Business Administration (BUSN)

BUSN 1101. Introduction to Business. (4 Hours)

Blends theoretical principles with real-life application. Introduces the fundamentals of launching, growing, and managing a business venture in today’s dynamic and increasingly global environment. Examines concepts within multiple academic disciplines and from multiple perspectives—including marketing, technology, finance, accounting, information systems, people, and culture—and then applies them to new ventures within varied types of organizations. Offers students an opportunity to develop an entrepreneurial skill set and mind-set through the development of the critical thinking, innovative decision making, problem solving, and team building needed for any business, large or small.

BUSN 1102. Personal Skill Development for Business. (1 Hour)

Offers first-year students in the D’Amore-McKim School of Business (DMSB) an opportunity to achieve a better understanding of themselves as students and as future professionals. Explores self-analysis, leadership traits and styles, diversity and cultural awareness, professionalism, emotional intelligence, and ethics. Encourages students to draw connections among classroom education, extracurricular activities, and practical experiences and to identify how each component fits into the pursuit of their individual goals.

BUSN 1103. Professional Development for Business Co-op. (1 Hour)

Introduces students to the Cooperative Education Program and provides them with an opportunity to develop job-search and career-management skills. Offers students an opportunity to perform assessments of their workplace skills, interests, and values and discuss how they impact personal career choices. Students also have an opportunity to prepare a professional-style résumé, learn proper interviewing techniques, and gain an understanding of the opportunities available to them for co-op. Introduces career paths, choices, professional behaviors, work culture, and career decision making. Familiarizes students with workplace issues relative to their field of study and teaches them to use myNEU in the job-search and referral process. Presents co-op policies, procedures, and expectations of the Department of Cooperative Education and co-op employers.

BUSN 1106. Essentials of Business. (2 Hours)

Examines, in a "business boot camp" approach, how to cultivate a business mindset and develop critical business skills. Focuses on five major objectives: collaborating in teams, improving presentation and writing skills, fostering critical and entrepreneurial thinking, identifying the value of the interaction between different business disciplines, and introducing the critical business skills that are covered in more depth in students' future coursework.

Corequisite(s): PHIL 1106

BUSN 1990. Elective. (1-4 Hours)

Offers elective credit for courses taken at other academic institutions. May be repeated without limit.

BUSN 2963. Topics. (1,2 Hours)

Offers undergraduate students an opportunity to learn about timely issues, develop new skills, or explore areas of broad interest in an immersive, short-course format. Content and instructors vary by offering.

BUSN 2990. Elective. (1-4 Hours)

Offers elective credit for courses taken at other academic institutions. May be repeated without limit.

BUSN 2992. Research. (0 Hours)

Offers an opportunity to document student contributions to research projects or creative endeavors.

BUSN 3110. The Consulting Environment. (4 Hours)

Seeks to provide students with a framework and the fundamentals that allow them to understand the field of consulting in addition to a way of thinking for jobs in the consulting and other highly competitive careers. Focuses on the analysis of complex business situations using caselets and cases and provides frameworks as the basis for analysis and critical thinking in pressure situations. In addition, various articles, white papers, business case studies, and other consulting practices are shared with the students enrolled in the course as well as professionals with industry experience providing insights as visiting guest speakers.

BUSN 3944. Junior/Senior Internship. (1 Hour)

Offers students an opportunity for internship work. May be repeated up to two times.

BUSN 3990. Elective. (1-4 Hours)

Offers elective credit for courses taken at other academic institutions. May be repeated without limit.

BUSN 4990. Elective. (1-4 Hours)

Offers elective credit for courses taken at other academic institutions. May be repeated without limit.

BUSN 4992. Directed Study. (1-4 Hours)

Offers independent work under the direction of faculty members of the department on a chosen topic. Course content depends on instructor. May be repeated up to three times for a maximum of 8 semester hours.

BUSN 4998. Research. (0 Hours)

Offers an opportunity to document student contributions to research projects or creative endeavors.

BUSN 5963. Topics. (1,2 Hours)

Offers students an opportunity to learn about timely issues, develop new skills, or explore areas of broad interest in an immersive, short-course format. Content and instructors vary by offering.

