Perfiles de Escuelas de Negocios

At Stanford, a tailored curriculum, diverse teaching methods, and small groups work to help students learn by doing. This is combined with a wide range of strong global experience programs.

Projects, simulations, prototyping, role-playing scenarios, global immersions, and case studies, as well as from classmates.

In the first quarter, students will be part of a 16 student seminar, which presents opportunities to build relationships with faculty and to defend viewpoints. In addition, leadership teams and leadership labs alongside personalized leadership coaching help students build skills. Close connections with the faculty enable students to delve deeply into cutting-edge research and groundbreaking ideas.

From the start, students are supported with a team that help each student make the right decisions. The faculty advisor knows student backgrounds and provides guidance to enable academic success, a student life advisor will help identify opportunities for putting leadership skills into practice, while career advisors help identify next steps.

Critical Analytical Thinking
Critical Analytical Thinking (CAT) will address issues that transcend any single discipline or function of management. In 14-16 person sections, students analyze, write about, and debate fundamental issues, questions, and phenomena that arise in many forms in management. Students will explore these critical issues broadly, as well as hone analytic and persuasive skills. CAT will enhance the ability to identify critical questions when exploring a new business issue, to parse issues, to develop reasoned positions, and to make compelling arguments. CAT also will help explore the principles and ideals that students will seek to uphold as a leader.

Ethics in Management
This course emphasizes frameworks for conducting ethical analysis (on what basis is a course of action ethical or not ethical), the analysis of ethical dilemmas (how do you think about situations in which different ethical precepts collide), and how to deal on a day-to-day basis with the practical issues of ethical behavior in organizations.

The Global Context of Management
The objectives of this course are to develop an understanding of the cultural, economic, financial, and political forces that drive the global marketplace and individual markets, and to provide a framework for, and experience in, learning quickly about specific markets. Students will gain understanding of the important questions to ask when entering a new market.

Managerial Finance
The aim of this course is to enable students to apply the fundamental ideas of financial economics to problems in the area of corporate finance. Students gain an overview of valuation principles, and how financial decisions can affect valuation, learn basic principles of corporate finance from the perspective of a financial manager, and analyze many of the important financial decisions made within firms and other institutions.

Managing Groups and Teams
This course introduces the structures and processes that affect group performance and highlights some of the common pitfalls associated with working in teams. Topics include team culture, fostering creativity and coordination, making group decisions, and dealing with a variety of personalities. Students will participate in group exercises to illustrate principles of teamwork and to give practice not only diagnosing team problems but also taking action to improve total team performance.

Organizational Behavior
Building on the discipline of social psychology, this course cultivates mindsets and builds skills to understand the ways in which organizations and their members affect one another. Students will learn frameworks for diagnosing and resolving problems in organizational settings. The course relates theory and research to organizational problems by reviewing basic concepts such as individual motivation and behavior; decision-making; interpersonal communication and influence; small group behavior; and dyadic, individual, and inter-group conflict and cooperation.

Strategic Leadership
This course examines the issues of general management and leadership in an organization. Students learn about setting an organization's strategic direction, aligning structure to implement strategy, and leading others within a firm. Students master concepts, frameworks, and tools to assess an industry and a firm's competitive environment, and to create alternatives. Students study the interplay among formal structure, informal networks, and culture which shapes performance. By integrating leadership theory, the lessons of practical application, and personal experience, students develop essential leadership skills and understand their own leadership styles.

The faculty advisor, who is also the CAT instructor, will personalize a plan for the second half of the first year in General Management Foundations courses.

Data Analysis and Decision Making
General managers require a sophisticated understanding of what one can or cannot infer from data, and make good decisions. If students have limited prior background, the base-level course covers topics such as probability theory and decision analysis (including decision trees, decision criteria, the value of information, and simulation techniques) and statistical methods for interpreting and analyzing data (including sampling concepts, regression analysis, and hypothesis testing). Students with extensive background knowledge can select courses on advanced regression and other statistical methods.

Finance
Building from the fall-quarter course in Managerial Finance, students are offered two paths: learn more about investments and financial markets or hone skills in the use of financial markets by individual corporations. Advanced courses allow students with more extensive background and experience in finance to extend their knowledge of financial markets and corporate finance.

Financial Accounting
Business leaders must read, understand, and use corporate financial statements. The base-level options in this area orient students to using financial accounting data (rather than preparing such data) and emphasize the reconstruction and interpretation of economic events from published accounting reports. Students with the requisite background will have advanced options to pursue the nuances of global financial reporting.

Human Resources
Stanford will provide students with a framework for understanding and thinking strategically about employment relations and the management of human resources in organizations. This area draws on insights from the social sciences to explore how employment relations are influenced by cultural, economic, legal, psychological, and social forces. The base-level option emphasizes four fundamental topics: (1) the selection of employees; (2) the development of their skills (human capital); (3) the use of pay to motivate workers, and other types of incentives; and (4) the organization of the workforce into teams, hierarchies, and so forth. Options allow students to specialize in HR practices for high-skill "knowledge" workers or how HR practices vary across the globe.

Information Technology
Knowledge of technology - computing, networks, software applications, etc. - is a prerequisite for a successful manager. In this area, you will learn the implications of technology for managers and organizations. A meaningful course that focuses on particular technologies is difficult because rapid changes in any technology quickly render today's lessons obsolete. Therefore, you will learn fundamentals and trends, rather than a snapshot of the current status of different technologies. The base-level course in IT offers you a broad survey of technology, while more specialized and advanced options include courses on the uses of IT in manufacturing supply chains, electronic exchanges, and electronic commerce.

