MSIM - Responsible Management and Climate Action

Fall Courses

MGT 500 Leadership Development through Action

The Responsible Leadership Development program is the cornerstone of the MS in International Management. This seminar was designed in consultation with experts in leadership development, and executive coaches who work with leaders of Fortune 100 companies. The Leadership Development through Action Learning seminar begins in the fall semester with a one-week leadership seminar entitled “Leadership, Story Telling, and the Golden Rule.” While the world is facing unprecedented challenges with widening inequality, economic uncertainty and climate breakdown, powerful and impactful new leadership stories are emerging in business, governments and civil society. The Leadership Development through Action Learning culminates with the delivery and presentation of the Learning e-portfolio. There will be individual and team leadership experiences throughout the academic year.

MGT 510 International Management

The goal of this course is to familiarize managers with the field of international business, management and operations. In this course, students will review, critically consider, and discuss a variety of contemporary issues within international management, including how today’s managers are challenged to also act as Geopolitical Executive Officers (GEO). During this novel seminar students explore and learn about different managerial practices in different continents around the globe.

MGT 511 Digital Transformation Strategies

The goal of this course is to familiarize students with digital transformation and digitalization in dynamic organizations based on an interdisciplinary mix of models and techniques. How are organizations responding to the innovation and adaptation challenge? During this seminar, students will learn from important global players and expert professors about the different models that organizations are embracing to strategically address the digitalization opportunity. Students make practical use of their knowledge and learning from previous courses including digital marketing, organizational design, and financial management, by working in teams to conceptualize and implement a digital transformation strategy.

MGT 524 Resp Mgt for Sustainable Business

This course provides insights into the discourse on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability management and their practical relevance to corporations. The goal of the course is to enable students to gain an in-depth understanding of core theories of CSR—relating them to how corporations deal with ecological and social sustainability issues and stakeholder demands. Students will examine corporate initiatives that attempt to address sustainability challenges and how they are being evaluated in the public eye regarding the risk of greenwashing. Further, students will learn about various CSR standards and reporting tools that corporations can use to develop, implement, evaluate, and communicate about their environmental and social impacts. Attention will be paid to the rising topic of corporate digital responsibility and new frontiers of CSR regarding artificial intelligence and digital data governance. The course perspective is international highlighting cases and approaches from various countries. Learning methods of the course also aim at developing practical skills, including teamwork, presenting, and debating.

MGT 525 Innovation and Project Management

The objective of this course is to give a solid base and strength in managing from simple projects to complex ones. The focus will be on fostering and managing innovation in start-ups, large enterprises, international organizations, governments, or social businesses. This course introduces students to frameworks, cases and articles discussing where ideas come from, how an innovation ecosystem is created, principles of lean-hypothesis for launching new products, services and ventures.

MGT 530 Challenges in the New Global Marketplace

This course focuses on the development and implementation of a marketing strategy for a company. As such, the marketing strategy of a company is grounded on a deep analysis of the business environment in which it operates and a thorough understanding of the consumers and their ways of processing information. The course, provides students with the most relevant aspects of the marketing process giving an outline of the main decisions the company needs to focus on when dealing with the marketing plan preparation.

MGT 531 Global Issues and Responsible Leadership

This course focuses on the responsible leadership of the individual in the context of Corporate Social Responsibility and the United Nations 2030 Agenda. How are global managers preparing their companies to be sustainable for 2030 and beyond? Through examples and guidance from both the business and the NGO world, we will explore what is discussed at strategy tables and how organizations are constantly revisiting their value chains to ensure long term success. Students will be challenged to think critically, strategically, creatively, collaboratively, and compassionately. With this self-knowledge, students will be able to apply the mechanisms by which to successfully engage in social and global issues as individuals and as leaders of organizations.

MGT 535 International Business Economics

This course illustrates how economic analysis can help to guide the successful decision making of managers. In particular, this seminar will challenge some of the most deeply rooted beliefs of the old economy and introduce some of the tenets of the new economy of the 21st century. It will allow students to understand and critically engage with basic principles of mainstream economics, on one hand, and explore new paradigms, on the other hand. In particular, there will be a strong focus on the circular economy.