BUSN 5964. Projects for Professionals. (0 Hours)

Offers students an applied project setting in which to apply their curricular learning. Working with a sponsor, students refine an applied research topic, perform research, develop recommendations that are shared with a partner sponsor, and create a plan for implementing their recommendations. Seeks to benefit students with a curriculum that supports the development of key business communication skills, project and client management skills, and frameworks for business analysis. Offers students an opportunity to learn from sponsor feedback, review 'lessons learned,' and incorporate suggestions from this review to improve and further develop their career development and professional plan.

BUSN 5965. Engaging with Industry Partners for Rising Professionals. (0 Hours)

Offers students an enhanced applied project setting in which to apply their curricular learning. Working with a partner sponsor, students refine an applied research topic, perform research, develop recommendations that are shared with the partner sponsor, and create a plan for implementing their recommendations. Curriculum supports students as they develop key business communication skills, project and client management skills, and frameworks for business analysis. Offers students an opportunity to learn from sponsor feedback, review lessons learned, and incorporate suggestions to improve and further hone their career development and professional plan. Career development opportunities through skill-building workshops, panels, and interview preparation are available. Partner-student interactions, including a culminating project presentation, allow partners to assess student potential for co-op, internship, or other employment opportunities with the partner.

BUSN 6200. Career Management. (0 Hours)

Required for the Co-op MBA program. Begins with an introduction to the career planning process and to the services of the MBA Career Center. Topics include résumé writing, videotaped practice interviewing, job search strategies, interview preparation, salary negotiation, marketing communication, and visa issues for international students seeking employment in the United States. May include additional topics depending on student interest. Requires admission to co-op MBA program. May be repeated once.

BUSN 6296. Introduction to Data Storytelling and Visualization for Business. (1 Hour)

Studies the skills required to effectively tell stories with data to drive business decisions. Covers data analysis, interpretation, and visualization techniques. Emphasizes understanding audience perspectives and mastering business presentation techniques. Offers students an opportunity to cultivate the ability to communicate complex data findings in a simple, concise, and influential manner to both technical and nontechnical audiences, thereby fostering data-driven decision making.

BUSN 6297. Leading Business Transformation. (1 Hour)

Studies the mindset, skill set, and tool set needed to make relevant changes in the way businesses and organizations operate. Examines the four dimensions of business changes: work processes, organization structure, digital transformation, and cultural transformation. Focuses on leading and driving business value. Applies to any level and business function.

BUSN 6298. Supply Chain Impact on Reaching Net Zero. (1 Hour)

Introduces the global supply chain ecosystem, as well as the scope and impact of supply chain on the net zero goals. Defines the hurdles to change including customer choice, technology limitations, and investment. Discusses solutions required to create the massive improvement necessary to meet targets and explore sourcing objectives, total cost analysis, supplier innovation, and risk-mitigation topics.

BUSN 6299. Building Profitable and Sustainable Online Experiences. (1 Hour)

Offers a rigorous introduction to the craft of using data, behavioral science, and machine learning to create highly personalized and engaging app experiences that make users happy. Focuses on free-to-play apps and presents case studies covering personalization systems with proven lift in engagement, retention, and monetization.

BUSN 6324. Predictive Analytics for Managers. (1 Hour)

Presents the concepts of correlation and simple linear regression analysis as well as multiple regression analysis. Offers students an opportunity to build multiple regression models and use them in forecasting and analyzing data. Exposes students to nonlinear regression models, reading and analyzing output tables, and using statistical software tools.

BUSN 6341. Digital Financial Models—How to Value an e-Business. (1 Hour)

Exposes students to the dynamics of the online market space and provides an opportunity to utilize digital analytics tools that provide insight into online customer segments, site visitor behavior, digital marketing strategy and tactics, and historical conversion rates. The valuation of an online business can be difficult if it is not a typical e-commerce business. Explores factors that affect cash flows and cost of capital for such businesses in detail and analyzes the various channels of funding. Offers students an opportunity to conduct an in-class valuation of an e-commerce and lead generation business. Challenges students to build future revenue projections. As a final analysis, class participants are asked to value an online business and submit a paper.

