Curriculum

Common Outcomes of Masters Programs:

• Develop the ability to use critical, analytical, and reflective thinking and reasoning
• Reflect on social and ethical responsibilities in his/her professional life.
• Gain experience and confidence in the dissemination of project/research outputs
• Work responsibly and creatively as an individual or as a member or leader of a team and in multidisciplinary environments.
• Communicate effectively by oral, written, graphical and technological means and have competency in English.
• Independently reach and acquire information, and develop appreciation of the need for continuously learning and updating.

Common Outcomes for Institute:

• Develop, interpret and use statistical analyses in decision making.

Program Specific Outcomes:

• Identify and diagnose business problems and opportunities accurately and effectively across a wide range of business domains (accounting, financial management, operations, marketing, strategy, and organizational design), in global and local contexts.
• Incorporate cultural context and complexities in their managerial practice.
• Assess the performance of an organization in a wide range of business domains, using a range of performance criteria.
• Identify, select, and justify strategies and courses of action at the divisional, business, and corporate levels of analysis and to develop effective plans for the implementation of selected strategies across a wide range of business domains and levels.

Sabancı Executive MBA is a 12 months intensive program organized in two six-month-long semesters. Courses are mainly scheduled on Friday evenings and Saturday all day. Some elective courses are also offered on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday evenings on weekdays..

The first semester concentrates on the development of the academic foundation. Moderately theoretical courses that are designed to develop analytical and business skills and knowledge are provided. In the second term, the students take Organizational Behavior & Leadership, Ethics in Business and Strategic Management courses as well as electives to gain knowledge and skills necessary to lead and run an entire organization. During the second term, the students will visit Columbia Business School and will take courses on Leadership, Innovation & Entrepreneurship.

Executive MBA Summary of Degree Requirements

1st Term – Fall – Required Courses

ACC 901 Financial Accounting & Reporting – 2 Credits
The course offers an introduction to the principles and concepts of accounting along with the preparation and analysis of financial statements. The purpose is to make managers intelligent consumers of financial reports for managerial decision making. 

MGMT 900 Data Driven Decision Making – 2 Credits
This course covers a range of topics related to research methodology and statistics relevant to managerial decision making. The emphasis is on using the concepts taught throughout the semester in terms of conducting hands-on data analysis. Topics covered include measurement and sampling, survey construction and validation, basic probability concepts and probability distributions, and statistics concepts such as confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, regression, and time-series forecasting. The successful student will finish this course with an ability to effectively evaluate and act upon statistical reports and data relating to applications in business. 

MGMT 910 Strategic Management – 3 Credits
Introduces a plurality of perspectives in strategic thinking and action. Strategy as plan, position, perspective, and pattern capture the diversity of perspectives essential to grasp in managerial practice. The contact and the process pertaining to these perspectives will be covered, and the experience of the participants integrated into the conceptual frameworks. 

MGMT 914 Managerial Economics– 1.5 Credits
Because we interact, cooperate, and compete with each other in the economy, economics is a social subject. Everyone experiences the economy. Everyone contributes to it, one way or another. Everyone has an interest in the economy: in how it functions, how well it functions, and in whose interests it functions. This course aims to motivate students to learn economics by asking questions about how the contemporary economy functions as an overall system. The course focuses on competition between firms; the determination of overall investment, consumption and employment; and the relationship between the economy and the natural environment. 

MKTG 901 Marketing Management – 3 Credits
Marketing concepts and methods used in processes that integrate innovative and productive capabilities of a firm into its products and services in light of its customers' needs, market challenges, and company objectives; the application of these concepts and methods in market analysis, marketing strategy development, and implementation design through the development of a complete marketing plan in a real market environment. 

2nd Term – Spring – Required Courses

FIN 902 Managerial Finance – 3 Credits
Fundamental financial concepts from the perspective of financial managers/entrepreneurs are examined and practical applications within local and global contexts are discussed. Topics include accounting information for decision making/performance evaluation, financial statement and ratio analyses, financial planning, time value of money, capital budgeting, risk-return relationship, capital structure, valuation of financial securities and firms, risk management, and derivatives. 

