MBA7541 Conscious Capitalism: How Business can Heal our World
(Formerly Building and Leading Conscious Business)

3 CreditsBusiness-as-usual is no longer an option. It has led to rising income inequality, devastated ecosystems and widespread social unrest. We are at a turning point in how we think about the role and purpose of business in society, with both the Business Roundtable and the World Economic Forum recently issuing calls for Stakeholder Capitalism and purpose beyond profit. Led by the co-founder of the fast-growing global Conscious Capitalism movement (www.ConsciousCapitalism.org), this course immerses students in a new business philosophy that challenges business leaders to re-imagine why their organizations exist and to consciously create long-term value for all stakeholders, including society and the planet. Research shows that companies that embody the principles of Conscious Capitalism substantially outperform their peers financially over the long term, while simultaneously promoting intellectual, social, cultural, emotional, spiritual, physical and ecological well-being. Students will learn in depth how to implement the tenets of Conscious Capitalism: higher purpose, stakeholder orientation, conscious leadership and caring cultures. In addition to discovering their personal higher purpose, they will critically examine the evidence on the impact of practicing Conscious Capitalism on the tangible and intangible well-being of all stakeholders; develop an understanding of systems thinking as an essential discipline for the practice of Conscious Capitalism; learn how to transform a conventional business into a conscious business; and embark on a lifelong journey of personal transformation to become more conscious human beings and leaders. The course incorporates a blend of discussions, interactive exercises, guest speakers, personal mastery exercises and a group project that entails performing a Conscious Business Audit of a company.

HUM4620 Constructing and Performing the Self
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsIn Constructing and Performing the Self students will examine and attempt to answer the most fundamental of questions: Who am I? A question this significant cannot be adequately answered by any one approach, thus the course brings together two very different approaches to guide the investigation. Psychological studies of identity marshal the tools and methods of science to develop and test theories that describe and explain the self. Theater studies bring interpretative and aesthetic perspectives to represent and reveal identity. In this course, these two approaches will be purposely inter-mingled: the questions asked and the answers derived will be informed equally by psychology and theater. Students will see, on a daily basis, how each field informs, supports, and speaks to the other. While there are some class sessions and assignments explicitly grounded in only one field to build students' fluency, the major activities of the semester will require both.

Given how personally applicable both psychology and theater are, students' own sense of identity will be the central text in this course. Like Tom in The Glass Menagerie, students are both the main character in their own life stories and also the narrator of them. This course aims for true interdisciplinary integration, and students will be called upon to use and apply the theoretical work as they build and create an original solo performance about a key moment in their lives. Our hope is that by semester's end students will have taken a concrete step forward in understanding and articulating their sense of self and feel comfortable and confident in their ability to perform for a live, public audience.

Students are asked to alternate between four roles in this course: scholar, writer, actor, and critic.
- Scholars consume information in analytical ways and produce new knowledge that is deeply grounded in their foundational knowledge.
- Writers produce new works, both analytical and creative, that take a novel position and support it.
- Actors give life to both old and new characters, conveying their shifting objectives over time to impact an audience.
- Critics evaluate texts (in our case, performances) with a constructive, thoughtful, and respectful approach that brings new insights.
Some days students will only adopt one role, other students will be asked to oscillate between the
them.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

MKT7550 Consumer Behavior
3 CreditsIn-depth analysis of factors that affect purchase decisions in the marketplace. Applies behavioral and social science concepts to the study of buyer behavior. Focuses on the use of knowledge of buyer behavior in marketing decisions. Emphasizes theory, application, and ultimate consumer and organizational buyer behavior. Special attention given to exploring and evaluating buyer behavior research, the role of models in explaining behavior, influence of buyer behavior on development of marketing programs, and issues of consumer protection as they affect marketing strategy.

Prerequisites: MKT7200 or MKT7800

MKT3510 Consumer Insights and Research
(Formerly Marketing Research)
4 General CreditsThis course provides students with hands-on experience with marketing research and analysis. Marketing research is simply an organized way of developing and providing information for decision-making purposes. The quality of information depends on the care exercised at each step of the marketing research process. These steps include problem definition, research design, data collection methods, questionnaire design, measurement, sampling, data analysis, data interpretation. The class will discuss key elements and issues in marketing research including sources of data, data collection techniques and analytical approaches for providing information to be used in managers' decision. The first part of the class will focus on research process and design. In this section students will learn how to formulate a research problem, determine a research design, evaluate methods for data collection and develop instruments for data collection. The second part of the class will focus on how to analyze the data and recommend the appropriate action to management.

Prerequisites: SME2011 or MKT2000

MKT3550 Consumer Psychology and Shopper Marketing
(Formerly Consumer Behavior)
4 General CreditsThis interdisciplinary course discusses how the consumer is the focus of the marketing system. Drawing on research from sociology, psychology, strategy and economics, this course focuses on the factors that shape consumer needs and influence buying behavior. The content of the course explores individual behavioral variables (needs, motives, perceptions, attitudes, personality, and learning) and group influences (social groups and culture) as they affect the consumer decision-making process. The objective of the course is to help students understand how to analyze marketing programs, especially the communications mix and market segmentation, to improve consumer satisfaction.

