Curriculum & Courses

Service Innovation Management (Tentatively Scheduled)

This course would be of interest for those in the service sector at large (banking and finance, technology, retail, hospitality and tourism, health, education, etc.). It prepares students for enlightened management: Outstanding service organizations are managed differently than their competitors. Their actions are based on a specific understanding of how success is achieved and about satisfying clients. The results show not only in terms of conventional measures of performance but also in the enthusiasm of the employees and level of customer satisfaction. Beginning with the service encounter, service managers must innovate to blend marketing, technology, people, and information to achieve a distinctive competitive advantage. This course will study service management from an integrated viewpoint with a focus on service design, service quality management, and customer satisfaction.

Special Topics: Intro to Systematic Review Methodology

This course aims to equip the students with the knowledge and technique (process) of conducting systematic literature review to synthesize a large corpus of literature in a short period of time either for a standalone project culminating in a publishable paper or as a front end of a major research project or thesis. Starting with identification of relevant studies and evaluation of quality of and impact of research, the students will use different templates, provided by the instructor, to analyze the methodology, underlying theoretical frameworks/models, study variables (antecedents, consequences, mediators, moderators, control variables), research findings, research gaps, and future research directions in their chosen area of research. The students are expected to produce a publishable paper as a final course deliverable.

Special Topics: Formal and Applied Qualitative Research

This course covers the key concepts and methods of qualitative research. This includes qualitative methodologies and research design, research ethics, as well as the collection and analysis of qualitative data. Hands-on activities will be provided to demonstrate the concepts, practice and evaluate the various methodologies, and learn to use the common tools and techniques.

Special Topics: Behavioural Research in Management

This graduate seminar course focuses on the use of behavioural experimental methods in Organizational Behaviour, Marketing, Economics, Consumer Studies, and general Management research. Emphasis is placed on the methodological approach developed over the last 50 years within the rapidly growing and exciting field of behavioural experimental research. We will read and discuss together some background readings. However, most of the course will involve carefully discussing and critically analyzing a small number of behavioural research papers in each of the fields mentioned above. We will make no attempt to cover all of the different experimental methodologies used in management research such as those extensively developed within Social Psychology. While valuable, they are not the principal focus of this course, which will concentrate on the behavioural methodology. Moreover, we will not cover the entire field of Experimental Economics in this course either. It has become a very large field, which cannot be absorbed in one course. Rather, we will concentrate on a small number of topics that we believe are especially relevant and important for graduate students in the various subfields of management. The precise subfields covered will be selected to correspond with the backgrounds and interests of the students who enrol in the course. The primary goal of the course is to promote awareness of the behavioural research approach to testing theories and to encourage some of you to do undertake your own experimental research within your own fields of interest. As we examine together research done by others, you should begin to develop an informed perspective on how to construct an experimental design, conduct an experimental session and analyze experimental data using appropriate statistical tools. The course is not an introductory research methods course. Students should have a serious interest in how social science research is conceived, conducted, implemented, and interpreted in business contexts. Working knowledge of basic statistics is assumed, although the instructor will make an effort to work with students to cover essentials. Students will also require a good understanding of substantive business contexts.

Special Topics: Machine Learning for Management Research

Introducing machine learning methods for management research.

Special Topics: Advanced Organizational Behaviour

This course considers theories and research that focus on the behaviour of people at work. The emphasis is on broad theoretical and empirical research that can apply to a wide range of organizational contexts, including theories related to job attitudes, organizational justice, motivation, and organizational deviance. The course is structured as a series of prescribed readings around a particular topic area and weekly classes. The goal is to provide a common knowledge base from which relevant theoretical, methodological, and practical issues can be addressed.

Econometrics

This course prepares graduate students in business and management to determine how changes in policy or strategy impact outcomes. Relying on the basic Regression model, this hands-on course prepares students to define the research question, identify counterfactual, estimate the empirical model, and make inferences about the efficacy of the strategy/policy.

Theories of Technology and Organizations

This course will offer graduate students the opportunity to read, under the guidance of senior research faculty, seminal research in the field of information systems. The expectation is that students will find this course an effective vehicle to develop broad and deep knowledge of their field of study upon which they can develop a research program and thesis.

MG9101

Management and Organization Theory

The objective of this course is to help students develop competences for the critical interrogation of the conceptual foundations of management and organization theories (MOT). Science is not dogma; the attitude of the scientist is that of skepticism and critical inquiry. Science and the knowledge it produces, unfolds as sets of conjectures (theories) and refutations (empirical testing). Social scientific theories are postulated and rigorously tested against observations within (and from) empirical situations. The integrity of this process and the knowledge it produces can be undermined by three fundamental factors: (a) reality is socially constructed, (b) social constructions condition what social scientists empirical observe, and (c) a and b can result in distortions in our knowledge and MOTs. For example, organization scientists had studied organizations for decades before recognizing the empirical fact that key dimensions of organizations (authority, power, progression, rewards etc.) are gendered and racialized, privileging some while disenfranchising others. MOTs as social constructions of organizational reality have embedded in them assumptions that stem from the ‘imagination’ of organizational theorists. MOT are manifestations of the ways we imagine our world, think about and study organizations, and as such are imbued with our social histories, assumptions about society, people, organizing, economic value, gender and race roles, etc.  There is no possibility to understand the potential and limitations any MOT in the reproduction of organizational reality and knowledge without critically interrogating these underlying assumptions. 

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MG9102

Advanced Research Methods: Qualitative

This course covers the key concepts and methods of qualitative research. This includes the collection and analysis of qualitative data, writing and discussing results, and preparing a qualitative grant application. Hands-on activities will be provided to demonstrate the concepts, practice and evaluate the various methodologies, and learn to use the common tools and techniques for analyzing qualitative data.

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MG9201

Digital Enterprise and Social Media

This course aims to introduce students to the overarching concepts, ranging from technical to managerial, that are critical for the functioning of the digital enterprise, the modern networked organization driven by digital technologies and data. After a high level coverage of these concepts, we will focus on seminal theories that attempt to explain how individuals, organizations, and society interact with digital technologies and the dynamics caused by technological progress.

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