BUSN 6343. Sharing Economy, Crowdsourcing, and Digital Business Transformation. (1 Hour)

Explores how a highly connected world driven by technological advances fuels a digital transformation centered around networks, crowds, and markets. Covers network effects and 'rich-get-richer' phenomena; business models and strategies for multisided markets and platforms; crowdsourcing and online labor markets; sharing economy; and new ways organizations become innovative by tapping into expertise outside firms' boundaries. Discusses business cases from industries including Uber/Lyft, Airbnb, Kickstarter, Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, Upwork, Etsy, eBay, InnoCentive, and TopCoder. Explicitly addresses possible negative consequences. Explores critical risks such as bias and inequality due to deregulation, social and algorithm-based discrimination, and an overall critique of growth-based business models. Offers students an opportunity to hone their skills to spearhead game-changing digital initiatives to learn how to manage others in the wake of disruptive changes.

BUSN 6344. The Fintech Revolution. (1 Hour)

Uses case studies and illustrations to explore the key major innovations that are revolutionizing and driving opportunities in fintech. Topics may include payments: payment processing, transfers, rewards; blockchain: digital currency, smart contracts, DLT, trading; investments: Robo Advisors, investment management; planning: retirement planning, education planning; lending: crowdfunding, P-2-P lending, alternative money-raising platforms; insurance: underwriting, comparison platforms; big data and analytics: AI and big data solutions, alternative data; security: cybersecurity, authentication, encryption. Also discusses business models and opportunities in fintech, including the evolution of fintech and the current state of the art; case studies of successful business models in fintech startups; key things that differentiate a successful fintech company; and best practices and tips when working on a fintech idea.

BUSN 6347. Change in the Digital Era. (1 Hour)

Explores the meaning of “digital transformation” in the 21st century. Introduces students to current best practices regarding organizational change, talent development, leadership, and organizational design. Analyzes the effectiveness of current best practices in light of digitalization. Offers students an opportunity to explore “next practices” regarding organizational change, talent development, leadership, and organizational design with a goal of understanding how to enhance personal resilience in the face of ongoing change.

BUSN 6350. Managerial Coaching. (1 Hour)

Introduces students to managerial coaching and why it facilitates heightened performance through learning. Students engage in discussions about the elements required for successful coaching, as well as common barriers to successful coaching. Also introduces students to a model for effective managerial coaching. Offers students an opportunity to develop a mindset to receive and provide coaching to achieve higher performance and career success, as well as to put into action and practice the lessons through experiential coaching role-playing scenarios.

BUSN 6351. Experiential Education. (1-3 Hours)

Consists of various experiential learning opportunities that are approved by the faculty of the D'Amore-McKim School of Business for full-time MBA students.

BUSN 6352. Python for Business Analytics. (1 Hour)

Introduces a detailed overview of Python programming for data mining and prediction in a business context in order to tackle modern-day data analysis problems. This course is appropriate for students who wish to learn and apply Python tools to business analysis.

BUSN 6353. Business Ethics: Compliance and Enforcement. (1 Hour)

Examines the value of making sound ethical business decisions and the consequences for not making them. Builds on the students’ own ethics values, as well as presentations of real-life events from those who were involved. Perspectives include those of victims, perpetrators, law enforcement, and journalists. Examines the situations and challenges presented to decision makers as part of their professional responsibilities. Uses a combination of lectures and interactive interviews with professionals who share their real-life experiences. Designed to challenge students to think through difficult ethical situations and to be a platform for discussions.

BUSN 6354. Creating Value through Artificial Intelligence. (1 Hour)

Investigates how companies can create value through artificial intelligence. Studies companies from startups to large multinationals across a variety of industries. Analyzes the AI strategies implemented or attempted by these companies to understand drivers of success and identify future opportunities. Uses lectures, case discussions, team and individual exercises, and a project on creating a value-driven AI strategy to offer students an opportunity to begin to develop intuition behind modern AI technologies. Designed to provide an accessible introduction and does not require coding or algorithm development.

