Program Overview

The International MBA—Hong Kong Program is designed for working professionals, managers, and entrepreneurs. It enables participants to integrate a rigorous and thorough management education with the demands of a full-time job. The program is designed to be completed in less than two years while you maintain your full-time employment.

The Tippie IMBA program will broaden your expertise and leadership abilities. Your employer also benefits tremendously. What you learn on the weekend will impact your job performance on Monday. You will become a more knowledgeable professional who can help make your company more competitive.

The program places a premium on practical value. Designed to meet the accelerated demands of fast-track professionals like you, the IMBA provides many benefits:

• Receiving a World Top 50 MBA degree from an internationally recognized business college, without interrupting your career.
• Enhanced ability to work effectively as part of a team. You'll be interacting with business professionals from diverse industries and backgrounds.
• Enhanced management skills you can apply to real-life business situations. This will come from your course work, study groups, and interactions with top faculty members.
• Faculty are internationally recognized for their achievements. You will be instructed by the same faculty who teach the Tippie MBA programs in Iowa.
• Students may choose to complete one semester of course work on-campus in Iowa City.

While in the program, you'll learn theory while developing practical problem-solving skills through business simulations, case analyses, problem-solving discussions, team presentations, individual study, lectures, distinguished guest speakers, and assigned readings. The IMBA experience will provide you an education that's not limited to textbooks, case studies, software, and syllabi, but one that encompasses the collective professional experiences of every student and faculty member.

Information learned in the program is often immediately applicable to your job. Classroom discussions can serve as a laboratory for solving business issues that you currently face each day in your work.

International Study option:

IMBA students who wish to do so may join one of the international trips offered through the Tippie MBA program for Professionals and Managers. These optional study trips offer the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the international business environment and the role of culture in world trade through an intensive study abroad experience. The Iowa MBA-PM International Programs normally consist of a two-week study trip and include a seminar and academic excursions to international business and cultural centers.

Typically offered bi-annually in early January and mid-May, MBA-PM International Programs are designed and taught by Iowa faculty supplemented by guest lecturers from the host country. Participants earn 3 semester hours of credit. Course offerings vary with each trip. Past trips include China, Germany, Greece, and Italy.

Curriculum

The International MBA—Hong Kong Program enables participants to integrate a rigorous and thorough management education with the demands of a full-time job. The program is designed to be completed in less than two years while you maintain your full-time employment.

Courses throughout the IMBA curriculum use case analyses, distinguished guest speakers, and integrated technology. Our faculty bring their own professional business expertise and outstanding academic credentials to the IMBA courses that they teach. Your business experiences and the experiences and knowledge of your classmates also enhances class discussions. Students complete 15 courses: nine "core" courses and six "elective" courses that are required in all of the Tippie MBA programs.

Core Courses

Within the International MBA—Hong Kong Program, students must complete the following nine required or core courses.

Corporate Financial Reporting
Interpretation and analysis of financial information. Framework for understanding contemporary financial reporting practices, the focus that shape those practices, and how those practices influence the usefulness of financial information in applied decision settings. Topics are organized around three modules: (1) measurement rules and bookkeeping procedures for production of corporate financial statements and use of the information for credit decisions; (2) strengths and weaknesses of alternative accounting methods and financial disclosures; and (3) analysis for valuation purposes.

Business Analytics
Introduction to techniques of quantitative modeling and statistical analysis for management decision making. A unifying element of the course is the use of Excel to perform various kinds of analysis in a spreadsheet environment. Major topics include decision analysis, statistical inference, regression, and linear programming. The course also develops required background material in probability.

International Economic Environment of the Firm
Basic determinants of aggregate output, employment, wages, unemployment, consumption, investment, international trade flows, interest rates, exchange rates, prices, and inflation in open economies; sources and nature of economic growth; effects of domestic and foreign monetary and fiscal policies; effects of trade and exchange rate policies.

Managerial Economics
Modules of consumer and firm behavior with applications; market equilibrium and structure; pricing decisions and strategy.

Management in Organizations
How to explain, predict, and influence behavior in organizations; decision making, leadership, communication, group skills in management positions; motivation, teams, organizational culture, organizational design, individual differences, organizational change.

Operations Management
Planning and decision making associated with the management of an organization's operations. Operations management, planning and decision-making activities; insights into the basic trade-offs associated with operations management decisions; tools and techniques for helping operations managers implement their decisions and reach their goals. Topics include: production and service delivery strategy, capacity planning, product and process design, total quality management, demand management, production and service planning, scheduling, materials control, emerging production and service technologies.