Managerial Accounting
To evaluate business strategies and outcomes, students need to understand the many ways that firms account for, control, manage, and utilize costs. In this area, students learn about alternative costing methods, and how the resulting cost information can be used for decision-making. One of the base-level options emphasizes performance measurement and executive compensation. Another emphasizes strategic cost management and control. If students already understand cost accounting and alternative methods for determining the cost and profitability of different products, an advanced option emphasizes frameworks for "value-based" management.

Marketing
These courses introduce students to the substantive and procedural aspects of marketing management. Students learn about analyzing the needs and wants of potential customers, and creating and delivering goods and services profitably. Beyond the base-level option, one alternative uses learning-by-doing (through simulations), with an emphasis on business-to-business marketing; a more advanced option stresses the use of advanced statistical techniques in the practice of marketing.

Microeconomics
The discipline of microeconomics is the foundation of much of what is studied at business school. The base level course provides the framework  to study market equilibrium, firm and consumer behavior, and competitive interactions. More advanced options apply those basics to contexts, such as auctions, price discrimination, and business strategy. A very advanced option, for students with extensive background, teaches you to analyze difficult microeconomic issues empirically.

Modeling for Optimization & Decision Support
Disciplined thought is based on analytical models: simplified, quantitative depictions of a complex reality. Management runs on numbers and models. Whatever students' current level of modeling skills, improving those skills is a key to success. The base level course focuses on models built using spreadsheets and, in particular, concentrates on optimization of spreadsheet models. A more advanced option focuses on the use of discrete event simulation to model events subject to random influences. And students who have very strong modeling skills can explore the use of quantitative models in specific contexts such as models in revenue and yield management, as practiced by the civilian airline industry.

Non-Market Strategy
Markets and the business environment are increasingly interrelated. Profit-seeking firms will also meet issues that involve governments or the public. Business leaders will need to participate in complex decision-making involving the legal, political, and social environments of business. This area considers the strategic interactions of firms with important constituents, organizations, and institutions outside of markets. Beyond the base level course, an extended option of the course uses analytical models to enhance understanding of political institutions, while a second alternative concentrates on business law.

Operations
This area addresses managerial issues arising from the operations of the manufacturing and service industries. Students learn about the problems and issues confronting operations managers and gain language, conceptual models, and analytical techniques that are broadly applicable. The base level course gives a broad introduction to operations. Those with some background in the subject can elect a course that is focused on business process design. Others with a very strong background may choose an alternative that is focused on the latest developments in global manufacturing.

Students can take up to 18 electives in these areas:
    * Accounting
    * Entrepreneurship
    * Finance
    * Global Management
    * Human Resources
    * Information Technology
    * Leadership
    * Managerial Economics
    * Marketing
    * Operations
    * Organizational Behavior
    * Political Economics
    * Public Management
    * Strategic Management

Compressed Courses
In the autumn quarter of the second year, students will take a series of one- and two-week seminars to build knowledge in leading business topics.

Synthesis Seminar
The Synthesis Seminar in the last quarter of the second year provides an opportunity to synthesize key learning and prepare to apply knowledge to the real world. It complements the first year Critical Analytical Thinking (CAT) seminar, and involves the same group of 16 students.

Global Management Program (GMP)
The Global Management Program, in existence since 1994,is the foundation at Stanford for its global learning perspective. Its mission is to develop leaders with global mindset and a commitment to making positive change. It offers the following:

Certificate In Global Management
The certificate is an option within the MBA Program and is available to students who wish to focus coursework on global management.

Global Electives
    * Building Strong Global Brands
    * Business and Environmental Issues
    * Entrepreneurial Design for Extreme Affordability
    * Global Operations
    * Growth and Stabilization in the Global Economy

Global Management Immersion Experience
Students gain international work experience by completing a four week summer project in an international location. In 2008, 92 students engaged with 57 organizations in 28 countries around the world. Company sponsors include organizations in the corporate, government, and NGO settings. Students may gain academic credit from the program. Students must complete the Global Experience Requirement as part of their degree, and the immersion experience satisfies this requirement.

Stanford-Tsinghua Exchange Program (STEP) and Stanford and IIM (Bangalore) Link (SAIL)
The Stanford-Tsinghua Exchange and the Stanford and IIM (Bangalore) Link programs provide cross-cultural learning of business and management in India and China by partnering Stanford MBA students with their counterparts in Tsinghua or IIM (Bangalore) Link. Students work for nine months on joint academic projects related to business in their respective countries. Students further their bonding and deepen cross-cultural understanding during one-week visits in each country. The aim is to allow students to form long-lasting relationships with students from Tsinghua or IIM (Bangalore) Link and to facilitate an understanding of doing business in China or India.

Global Study Trips
Global Study Trips are student-initiated and offers interaction with global leaders. Global Study Trips develop perspectives of the business climates and cultural practices in countries visited, furthering the capacity to manage in a global environment.

In preparation for the trip, students host speakers on topics such as macroeconomic policy and political history and facilitate discussions on culture and business etiquette. Upon returning to campus, students complete a report and share their experiences and key takeaways with the GSB community. Participation in a Global Study Trip fulfills the Global Experience Requirement.