BUSN 6363. Social Impact of Business. (2 Hours)

Explores how business practices affect society and how society affects business practices. Addresses topics such as social impact investing, sustainable supply chains, corporate social responsibility, social entrepreneurship, and global perspectives on corporate citizenship. Business and society have never been more intertwined. Executives are increasingly called upon to consider the larger societal impacts of their decisions and at the same time find themselves subject to demands from multiple societal stakeholders that include customers, suppliers, employees, governments, and interest groups, among others.

BUSN 6365. Business Analytics. (3 Hours)

Provides an overview of data collection, organization, analysis, interpretation, and presentation techniques used by contemporary organizations. Students use multiple software tools to collect, prepare, manage, analyze, evaluate, understand, critique, visualize, and present data sets of various types. Offers students an opportunity to obtain essential skills, tools, and techniques required to understand data sets, both large and small, from sources internal and external to an organization. This understanding can then be used to support datacentric decision making and create a measurable improvement in business performance. Businesses run on data, and employees at all levels must know how to properly use and interpret data to support their roles within a company.

BUSN 6366. International Corporate Governance and Strategic Thinking. (1 Hour)

Introduces key concepts in strategic corporate governance. Offers students an opportunity to use these concepts to understand the different economic, social, and political contexts across advanced industrial and emerging economies. Describes key aspects of corporate governance systems in a number of different countries and analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of these systems in comparison. Examines the importance of social and political factors in shaping different models of firm organization across countries and how new governance practices and institutional norms develop in response to changes in the real world of business management.

BUSN 6368. Immigrant Contributions to the U.S. Innovation Economy. (1 Hour)

Offers students an opportunity to learn firsthand about the motivations of highly skilled people to immigrate to the United States; the capabilities they bring; the challenges they face in adapting to U.S. society and the workplace; and the multiple layers of imprinting from their home countries and their adopted country, the United States. These factors converge to create complex identities that have an impact on the innovation and entrepreneurial potential of these immigrants.

BUSN 6369. Using Data from Application Programming Interfaces for Informed Decision Making. (1 Hour)

Covers the fundamentals of data-gathering techniques from Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). Exposes students to how a basic API works on a conceptual level; how to find and read the documentation for any API endpoint usage; how to write and test queries to APIs; how to understand the basic request/response framework; the differences between traditional API endpoint structures and graph structures; common applied business APIs such as Yelp, Twitter, and others; and how to leverage popular statistical software such as Python to automate the data-gathering process from APIs.

BUSN 6370. Digital Money. (1 Hour)

Considers the evolution and significance of digital currencies and payment systems; government responses in the form of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs); the ensuing competition with private stablecoins and cryptocurrencies; and the strategic impact of the rise of digital currency on enterprises and on their interactions with regulators, suppliers, and customers. Explores key issues such as digital money, policy implications, government concerns over digital money, the possible launch of CBDCs, and business and societal implications.

BUSN 6371. Setting Your Own Work/Life Agenda. (1 Hour)

Examines issues related to contemporary careers and the changing nature of the workplace from a work/life perspective. Students engage in an extensive, self-directed analysis of personal strengths, preferences, and developmental needs as they craft plans for a postgraduate school career. Designed to help students to discern or validate their career direction and to construct an important narrative they can use to explain their interests to potential employers and others in their network. Emphasizes forging their own unique, positive career path and pursuit of optimal work/life balance. Offers students an opportunity to build critical leadership skills needed for assessing and understanding the career and work/life issues of others they may work with, manage, and live with.

BUSN 6372. High-Engagement Management. (1 Hour)

Explores how organizations can be designed and run to create conditions of high engagement and high performance. Offers students an opportunity to experience the contrasting impacts of low- and high-engagement management; learn the management practices that affect employee engagement; and understand the relationship between high-engagement practices and organizational performance.

BUSN 6373. Agilizing the Enterprise. (1 Hour)

Studies the importance of agility and how it affects the solutions delivered by an organization. Discusses how a blend of strategic innovation, visionary leadership, managed resilience, and organizational agility go hand in hand to ensure the success of an organization. Exposes students to agile transformation, the process of examining the organization to find specific areas where an agile operating model can unlock value. The principles of agility can be applied across the whole organization.