MGT 538 Reporting with Purpose

This course focuses on the interaction between reporting and corporate transformation. Corporate reporting used to be limited to annual financial reports describing past performance in combination with quarterly earnings updates for shareholders. Currently, most companies provide far more than financial updates, either because of legal requirements or voluntarily. Shareholders, but also many other stakeholders, want a better understanding of a company’s purpose and progress towards a more sustainable future, based on a clear narrative and relevant metrics. This is particularly true for companies planning to transform their business in response to climate change and other major social and environmental challenges. Transforming a company typically requires a change in the product or service offered, but also a change in the way a company operates (internal transformation) and how it relates to the outside world (external transformation). Furthermore, with intangibles such as corporate reputation and intellectual and human capital often representing 80% or more of enterprise value, non-financial metrics become increasingly important to capture the essence of a company’s competitive edge and long-term value. This course explores the role of integrated reporting, and how the reporting process both reflects and reinforces corporate transformation by building alignment and trust with both internal and external stakeholders. Key topics that will be discussed are materiality analysis, business transformation metrics, target setting, statement of purpose, ESG standards and raters, and sustainable finance.

MGT 545 Managerial Finance

This course examines the principles and practices of integrated frameworks for strategic financial decision-making. Attention is given to managerial financial decisions in a global market setting concerning such questions as how to obtain an adequate supply of capital and credit, and how to evaluate alternative sources of funds and their costs. Topics include the management of assets and liabilities, working capital management, capital budgeting, equity versus debt financing, capital structure, and financial forecasting.

MGT 550 Innovation and Design Thinking

This course emphasizes Design Thinking, an innovation approach that constantly focuses on customer needs and leads to solving problems and developing new ideas. Similar agile approaches are also considered: Lean Start-Up, Prototyping, Value Proposition Design, or the combination of Design Thinking with Data Analytics or System Thinking. In an interdisciplinary team, students learn to recognize the latent needs and expectations of various stakeholders. From these expectations, as many ideas as possible are generated, implemented, tested and refined in order to ultimately arrive at innovative solutions that offer real added value.

MGT 554 Organization Evolution and Design

This course examines the discipline and the art of organizational design with a focus on designing for purpose, responsiveness and collaboration. Sustainable success of organizations is heavily influenced by the extent to which the organizational structure and culture enable the execution of the chosen strategy. Organization Design & Development (OD) is the art of designing and implementing the right structure, and to develop and foster the appropriate culture. This interactive course is designed to provide students with a carefully selected set of frameworks and tools to align organizational structure and culture with strategy. Through case work, students will practice tools and methods to understand and cope with the wider complexity of organizational design and development.

MGT 562 Responsible Sales Strategies

In this course, the students explore the characteristics of responsible and high-performing sales managers, and get ideas on how to boost the sales team’s success and drive the organization's revenue through the role as a sales manager whether in a business-to-business (B2B) or a business-to-consumer (B2C) setting. Students will develop the skills they need to lead a sales team and drive revenue. They will learn to strengthen their personal leadership coaching, train their team colleague, and create a championship culture. This Responsible Sales Strategies course will challenge students to consider and try approaches and techniques proven in many industries and inspire them to consistently attain high performance in sales through responsible managerial approaches.

Spring Courses

MGT 512 Cult Intelligence Diversity Pract Bus

Evidence from research and practice demonstrates that cultural intelligence and diversity management practices positively affect different dimensions of organizational performance. In this course, we aim to introduce students to two groups of practices, explain the rationale behind using them in organizational settings, and discuss their implications for employees, companies, and society. In the first part of the course, students will examine cultural intelligence practices in global business contexts; analyze various correlations and impact on performance; cultivate greater awareness of how a heightened sensitivity to cultural intelligence can be integrated into successful, sustainable strategic plans that are aligned with values informed by respect for human differences. Understanding those differences through critical thinking, reflective exercise and role play simulations will complement the analytical work driven by student data collection and research assignments. In the second part of the course, students will understand the mechanism behind prejudices, stereotypes, and discrimination in organizational settings, discuss diversity management practices and policies that can help organizations and employees benefit from diversity, and increase their awareness on diversity topics.