MGMT 901 Doing Business Glocally: Global trends/local– 1.5 Credits
The phenomenon of globalization is discussed in connection with a variety of issues directly and/or indirectly relevant for business and managerial practices. Topics include the globalization debate in terms of conceptualization, causal dynamics, socio-economic consequences, and implications for macroeconomic stability, state power, and governance.

MGMT 905 Ethics in Business – 1.5 Credits
Ideas and perspectives on ethical issues in contemporary business are discussed with the objective to expand participants' capacity for moral inquiry and increase their alertness about the impact of business on society. Various ethical and moral dilemmas in business decision making are examined encountering the philosophical issues at the foundation of economic theory and management science. Review of recent debacles in the corporate world focusing on practical issues such as social responsibility, ethical investments, sustainability, corporate governance, corporate citizenship, codes of ethics as well as on more conceptual inquiries on morality and future of market-driven societies.

OPIM 902 Operations and Supply Chain Management - 3 Credits

This course deals with the design, production and distribution of goods and services. Managerial issues and decision problems include the design, planning, and control of processes at strategic and operational levels. Concepts and tools used in generating solutions to problems and their implementations aspect are discussed. Operating systems from different areas such as manufacturing, service and transportation are exemplified to expose students to the similarities and differences in their characteristics. Students are also exposed to recent developments in the global competitive environment and the impacts of such developments on traditional operations problems. Topics include operations strategy, processdesign and improvement, quality management, capacity, and supply chain management.
 
ORG 902 Organizational Behaviour and Leadership – 2 Credits
Organizational behavior studies people in organizations, how and why they think, feel, and act. This topics include motivation, decision-making, leadership, organizational culture, communication, organizational conflict, power and negotiation, team processes, organization change, structure and change, covered in traditional lectures with the use of cases, group projects and experiential exercises.

The following list of electives is provided here to give candidates some idea about the type of courses offered in the program. The actual list of courses may vary every year.

ACC 910 Financial Statement Analysis – 1.5 Credits
The course focuses on how finance professionals use and interpret financial tables. Creation and use of financial ratios are discussed. Assessment of the financial strength of companies is examined. 

FIN 906 Behavioral Finance – 1.5 Credits

Behavioral finance is a relatively new but quickly expanding field that seeks to provide explanations for people’s financial decisions by combining behavioral and cognitive psychological theory with conventional economics and finance. Neoclassical economists assume that; i) all individuals act rationally to maximize their utility for both monetary and non-monetary gains, and ii) markets are fully efficient and prices reflect all available, relevant information. However, in reality these assumptions often do not hold. Behavioral finance helps explain why and how markets might be inefficient, why people are imperfect processors of information and why they are often subject to biases, errors and perceptual illusions. CFA exam curriculum devotes more and more weight to behavioural finance every year. Portfolio managers, investment advisors, consultants, CFOs and individual investors must have an in-depth understanding of different behavioral biases and their impacts on financial decision making. This course aims to be a guide to understanding the fundamentals of behavioral finance and reasons and impacts of irrational investor behaviour. Throughout the course, we will cover psychological biases that effect the financial decision-making process and examine their impacts on financial markets and on people’s lives. The course will be supported by real-life case studies, analyses of investor behaviour, cases of behavioral interventions to modify investor behaviour and interviews / Q&A sessions with investment practitioners.

FIN 958 Global Financial Markets – 1.5 Credits
This course is an introduction to the global financial markets that are used by banks, multinational corporations, and government agencies, in the conduct of their business and implementation of economic policy. The global financial markets include the market for foreign exchange, the Eurocurrency and related money markets, the international capital markets, the commodity markets and the markets for forward contracts, options, swaps and other derivatives. The course seeks to explain how these markets work both in the context of basic principles of economics and finance and by means of examples and applications using several case studies. It will also look at a very important type of risk, namely the exchange rate risk, for multinational corporations, banks, and other entities (hedge funds, shadow banks, etc.) and discuss how to manage and hedge these risks using various financial instruments. Finally the course will provide theoretical and empirical analysis on the prediction, prevention, and management of various financial crises, such as banking, currency, debt, and balance of payments crises. . 

FIN 999 Wealth Management – 1.5 Credits

The course offers a hands-on experience about the practical aspects of financial portfolio management. Along with the concepts covered in the class, students are expected to build a portfolio management notion by thinking on real world problems. The main themes are investment decision making process and investment policy statement, management of individual and institutional portfolios, integrating capital market expectations and asset allocation, technical and practical aspects of portfolio management in traditional asset classes and alternative investments.

