Elective Courses

Term 1 (weeks 1-5) 1.5 Credit Courses 

MGMT 634: Using Financial Statements to Evaluate Firm Performance*

Benjamin Lansford

This course is designed to develop basic skills in financial statement analysis with special emphasis on understanding, organizing and summarizing financial data for decision making purposes related to valuation. The course focuses on financial and accounting analysis which consists of documenting and understanding a firm's profitability relative to past performance and comparable firms. Ratio analysis, accounting quality, and earnings management are the focal points of this portion of the course.
*Serves as a prerequisite for MGMT 635, Accounting-Based Valuation

MGMT 659 : Real Estate Finance: Asset Valuation
Jefferson Duarte

This course has two major objectives: First, this course provides an overview of topics related to real estate finance. Specifically, this course provides a detailed description of the Discounted Cash Flow model applied to real estate. The Discounted Cash Flow model is the main financial decision tool used in the real estate industry and we use it extensively in this course. Second, this course briefly overviews basic concepts commonly used in the Real Estate Industry.

MGMT 648: Applied Finance

Kevin Crotty

Study of the theory and practice of the fundamental principles in finance, emphasizing hands-on experience with a wide range of corporate finance and investment applications. The course provides extensive opportunity to implement finance theory at a practical level and to develop advanced analytical spreadsheet expertise, including financial statement forecasting, regression analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, and portfolio optimization.

*Serves as a prerequisite for MGMT 642 & MGMT 645

MGMT 682: Pricing Strategies

Utpal Dholakia

This course is designed to help the professionally active MBA student learn and apply core strategic pricing principles and concepts. In this case-based course, we will study the factors to be considered when setting and changing price and apply these principles to the development of effective pricing strategies. The pricing decision depends on economic and market factors, business strategy and customer psychology. Each perspective provides unique insights and helps formulate effective pricing decisions. While the emphasis of this course is on one component of the marketing mix, namely pricing, the pricing decision is dependent on other marketing mix variables. An important challenge in this course is to integrate pricing strategy with the rest of the marketing mix and make pricing decisions that help to achieve overall business objectives.

MGMT 684: Brand Strategy

Kathleen Harrington Clark

The Brand Strategy course is designed to build on your first-year marketing course and explore the elements of brand strategy in order to build capabilities in brand management and understand how brands drive business strategy and long-term value. The course examines what brand strategy is, what it is not, and how to manage, execute, measure and value

MGMT 709: Data Driven Marketing

Introduction to the key concepts underlying the function of marketing and its interaction with other functions in a business enterprise. Explores marketing's role in defining, creating, and communicating value to customers.

MGMT 759: Digital Transformation

Haiyang Li

Using real cases across industries and visits of industry experts, Digital Transformation is designed to equip students to confidently conceive, lead and execute digital innovation and transformation initiatives and develop new business models for existing and insurgent organizations.

MGMT 821: Leading Across Differences
Mikki Hebl
The demographics of the workforce are changing. Across industries, the talent pool is becoming increasingly diverse by many measures. To keep up with this change and to position themselves well for future success, organizations need to acknowledge this shift and embrace the idea of diversifying their workforce. This shift is not easy and cannot be done overnight; businesses need leaders who can spearhead this change, confront biases, and help the company’s practices and culture evolve. This course equips students with the knowledge and skills to lead such change.
This course is designed to provide you with optimal ways to learn about, plan for, encourage, and manage diversity in organizations. We explore the data and analyze the business case for diversity and evaluate strategies to recruit and retain future and diverse talent. Through a combination of direct instruction, testimonials from experts, and group discussions, students will gain an understanding of what it takes to lead this change in the workplace and why it is so important. Additionally, a group project gives students the opportunity to practice leading this change in real-world settings with their current employers.

Term 2 (weeks 6-10) 1.5 Credit Courses  

MGMT 645: Portfolio Management*

Yuhang Xing

Review of classic investment theory, with emphasis on measuring and managing investment risk and return. Includes the development of modern portfolio theory and asset pricing models, an introduction to option and futures contracts, market efficiency, and stock valuation. Recommended for most finance students.

*Prerequisite: MGMT 648, Applied Finance (effective Fall 2022) 

MGMT 667: Real Estate Development: Feasibility

Jefferson Duarte

This course describes the feasibility analysis of real estate developments. Topics covered are the development process, market studies, financial feasibility, and joint ventures for the primary real estate property types.

MGMT 715: Strategic Innovation & Competitive Advantage

Haiyang Li

This course will help students apply the key strategic management frameworks and concepts into the innovation management context in technology industries and help them understand that innovation is an essential and integral part of strategic management. Within this strategic perspective, this course draws upon strategic management, organization theory, product innovation, and technology management for analytical tools to address important challenges faced by managers in technology-based firms.