MGT 514 Digitalization and Future of Business

How is the digital transformation changing the way private businesses and public institutions organize and operate their daily activities? How can established businesses innovate and adopt new technologies to compete in a highly competitive and digitalized landscape? Digital technologies, such as artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, internet of things (IoT), and more recently non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are rapidly transforming traditional industries while enabling fundamentally new business models. This course will enhance students' understanding of digital technologies and strategies. It will explore the managerial implications of such implementations on business practices within the main functional areas of a business, such as finance, marketing, and strategic management.

MGT 515 Business Analytics

Business Analytics is a necessary skill in today's world, since everything is quantified into the indicators and insights that are used for evidence based decision-making. This course applies analytics across multiple settings including business, government, and NGO/cultural institutions. In this course, students will utilize current software to generate meaningful data insights and enhance their data visualization skills. Moreover students will practice gathering data online, cleaning it, and ensuring its reliability and validity. Finally, and most importantly, students will learn to successfully communicate through charts and graphs to ultimately improve their innovative business practices.

MGT 519 Thesis and Methodology

Meeting the complex challenges of tomorrow requires us to take a systematic and methodologically informed approach to understanding the key mechanisms, actors, and issues involved. This course introduces students to both qualitative and quantitative methods taken from a number of different disciplines, but all aimed at understanding and managing real world challenges. As such, this course enables future managers to utilize methods taken from the social and natural sciences. The course consequently is designed to prepare students for their thesis projects, and to enable students to pursue their individual research interests. It also aims at providing students with a methodological skill-set that transfers to future projects and facilitates active managerial engagement.

MGT 521 Global Governance and the Management

Today, international management takes place in an interconnected and globalized world. Many of the most pressing challenges can therefore no longer be addressed by individual actors alone – be they managers, businesses, states, or international organizations. Rather, meeting global challenges like climate change, under-development, public health, or international security, calls for cooperation that brings together problem solvers from different fields, situated at different levels. To better understand the global context in which management challenges emerge, this course introduces students to a global governance perspective which traces the problem-solving capacities and interconnectedness of a multitude of different actors at global, regional, and local levels. Moving beyond a purely problem-solving focus, this course also focuses on the normative dimension of addressing global challenges today and tomorrow.

MGT 523 Understanding Environmental Issues

Using practical examples from Ticino and Switzerland, this course will expose students to the effects that climate change is having on (fresh)water ressources and on the water cycle in general. Each specific example will show how climate change driven modifications of the water cycle affects not only the functioning and the ecology of the system at hand (e.g., lake, river, groundwater reservoir, or glacier), but also their management and usage and therefore us. For each example, students will also investigate and critically assess the different attempts put in place to mitigate or minimize such changes.

MGT 534 Corporate Climate Action

This course will provide students with a comprehensive introduction to the business response to climate change. Climate change is a major challenge for business and society, with severe and often unforeseeable consequences for human life and business conduct. Companies worldwide are increasingly asked to contribute to a climate-resilient future by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. In this course, students are introduced to the theoretical foundations of carbon accounting and management. Equipped with the fundamental understanding of how and where greenhouse gas emissions emerge from corporate activities, students will examine various mitigation measures, including the role of cap-and-trade programs, carbon offsetting, and capture. The long-term and financially sustainable minimization of corporate emissions calls for students' critical reflection on the potential and limitations of carbon management programs. Thus, students will learn about the risk of greenwashing and the need to analyze the quality of offsetting schemes. The course outlook sheds light on future trends, such as the impact of distributive ledger technology and its potential for corporate climate action and the governance of carbon markets.

Summer Courses

Capstone Thesis