzzling topic that fascinates academics, investors, and managers. These businesses are ridiculed, especially in Hong Kong, as unprofessional and cronyism-driven. But one cannot ignore their importance: families started many of the most successful firms in the world; families owned the majority of listed firms; many family firms uphold the best innovation, quality and brand value; and family funds constitute some largest philanthropic and investment projects. This course takes a family enterprising approach to discuss the importance, diversity, complexity, and more importantly continuous entrepreneurship of business family (as opposed to family business). Apart from lectures and case analysis, students should interact with family members and associated professionals to understand the types, life cycle, conflict, succession, characteristics of business families. For sustaining their growth, practical approaches, such as structures and procedures as advisory boards, family councils, family venture funds and spin-offs, and family philanthropy, will also be discussed. This course shall benefit family business members, managers in family-owned firms, and professionals.

It’s an era of “Technology Everywhere”.  The rapid advancement in technology literally impacts every sector of our society.  From taxi services to mobile payment, from robotic engineering to artificial intelligence; new innovations and technology have laid substantial or even subversive changes to our ways of doing business.  It is, therefore, important for senior management to understand the uncertainty and challenges engendered by technological and market changes, and with a better understanding, be able to derive the optimal ways to cope with these changes.

This course is designed to illustrate how to devise a good market plan comprising segmentation, positioning and targeting to achieve consumer satisfaction. Emphasis is placed on adopting the basic marketing concept to enhance a firm’s long-run market position via the creation of a differential advantage while meeting consumer desires at the same time. Another emphasis of this course is to explain how a firm can excel in the ever-changing market and competitive environment.

This course integrates areas within financial management and investments to analyse merger and acquisition (takeover) markets. The class will be conducted using both lectures and presentations. The topics covered in lectures include an overview of takeover markets, legal aspects and restrictions, capital budgeting techniques, the efficient market hypothesis, the market model and computation of abnormal returns, the dividend discount model and the free cash flow model. The topics covered in presentations will include US and Hong Kong cases of mergers, tender offers and leveraged buyouts. Amongst other things, the efficient market hypothesis is applied to analyse the stock market response to takeover announcement as well as a range of other issues including: welfare gains/losses associated with takeover, the cost of capital for due acquiror and the intrinsic value of the target (using dividend discount and free cashflow models).

The course is a practical introduction to short term money markets, long-term capital markets, and derivative markets with an emphasis on Hong Kong in particular and Asia in general. After presenting an overview of these markets within the financial system, the course will focus on specific topics which may include currency, money, bond, stock or derivative market developments, innovations and restructurings, the legal framework, market manipulation and insider trading, regulatory oversight and reform, market technology and related issues.