Course Descriptions
All EMBA programs say they teach leadership, but our second term focuses on a personalized approach to learning the soft skills. Coupled with the core business fundamentals you learn in the first term, our leadership courses prepare you for more senior positions. Starting with self-awareness exercises and goal-setting, we’ll provide you with feedback and coaching to help you develop, change and grow. Through a combination of course work, workshops and assessments, we’ll help you put your plan into action so you can apply what you’ve discovered.
First Term
A good strategy is a roadmap that guides company decision making at all levels. This course, the first of two parts, will introduce you to the concepts and theories of strategic management. Analyzing case studies —starting with the ultimate brand war, Coke vs. Pepsi — you’ll build a personal toolkit that you’ll use on your own company in the second term.
Microeconomics is the study of economic decisions on a small scale — how individual consumers, firms and governments allocate scarce resources. We’ll talk about the impact of prices and incomes, the key microeconomic variables. This course will also give you the tools to analyze current economic conditions and policies.
This course will teach you how to interpret financial statements — both for what they tell us, and more importantly, for what they don’t. You’ll acquire technical knowledge of how these statements are prepared, using cases and problems to study balance sheets, income statements, and more.
RSM5401H Business Operations
Operations is the process that converts inputs (labor, material, knowledge, and equipment) into outputs (goods and services) for both internal and external markets. We’ll study how to manage this process, looking at strategic issues as well as tactical and operational decision making.
Strategic marketing involves determining which customers your business should serve, what products and services you should offer them, and how. You’ll learn key concepts in marketing and how they fit into an overall strategy, looking at your own company for examples.
RSM5801H Quantitative Reasoning for Management
This course will show you how to use statistics to solve day-to-day business problems. Making informed decisions based on data analysis requires an understanding of how statistics are put together — and how they can be misused. We’ll study the relationships between different variables and how they contribute to trends.
Second Term
RSM5003H Personal Leadership I: Performance Management
Becoming a good leader starts with the people you choose — and once you’ve put together a team, your job is to assess performance, instill a sense of fairness, and overcome setbacks together. We’ll talk about emotional intelligence and how it relates to effective leadership. What motivates people to give their best to the team?
RSM5004H Personal Leadership II: Negotiations
Whether you are allocating resources or settling disputes, negotiation is an art and a science. This course will give you an honest look at your strengths and weaknesses, and help sharpen your skills by having you negotiate with your classmates.
RSM5012H Leadership Presence
This course will help you develop your leadership capabilities, relying on the results of your Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) questionnaire and Bar-On emotional intelligence assessment. We’ll study how high-performance teams function, and how you can translate these insights into a personal action plan.
RSM5601H Organizational Leadership I
We’ll look at some classic examples — from Southwest Airlines to Glengarry Glen Ross — to give you a thorough understanding of team dynamics, organizational power, politics, conflict, and corporate culture.
RSM5602H Organizational Leadership II
We’ll explore some simple but powerful concepts that will help you create value for employees: the difference between managing and leading, theories of motivation, and building trust through authenticity. You’ll learn how to apply these concepts to the real world, in all its confusion, pressures and constraints.
Third Term
This course will deepen your understanding of the theory and concepts of strategic management in large, complex business organizations. We’ll explore the dilemmas posed by innovation and ethics, and visit the Toronto Symphony Orchestra for a conversation with the CEO about the company’s remarkable turnaround.
RSM5005H The Business Environment I
In an increasingly regulated business environment, legal, ethical and governance-related issues can hamper growth. We’ll look at business law in Canada and how it affects operations, and the importance of ethical behaviour among management. We’ll also examine some common dilemmas and how to resolve them effectively.
RSM5009H Topics in Strategic Management
The content of this course changes from year to year, depending on current events, research innovations at Rotman and feedback from local corporations. Past topics have included Leadership from Within, Industry Analysis, and Corporate Governance.
Building on what you learned in Accounting I, we’ll take a big-picture approach, linking the material to marketing, finance and strategy. We’ll look at the underlying motivation of management to shade financial statements to suit their overall aims, and you’ll use your new tools to analyze real companies in real time.
RSM5291 Foundations of Integrative Thinking
Integrative Thinking, Rotman’s trademark philosophy, is an approach that blends logic, cognitive science, behavioural decision making and rational choice theory to understand the thought processes that underlie management decisions. You’ll learn how to use this knowledge to create a new model of business thinking.
An introduction to the basic theories and applications of corporate finance, this course covers budgeting, valuation models, weighted average cost of capital, and other fundamentals. You’ll apply financial techniques and principles to managerial decisions.
Branding is a hot topic, but it’s frequently misunderstood as a form of advertising or graphic design. It’s much more than that. We’ll discuss the concept of branding and its implications, using examples from around the world, from financial services to coffee shops, non-profits and even personalities.
Final Term
RSM5006H The Business Environment II: Business-Government Relations
The goal of this course is to help you understand the machinery of legislation and regulation that affects Canadian business, and to show how policies can be influenced. You’ll learn how to think about, work with and access important governmental programs.
RSM5007H International Business
Doing business across borders requires an understanding of the international economic system, including exchange rates, financial flows and trade policies. We’ll discuss the impact of globalization, outsourcing, and the role of the World Trade Organization.
RSM5011H Integrative Thinking Capstone: The Opposable Mind
Under the direction of Roger Martin, Dean of the Rotman School, you’ll apply integrative thinking to difficult business quandaries. Looking at the personal knowledge system that underpins decision making, we’ll explore the ways integrative thinkers tackle problems differently.
Business decisions don’t take place in isolation — managers need to consider the wider context of aggregate economic activity in Canada, which includes product demand, investment, and trade. We’ll derive a simple model of the macroeconomy, and use it to analyze important issues like free trade, interest rate policy, and inflation.
Building on the foundations of last term’s finance course, we’ll focus on planning and growth, short-term financial management, dividend policy, equity securities, debt financing, bankruptcy, derivatives and financial risk management.