Marketing Management
Concepts, principles, and models of marketing. The relationship between marketing and other functional areas of business. Emphasis on how the marketing manager can achieve desired outcomes with the target market. Includes analyzing marketing opportunities; researching and selecting target markets; developing marketing strategies; planning marketing programs; and organizing, implementing, and controlling the marketing effort.

Managerial Finance
Provides an overview of the basic concepts and principles of financial management and insight into the decision-making process of financial managers. Topics include: the time value of money, the tradeoff between risk and return valuation techniques, capital budgeting, capital structure, and the role of financial markets. Emphasizes the mathematical tools of financial decision making and reasoning and concepts in appropriately applying these tools.

Strategic Management and Business Policy
The capstone strategy course for the MBA program. Discussion of strategic business frameworks as applied to a comprehensive computer-based business simulation. In the simulation, students apply concepts and tools from earlier courses to manage their "virtual" company. These companies in turn compete in a common marketplace. Students learn to think, act, and communicate strategically. Prerequisite: Completion of all core courses.

Electives

Students in the International MBA—Hong Kong Program are required to take six electives during their course of study. A number of electives are offered throughout the year. The following list includes some of the courses that may be available to you during your enrollment. Because of class size, we cannot guarantee that all of these courses are available every year.

Finance

Structured Finance—Securitization: Design of debt, equity, and hybrid financing techniques to resolve issuer and investor problems that conventional methods cannot address; why and when corporations and financial institutions issue structured securities; how securities are designed and priced; how securities meet investors' needs; securitized assets, mortgages, asset-backed securities, collateralized debt obligations, credit risk, valuation, cost of capital; legal, tax, and regulatory issues; design and implementation of structured-financed products.

Investment Management
Hands-on approach to investing in marketable securities in domestic and global markets; market efficiency, risk-return relationships, asset pricing models, security valuation, options and future's valuation, portfolio strategies and management.

Corporate Finance
Structured problems and cases in corporate financial policy decisions; financial decision models, current and fixed asset administration, cost of capital, capital budgeting, dividends, cash flow projections, cash management, mergers and acquisitions.

International Finance: Introduction to structure and functioning of global financial markets; currency market, international equity markets; use of derivatives in currency risk management for corporate and investment needs; corporate investment decisions in an international context.

Management & Organizations

Maximizing Team Performance: Current approaches to implementing effective teams within organizations; team selection and formation, group dynamics, facilitation skills, performance and obstacle management.

International Management: Management issues encountered in international business settings; assessing international politico-economic and sociocultural environments; managing a multicultural workforce; forming international structures and alliances; developing international business strategy.

Dynamics of Negotiation
The theory and practice of successful negotiation. Includes analysis of individual conflict-handling styles and analysis of negotiation contexts to successfully plan and implement appropriate strategies and tactics. Offers experiential opportunities to practice and develop negotiation skills at the dyadic, team, and group levels across a variety of negotiation contexts.

International Management .
Management issues encountered in international business settings; assessing international politico-economic and sociocultural environments; managing a multicultural workforce; forming international structures and alliances; developing international business strategy

Leadership & Personal Development: Major theories; determinants of leader effectiveness, personal and career success; practical development of leadership, managerial skills to enhance individual, organizational effectiveness.

Legal Environment of Business and Ethics
Considers ethical issues that arise in business and in the lives of individuals who participate in business activities. The readings will facilitate thought and discussion about a wide variety of ethical dilemmas and substantive legal rules encouraging thought regarding the rationale behind certain laws and the often competing priorities that are reflected by the choice of a specific legal outcome. Explores the ways in which laws reflect, influence and maintain societal norms and ethical viewpoints. The purpose of this class is to enhance problem solving skills not to prescribe an ethical code of conduct for you nor convince you that the western way of responding is the only correct or the best way to respond.

Marketing

Brand Management: Strategies for building, leveraging, and defending brands; principles of consumer behavior, how they relate to building brand identity and equity; branding of consumer goods and services.

International Marketing: Domestic versus international perspective; identification and evaluation of opportunities and risks in non-U.S. markets; research problems in global markets; effects of international organizations, foreign exchange, macroeconomic policies, local law, and cultural differences on consumer behavior and marketing decisions; multinational versus global marketing strategies (entry, product adaptation, channel logistics, pricing, promotion); emphasis on practical applications.

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship and New Business Formation
Introduction to the entrepreneurial process from conception to birth of a new venture; the attributes of successful entrepreneurs, innovation and creativity, opportunity recognition, venture screening, identification of resources, and feasibility analysis. Prerequisite: Corporate Financial Reporting