MGMT 784: Power & Influence in Organizations

Jonathan Miles

A manager’s primary purpose is to use power to influence subordinates and create an effective organization. This course will teach students how to build power, how to influence people, and the proper use of power in the modern organization through lecture, discussion, and experiential activities.

Full Term (weeks 1-10) 3 Credit Course  

MGMT 763: Entrepreneurship Lab

Al Danto

Prerequisites: MGMT 531 & MGMT 627 - students must apply for registration

This 3-credit/10-week elective offering is an expansion of the core enterprise courses, The New Enterprise and Enterprise Acquisition. Only offered once a student has completed these 2 courses and typically taken with 598, Capstone, it provides the opportunity for students to enhance their entrepreneurship interests or build on their MBA-acquired skillets via 3 track offerings: the new enterprise, enterprise acquisition, and the life of meaning. Students will choose one to focus on for the full duration of the course. 

• New Enterprise track: students apply the processes and lessons from the New Enterprise course to further evaluate and continue working on a startup idea. 

• Enterprise Acquisition track: students develop their own acquisition plan and can start the process to acquire a company, support an active student or alumni searcher, or start their own Search Fund. 

• Life of Meaning track: Times of disruption and major life events like completing an MBA provide a unique opportunity to evaluate strengths and true passions and to reflect on what type of career can lead to a true sense of purpose, meaning and fulfillment. Many MBA students reach the end of their MBA journey without having opportunity (or time!) to evaluate and reflect on what will give them fulfillment and a purpose in life. This project provides the opportunity, and the guidance, to take an introspective look at what personal and career paths could achieve this.

• Military Veteran Startup Accelerator: a hands-on, experiential course designed to empower students to collaborate with military veteran entrepreneurs in developing and refining their business ventures. This unique course enables students to learn through action, directly contributing to the success of veteran-led startups while gaining practical entrepreneurial skills and enhancing the Rice Business brand within the veteran community. During quadmesters that align with the Rice Veteran Business Battle application review and selection process, students will actively participate in evaluating and preparing applicants for the pitch competition. In other quadmesters, students focus on developing a robust pipeline of future applicants for the competition.

In all tracks, students are assigned a coach and attend check-in meetings to present updates and receive feedback from faculty, mentors and other students in the course. 

Term 1 (weeks 1-5) 1.5 Credit Courses  

MGMT 634: Using Financial Statements to Evaluate Firm Performance*

Benjamin Lansford

This course is designed to develop basic skills in financial statement analysis with special emphasis on understanding, organizing and summarizing financial data for decision making purposes related to valuation. The course focuses on financial and accounting analysis which consists of documenting and understanding a firm's profitability relative to past performance and comparable firms. Ratio analysis, accounting quality, and earnings management are the focal points of this portion of the course.
*Serves as a prerequisite for MGMT 635, Accounting-Based Valuation

MGMT 648: Applied Finance

Kevin Crotty

Study of the theory and practice of the fundamental principles in finance, emphasizing hands-on experience with a wide range of corporate finance and investment applications. The course provides extensive opportunity to implement finance theory at a practical level and to develop advanced analytical spreadsheet expertise, including financial statement forecasting, regression analysis, Monte Carlo simulation, and portfolio optimization.

*Serves as a prerequisite for MGMT 642 & MGMT 645

MGMT 652: Mergers and Acquisitions

Gustavo Grullon

Mergers and acquisitions can be critical to the growth of firms as they evolve through their life cycle. Yet many mergers and acquisitions transactions destroy value instead of creating it. The purpose of this course is to provide you with the financial and economic tools to understand mergers and acquisitions more deeply.

In this course we examine the core concepts involved in mergers and acquisitions: the takeover process, the legal and regulatory framework, accounting issues, tax considerations, payment method, motivations for mergers and acquisitions, empirical evidence and valuation. We also focus on corporate restructuring and divestitures, cross-border transactions, valuation of privately held firms, financing strategies and post-merger performance.

MGMT 678: Business of Healthcare

Edward Kroger

The healthcare system in the United States is massive, complex and dysfunctional. This course will serve as an introduction to students interested in leading healthcare organizations. We will describe the providers and the financial system that comprise healthcare, and the challenges healthcare faces. Next, we will turn to important opportunities for healthcare leaders to alter the current value equation through changes in organizational behavior, operations, strategy, technology and policy. Finally, we will consider the short- and long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on an already strained system.

MGMT 684: Brand Strategy

Kathleen Harrington Clark

The Brand Strategy course is designed to build on your first-year marketing course and explore the elements of brand strategy in order to build capabilities in brand management and understand how brands drive business strategy and long-term value. The course examines what brand strategy is, what it is not, and how to manage, execute, measure and value.

MGMT 759: Digital Transformation

Haiyang Li

Using real cases across industries and visits of industry experts, Digital Transformation is designed to equip students to confidently conceive, lead and execute digital innovation and transformation initiatives and develop new business models for existing and insurgent organizations.