MKTG 904 Digital Marketing – 3 Credits

This course examines the emergence of the new digital markets as well as how traditional markets are affected by the widespread use of information communication technology by consumers and businesses. Internet business models, trends, strategies, and technologies are covered.

MKTG 907 Sales Management – 1.5 Credits

The goal of the Sales Management course is to examine the elements of an effective sales force as a key component of the organization's total marketing effort. The course will extend student’s understanding of marketing's reach and potential impact in achieving its overarching goals. Course objectives include understanding the sales process, the relationship between sales and marketing, sales force structure, customer relationship management (CRM), use of technology to improve sales force effectiveness, and issues in recruiting, selecting, training, motivating, compensating and retaining sales people.

MGMT 911 Business Simulation – 1.5 Credits

This course provides an opportunity for the participants to integrate knowledge and experience through a computer-based simulation environment. As student teams compete, they develop a deeper understanding of how the various functional areas of management (finance, marketing, production) are integrated.

MGMT 940 Digital Transformation and Innovation – 1.5 Credits
The digital transformation that has been happening in the industry is leading to the disappearance of borders between cyber and physical systems and creating synergies between them. In order to maintain and improve their firms’ competitiveness, decision makers need to know the technologies, approaches, and best practices that further this transformation. Digital transformation has also helped recognition of the role of innovation in the global competitive environment among other operational priorities (cost, quality, flexibility, and delivery). This course involves an in-depth discussion into such topics, cases, and best practices.

MGMT 964 Great People Decisions – 1.5 Credits
This course will introduce students to how to make more effective people decisions. The aim of the course will be to make key appointments easier through good people decisions. In a comprehensive and practical way, the course will use and provide simple methodology to provide what one needs to know about hiring, evaluating and promoting (senior) talent, including such topics as:
• The Success Formula in People Decisions
• Why Great People Decisions Are So Hard
• What to Look For
• Where to Look
• How to Appraise People
• How to Attract and Motivate the Best People
• Knowing When a Change Is Needed

MGMT 971 Design Thinking and the Power of Storytelling in Business – 1.5 Credits

This course aims at introducing students to new concepts and methods: design thinking and storytelling. Design thinking promotes user-centered innovation, experimentation to cope with the uncertainties that firms face during the innovation process, which rests on some principles, such involvement of users to the innovation or product/service development and design process, problem framing, leveraging empathy with users, experimentation, and diversity. Offering a new method of problem solving, Design Thinking emphasizes the importance of experimenting, learning-by-doing, listening customers, iterations until finding a satisfying solution to the problems. Entrepreneurs or managers challenge with not only creating viable solutions to the problems and solutions/innovations to customers and stakeholders where narratives and stories always helped to communicate their vision, and how their innovations would shape the future. Although these stories have improved the communication between and within the firms and their stakeholders, the power of storytelling in business has been widely ignored. Today, with the rise of social media and new communicational channels and tools, storytelling has become more and more critical talent/competence. Providing students with practice-based skills is critical in this course, for this aim, they are required to work on two projects. One of them is based on practicing design thinking process and principles, which students are requested to frame a problem, develop a viable solution, develop a prototype as ensuring user/customer involvement and conduct various experiments to understand the viability of the solution. Second project focuses on storytelling practices; students are required to craft an effective story for the innovation/solution that they develop for the first project. They are also requested to deconstruct and analyze the stories told by classmates.

MGMT 972 Cybersecurity for Executives – 1.5 Credits

The methods and tactics used by the advanced persistent threat attackers are explained at a non-technical level to enable the business executives to understand the enemy and evaluate their organization's posture against it. While stay a non-technical level demonstrations are provided to have a better grasp on the attacker methods and tools. Managing cybersecurity risks requires a good understanding of governance, regulatory requirements and relevant best practices. Thus, a cybersecurity governance primer is also provided to the participants.

MGMT 996 Managerial Skills Development  – 1.5 Credits

Managerial Skills Workshop is a series of seminars and hands-on activities designed to develop various team and professional skills of the MBA students to support them as they embark on their careers.