BUSN 6374. Creating Shared Value as a Way of Life. (1 Hour)

Designed to empower students with a holistic toolkit to make “creating shared value” a way of life as a social innovator, entrepreneur, and strategist who is prepared to tackle the challenges of the 21st century. Offers students an opportunity to be exposed to and practice the concepts of business policy by assuming the role of a strategist analyzing the strategic context of a company/venture at a point in time.

BUSN 6375. Designing 21st-Century Business Organizations. (1 Hour)

Addresses the question: What is the most effective organizational design (or designs) for meeting the challenges of the 21st century? Describes a process for designing an organization, along with some of the key challenges associated with organizational design. Reviews the design options available historically, as well as designs that are more popular in recent years. Asks students to justify their own conclusions about which organizational design is best suited to meet the requirements and challenges facing business organizations today.

BUSN 6376. The Business Case for Social and Economic Justice. (1 Hour)

Examines how strategic business decisions are made and governing policies established in today's changing corporate environment. Discusses whether it is advisable for CEOs to “take a stand” on behalf of their company and their employees when fundamental shared values and a company's purpose or mission are at stake. After a grounding in business governance theory and history, students debate whether CEOs should speak openly on controversial public issues. One can make the case that a CEO taking a position on one side of a public issue is a significant strategic risk. Conversely, stakeholders are increasingly demanding that business leaders publicly take positions and change business practices to align with those values.

BUSN 6377. Learning from Crisis:Toward Sustainability and Resilience. (1 Hour)

Highlights the importance of public-private sector interconnections and systemic partnerships within communities to promote resilience and enable progress toward sustainable development, such as those promoted by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). Covers the nexus between resilience, sustainable development, and the impact of crises on societies and multinational corporations. Includes both conceptual material and examples. Includes a case study competition where students are presented with a challenge scenario and then asked to provide a presentation where they think creatively about how firms and communities can have a reciprocal relationship toward sustainable development and resilience.

BUSN 6378. Effective Business Storytelling. (1 Hour)

Examines the art and science behind effective storytelling in a business context. Explores the role and criticality of storytelling to achieve business objectives. Introduces students to the key elements of a good story and the finite story types that exist. Challenges assumptions about storytelling—what it is, its role in business, and the skills storytellers need. Provides a wide range of written and spoken examples and exercises. Offers students ample opportunities to practice and critique storytelling in a variety of contexts, from the quotidian to the difficult.

BUSN 6379. Entrepreneurial Ecosystems. (1 Hour)

Examines the development, growth strategies, and stewardship of entrepreneurial ecosystems and “startup communities.” Defines and measures ecosystems. Studies the ways that governments, corporations, and community groups attempt to shape ecosystem development. Surveys leading authorities in the field and looks at real-world examples of success and partial success from several different perspectives.

BUSN 6380. Predictive Modeling for Business. (1 Hour)

Introduces students to selected principles and techniques of predictive analytics through a case study approach, with a focus on classification models. Topics covered include the fundamental properties of supervised machine learning methods; common applications of supervised learning models in business contexts; and the implementation and interpretation of two popular classification models, logistic regression and random forest. The open-source software environment R is used to perform analysis for course assignments.

BUSN 6381. Business Applications of Natural Language Analytics. (1 Hour)

Surveys the applications within business of Natural Language Analytics (NLA), including Natural Language Processing (NLP), Understanding (NLU), and Generation (NLG). Over the past decade, NLA has experienced exponential improvements in capabilities and applications to various areas within marketing, supply chain, finance, and public policy. Offers students the opportunity to learn how to wrangle and analyze text data (NLP), apply foundational models to gain understanding of data contained within text (NLU), and have the opportunity to work with tools that allow them to auto-generate language (NLG). Applications will showcase document classification, sentiment analysis, content generation, chat bot design, and question/answer. All applications will be showcased in R.

BUSN 6382. Real Options. (1 Hour)

Introduces the concept of real options, offers theoretical underpinnings for the method, and broadly covers option pricing methods. Examines the use of real options in making financial decisions for capital budgeting decisions, helping to maximize shareholder value. Explores methods such as net present value, or NPV, and internal rate of return, or IRR, to evaluate the feasibility of projects. Examines several applications in project valuation using MS Excel.