Prerequisites: SME2011 or MKT2000

HUM4640 Contagious Cultures: Narrative, Film, Society
(Formerly Literature and Film of Contagion)
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Credits

Wherever you live in the world, it is almost certain that your life has been affected if not profoundly transformed over the past two years. The experience of living through such a vast contagion prompted me to think not about illness (I think we're exhausted by that), but about the spreadability and transmission of all sorts of infectious content. In this course, we will look very little at narratives of actual physical contagions. Instead, we will study contagion-as-metaphor for the expansion of a wide range of ideas and movements that propagate, spread, go viral, catch on, etcetera. Through narrative and film, discussion and debate, we will consider such overt topics as humor, laughter, and fear, but also beliefs, environmental contagion, cheating, social media, scapegoating and cancel culture, hair and fashion styles, protest, hope, and happiness, among other possibilities. Why and how do we aspire to some concepts going "viral," while striving to contain others? How is the speed and profusion of transmission of things other than disease both a positive and a negative aspect of our contemporary world?

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

ECN3650 Contemporary Economic Systems
4 Advanced Liberal Arts Elective CreditsAt the heart of contemporary economic debates is the question: what role should government play in the economy? This course provides a framework for understanding the real world implications and outcomes of these debates in the context of economic theories, policies and systems. The course begins with an exploration of the major economic theories as they have emerged through time and the problems each theory has sought to address. The course explores the big ideas in economics from free markets to communism to managed markets, and covers the core debates surrounding the relevance of fiscal, monetary, trade and policy/regulatory policies. The course then uses several policy and country case studies to explore the application of these ideas to pressing issues such as structural unemployment, inequality, civil conflict, climate change and the impacts of trade, focusing as well on the potential role of businesses and entrepreneurs in addressing these issues. Emphasizing fact-based analysis in assessing the goals and outcomes of diverse policies, the course builds critical thinking skills and helps prepare students for leadership roles in a dynamic global business environment.

Prerequisites: (SME2031 or ECN2002) and ECN2000

LIT4605 Contemporary World Literature: The Writing of the Unreal
4 Advanced Liberal Arts CreditsStudents who have taken VA2036 are not permitted to take LIT4605This course examines contemporary world literature through the specific prism of _the unreal_. Writers from Latin America, the Caribbean, East Asia, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East will be examined in their rich experiments with surrealism, anti-realism, and hyper-realism. Moreover, this course will explore the enigmatic conceptual territories of the dream, the nightmare, the fantasy, the illusion, the hallucination, the mirage, the vision, and the simulation as breakaway zones of the global literary imagination. To achieve this task, we will evaluate authors as diverse as Franz Kafka, Ghada Samman, Haruki Murakami, Clarice Lispector, Jose Saramago, Naguib Mahfouz, Kobo Abe, Juan Rulfo, Vi Khi Nao, and Reinaldo Arenas, interrogating their different approaches to the creation of phantasmatic, strange, and unknown spaces.

Prerequisites: Any combination of 2 ILA (HSS, LTA, CSP, LVA, CVA)

EPS6601 Corporate Entrepreneurship

3 Credits (MSAEL Core)Corporations caught up in the web of commoditization and stagnation have come to realize that they need entrepreneurial capabilities to create new platforms of business that will be the promise of the future. Yet overall, these efforts have produced uneven success. Although entrepreneurs in organizations can benefit from the resources, experience, financial assets and networks of the large company, they are constrained by its bureaucratic practices. Recent evidence points to corporate leaders' renewed attention to developing management systems that work with, rather than against intrapreneurs. In this course we will examine various approaches companies have taken to build this organizational capability. We examine five different approaches and consider the shortcomings or each. We will build the rationale for why innovation must become an organizational function if a company truly wishes to compete for the Future. We focus at the organizational level rather than the individual project level, seeking insights about how organizations can institutionalize structures and processes for entrepreneurship, even within a dominant culture of operational excellence that, of necessity, pervades most large established firms.

Prerequisites: MOB6600 and EPS6600

EPS7507 Corporate Entrepreneurship

3 Credits Corporations caught up in the web of commoditization and stagnation have come to realize that they need entrepreneurial capabilities to create new platforms of business that will be the promise of the future. Yet overall, these efforts have produced uneven success. Although entrepreneurs in organizations can benefit from the resources, experience, financial assets and networks of the large company, they are constrained by its bureaucratic practices. Recent evidence points to corporate leaders' renewed attention to developing management systems that work with, rather than against intrapreneurs. In this course we will examine various approaches companies have taken to build this organizational capability. We examine five different approaches and consider the shortcomings or each. We will build the rationale for why innovation must become an organizational function if a company truly wishes to compete for the Future. We focus at the organizational level rather than the individual project level, seeking insights about how organizations can institutionalize structures and processes for entrepreneurship, even within a dominant culture of operational excellence that, of necessity, pervades most large established firms.