Term 2 (weeks 6-10) 1.5 Credit Courses  

MGMT 635: Accounting-Based Valuation*

Benjamin Lansford

The objective of this course, which directly builds on materials from the “Using Financial Statements to Evaluate Firm Performance” course, is to further increase your ability to extract, interpret, and use information from financial statements. We will emphasize the understanding, organizing, and summarizing of financial data for decision-making purposes related to valuation.

*Prerequisite: MGMT 634, Using Financial Statements

MGMT 642: Futures and Options

Jeff Fleming

This course provides an introduction to derivative securities. A basic understanding of derivatives is useful for examining many issues in finance. This includes obvious issues such as whether an investor should trade futures or option contracts on an asset rather than trading the asset itself or how a firm can use derivatives to hedge its exposure to interest rate, currency or commodity price risk. It also includes more subtle issues such as whether an oil producer should stop production when oil prices fall or how a portfolio manager can guarantee some minimum asset value over a future investment horizon. The goal of the course is to develop a sufficient understanding of derivatives to consider these types of issues.

*Prerequisite: MGMT 648, Applied Finance

MGMT 667: Real Estate Development: Feasibility

Jefferson Duarte

This course describes the feasibility analysis of real estate developments. Topics covered are the development process, market studies, financial feasibility, and joint ventures for the primary real estate property types.

MGMT 712: Process Management & Quality Improvement

Ian Wedgwood 

This course introduces the leadership thinking and skills required to drive performance in processes (particularly in operations), in terms of quality, and other key performance characteristics, such as service and finance. Upon completing this course, students should understand the different facets of change, as well as the balance between strategic change, performance improvement, and operational sustainability.

MGMT 713: Strategic Issues for Global Business
Anthea Zhang
With an ever-growing number of industries becoming global in scope, managers are being increasingly challenged to manage strategies within a global perspective. “Strategic issues for global business” seeks to provide students with the skills, knowledge and sensitivity required to attain and maintain sustainable competitive advantage within a global environment. The course will adopt a strategic perspective and will highlight the following topics from this perspective: the motivation of going global, the competitive context in which companies operate in global industries, the characteristics of global, multi-domestic and transnational strategies, the unique challenges of globalization in knowledge-intensive industries, and the globalization of emerging market firms. 

MGMT 735: Marketing Lab*
Jonathan Hall
This course affords students the opportunity to apply their academic marketing knowledge to a real-world project, in a consultative role with a firm that serves as the client/project sponsor. Clients represent a variety of industries and challenge their student-managed teams to address a focused and strategically important marketing-related problem.  

*Prerequisite: MGMT 684, Brand Strategy - can be completed in same quadmester - Students must apply for registration 

MGMT 784: Power & Influence in Organizations

Jonathan Miles

A manager’s primary purpose is to use power to influence subordinates and create an effective organization. This course will teach students how to build power, how to influence people, and the proper use of power in the modern organization through lecture, discussion, and experiential activities.

Full Term (weeks 1-10) 3 Credit Course  

MGMT 763: Entrepreneurship Lab

Al Danto
Prerequisites: MGMT 531 & MGMT 627 - students must apply for registration

This 3-credit/10-week elective offering is an expansion of the core enterprise courses, The New Enterprise and Enterprise Acquisition. Only offered once a student has completed these 2 courses and typically taken with 598, Capstone, it provides the opportunity for students to enhance their entrepreneurship interests or build on their MBA-acquired skillets via 3 track offerings: the new enterprise, enterprise acquisition, and the life of meaning. Students will choose one to focus on for the full duration of the course. 

• New Enterprise track: students apply the processes and lessons from the New Enterprise course to further evaluate and continue working on a startup idea. 

• Enterprise Acquisition track: Students develop their own acquisition plan and can start the process to acquire a company, support an active student or alumni searcher, or start their own Search Fund. 

• Life of Meaning track: Times of disruption and major life events like completing an MBA provide a unique opportunity to evaluate strengths and true passions and to reflect on what type of career can lead to a true sense of purpose, meaning and fulfillment. Many MBA students reach the end of their MBA journey without having opportunity (or time!) to evaluate and reflect on what will give them fulfillment and a purpose in life. This project provides the opportunity, and the guidance, to take an introspective look at what personal and career paths could achieve this.

• Military Veteran Startup Accelerator: a hands-on, experiential course designed to empower students to collaborate with military veteran entrepreneurs in developing and refining their business ventures. This unique course enables students to learn through action, directly contributing to the success of veteran-led startups while gaining practical entrepreneurial skills and enhancing the Rice Business brand within the veteran community. During quadmesters that align with the Rice Veteran Business Battle application review and selection process, students will actively participate in evaluating and preparing applicants for the pitch competition. In other quadmesters, students focus on developing a robust pipeline of future applicants for the competition.

In all tracks, students are assigned a coach and attend check-in meetings to present updates and receive feedback from faculty, mentors and other students in the course.