EMBA Core Courses

Covering the full spectrum of general management principles, the Executive MBA Program’s core curriculum includes accounting, finance, organizations, strategy, economics, and marketing courses. Designed for experienced professionals, these courses will equip you with a balanced, dynamic skillset and help you become a more confident, well-rounded leader.

You are required to take 19 units of core courses, which you take at the same time as other students in your cohort. Each course counts for one credit unless otherwise noted.

All curricula and courses are subject to change.

Accounting for Management Planning and Control

This course details the use of financial information in management. Topics include profitability and performance measurement, activity-based management, and decision support.

Analytical Approach to Uncertainty

This course introduces fundamental probabilistic concepts that enable managers to make critical business decisions in the face of uncertainty.

Capstone 

This course functions as a capstone experience, integrating and synthesizing the key concepts and skills acquired throughout the program. 

Economics of Competition

This course prepares students to diagnose the determinants of an industry's structure and formulate rational, competitive strategies for coping with that structure.

Executive Perspectives on Leadership

The focus of this course is to provide a thorough understanding of what is involved in leading a global company. Through a combination of lectures, cases, and readings, the course will discuss and debate the key ingredients required to establish and manage a global company.

Financial Reporting Systems

This course introduces generally accepted accounting principles and concepts and trains students to analyze financial statements.

Foundations for Strategy Formulation

Students will explore economic principles essential for the formulation and evaluation of strategy. Topics include industry analysis, strategic positioning, and the boundaries of the firm.

Frameworks for Strategic Analysis

(.5 credit) This course explores economic principles of business strategy and develops an analytic framework for identifying and evaluating alternative strategies. 

Leadership

Effective leadership requires many skills: working well with teams, using personal and organizational resources, making difficult but critical decisions, and negotiating effectively. This course will give students frameworks for leading a team effectively to reach shared goals.

Managerial Economics

This course provides an overview of methods to estimate the sensitivity of buyers to price, the trade-off between margin and volume, price discrimination, and pricing in competitive environments.

Managerial Finance I

This course introduces the basic techniques of finance. Topics include discounting techniques and applications, evaluation of capital expenditures, and estimating bond and stock valuation.

Managerial Finance II

This course analyzes corporate financial decisions. Topics include market efficiency, capital structure, cost of capital, dividend and stock repurchase policy, and firms' use of options and convertible securities.

Marketing Management

In this course, students will focus on the importance of companies being market-driven and customer-focused and presents current theories and practices of marketing management.

Marketing Strategy

This course examines strategies over a product’s lifecycle, including strategies for growth, defense, and mature and declining markets.

Negotiation Strategies

This course provides participants with the opportunity to develop their negotiation skills in a series of simulations and debriefings that address multicultural and multiparty issues in the context of deal-making and dispute resolution. Each simulation has been chosen to highlight the central concepts that underlie negotiation strategy. These concepts are the fundamental building blocks for planning negotiation strategy, managing the negotiation process, and evaluating the quality of negotiation outcomes.

Operations Management

This course examines the basic principles of managing the production and distribution of goods and services. The course approaches operations as a managerial integration function and provides frameworks and tools to target and implement improvements in business processes.

Purposeful Collaboration 

This course is designed to prepare incoming students for the challenges and opportunities of working within study groups related to challenging coursework, job demands, tight schedules, and life disruptions. The mini-course is designed to allow students to do reasonable forecasting, scenario-planning and strategizing with their study groups so that they can successfully navigate these challenges throughout their Kellogg journey. 

Statistical Decision Analysis

A study on how to make better business decisions based on systematic data analysis.

Strategic Crisis Management

This course provides conceptual tools for managers in high-pressure, complex crisis situations. Topics include management and media, dealing with activists and interest groups, and surviving legal, legislative and regulatory challenges.