BUSN 6383. Blockchain and Decentralized Finance. (1 Hour)

Introduces the fundamental building blocks of blockchain technology, as well as its application in cryptocurrencies and, in particular, decentralized finance. Covers the fundamentals of cryptography, such as hash functions and digital signatures. Emphasizes three major DeFi applications: stablecoins, lending platforms, and exchanges.

BUSN 6384. Marketing in the Metaverse. (1 Hour)

Explores how firms are using metaverses for marketing purposes to enhance marketing strategy and to create value for customers in virtual worlds through marketing experiences similar to what a brand does in real life. Examines current trends, drivers, and barriers to the use of metaverses for marketing purposes. Studies how a metaverse can help in marketing activities—marketing strategy, advertising, and customer relationships—and how established firms have started engaging in marketing in a metaverse—Nike launching “Nikeland,” a metaverse game where people can interact with the brand.

BUSN 6386. Crafting Your Personal Strategy. (1 Hour)

Examines the application of strategy frameworks and practices for crafting individual professional strategies. Applies concepts of mindfulness and strategic thinking to formulate strategic actions to create a pathway toward personal vision within a professional world. Offers students an opportunity to define and identify their personal vision, match their vision to external and internal environments, and formulate their personal strategy for a market entry.

BUSN 6402. Stakeholder Values and Societal Challenges in Business. (2 Hours)

Examines how to analyze the impact that societal challenges have in business decision making. Focuses on the challenges that companies face when embracing and empowering goals to add value to their shareholders and stakeholders while “doing good.” Examines the increasingly complex relations between businesses with outsized power and reach and governments in developed and emerging economies. Studies the implications of firm-level and government-level decision making and the impact on the specific communities where decisions are enacted. Studies the roles played by for-profit entities, not-for-profit entities, nongovernmental organizations, and government agencies in exploring, understanding, and achieving progress with these challenges.

BUSN 6945. Washington Campus Seminar. (3 Hours)

Offers a weeklong educational residency in Washington, D.C., where students meet with members of Congress, current and former executive branch officials, senior civil servants, business executives, lobbyists, representatives of the media, and special-interest groups. Offers students an opportunity to understand how Washington works, how legislative and regulatory changes impact their business futures, and what new business opportunities may evolve as the result of federal policy priorities and decisions. The residency seeks to offer unparalleled insight into the process of government, with the goal of enabling top business leaders to contribute ethically and effectively to the policy debate, influence policy outcomes, and leverage their understanding of policy trends to developing new business opportunities.

BUSN 6950. MBA Skills Workshop. (0 Hours)

Continues the full-time MBA orientation program. Offers students an opportunity to develop the management skills necessary to become effective managers, including communication skills, qualitative and quantitative business analysis, and ethics and values.

BUSN 6954. Co-op Work Experience - Half-Time. (0 Hours)

Provides eligible students with an opportunity for work experience. May be repeated without limit.

BUSN 6955. Co-op Work Experience Abroad - Half-Time. (0 Hours)

Provides eligible students with an opportunity for work experience. May be repeated without limit.

BUSN 6962. Elective. (1-4 Hours)

Offers elective credit for courses taken at other academic institutions. May be repeated without limit.

BUSN 6964. Co-op Work Experience. (0 Hours)

Provides eligible students with an opportunity for work experience. May be repeated up to five times.

BUSN 6970. Professional Projects. (0 Hours)

Offers graduate students an opportunity to participate in flexible, professional work experiences through micro-internships, an alternative to a traditional corporate residency or co-op. Students demonstrate and enhance their career readiness competencies, explore career paths, and expand their network. These project-centered experiences are primarily remote, involve 10 to 40 hours of work, and are deadline driven as opposed to set during specific hours.

BUSN 6976. Directed Study. (1-4 Hours)

Offers independent work under the direction of faculty members of the department on a chosen topic. Course content depends on instructor. May be repeated up to four times.

BUSN 7976. Directed Study. (1-4 Hours)

Offers independent work under the direction of members of the department on chosen topics. May be repeated without limit.