Central banks have significant influence on the environment in which managers operate. They guide the economy via monetary policy, are closely watched by financial markets, and have become increasingly involved in the supervision of financial institutions. The course takes a deep dive into the theoretical and practical considerations that shape the policies of central banks around the world.

The course is designed to connect a broad set of forces of change in the global economy and to consider very specific alternatives for developing real options for competing in such an environment. Very current, cutting edge books and articles will be offered.

This course explores the major issues and managerial concepts relating to strategic management of the operations function in today's global economy. The course targets prospective general managers. It is organized into three main topical groups, including an introduction to operations strategy concepts, an examination of operations strategy process tools, and the discussion of specific management decision areas within the operations strategy framework. Competitive cost analysis is emphasized and issues related to e-business operations strategy are included in the discussion of the topical issues. Business cases studied include a mix from both the manufacturing and service industries. Classes may feature visiting company executives, and there is a strong global emphasis throughout the course.

This course focuses on two-party negotiations in a wide variety of settings ranging from simple buyer-seller bargains to complex, multi-issue strategic relationships. Most class sessions revolve around the results of negotiations between class members that are conducted prior to class, as preparation for the session. The results of these negotiations are displayed each day and provide an opportunity for explicit feedback on each student's negotiating performance. Class discussion reviews the wide variety of experiences in the specific negotiation and develops and tests hypotheses regarding effective behaviors, tactics, and strategies. The resulting ideas are reinforced and further developed through a series of weekly readings. Finally, the course offers several frameworks for codifying each student's negotiation toolkit and for describing each student's negotiation behavior.

A Darden Independent Study elective includes either case development or a research project to be conducted by an individual student under the direction of a faculty member. Students should secure the agreement of a resident faculty member to supervise their independent study and assign the final grade that is to be based to a significant degree on written evidence of the individual student's accomplishment.

The purpose of this seminar is to provide a critical introduction to scholarly reading and writing concentrating on one portion of the foundations of management theory; namely, pragmatism and stakeholder theory. While we will address some "classic" texts in management and ethics, you should understand that the syllabus is idiosyncratic to me, rather than systematic.

An independent study course is a faculty supervised study in which students explore a specific topic in the area of business administration.

The Competitive Dynamics Doctoral Seminar is designed to introduce students to the competitive dynamics (CD) literature and to train them in a programmatic approach to conducting research within this subfield of strategy. The elective is open to all PhD students in business and related disciplines.

Dynamic Programming provides a set of general normative methods for making sequential decisions under uncertainty. While there are no formal prerequisites for the course, some level of exposure to optimization, probability theory, and matrix-vector algebra is highly desirable. The course brings a new dimension to static models studied in optimization by investigating dynamic systems and their optimization over time.

For doctoral research taken under the supervision of a dissertation director.