Module Description
This introductory course provides a broad overview of critical dimensions of human capital in the context of business strategy. It is designed to guide Human Resources professionals work on integrating human capital strategy with business strategy and to highlight the reciprocal interdependency between HR strategy and business strategy through exploring external and internal factors that influence this relationship. To this end, the course will include in the following areas of focus: Organizational structure, Organizational culture, leadership, talent and global megatrends. We will provide a common grounding in each of the topics through practice perspectives and bring these to life with case studies and peer sharing.
Human capital (HC) decisions are increasingly based on rigorous evidence and analysis. This course is divided into two sections that cover (1) research methods used to generate rigorous evidence and (2) analytical methods used to generate insights for HC decisions.
Research methods represent the “how” of the scientific study of theoretical and applied questions. Appropriate research methods allow us to rigorously investigate and develop evidence to address important problems. This section of the course is an introductory master-level seminar on empirical research methods in the context of business research. It will focus on different types of research designs and methods, such as lab experiments, field experiments, and survey research. It is meant to help students make informed choices about designing and conducting their own research studies effectively and ethically.
HC analytics focuses on the use of people data for HC decisions and it involves mapping HC initiatives to business outcomes. The key benefits of employing HC analytics include quantifying returns on HC investments and optimizing employee investments to achieve tangible business outcomes. However, the challenge faced by HC practitioners lies in knowing what to analyse and how to analyse. Reports have revealed that only a small percentage of HC practitioners are proficient in undertaking advanced univariate analyses and that an even fewer number can perform advanced multivariate analyses. This proficiency gap suggests a need for HC practitioners to be more competent in this field. The focus of this section of the course is to narrow this gap, allowing HC professionals to play a more strategic role within their organizations through equipping them with the ability to undertake some useful HC analytics on available organizational employee data. The course will use the SPSS software package, chosen for its ease of use and commercial accessibility.
The objective of this course is to develop a critical understanding of learning and talent development (LTD) policies and strategies that enable the development of intellectual, social, professional and personal skills to perform effectively in an organisation. The course is designed to give students a sound introduction to learning and development (L&D) practices that are anchored on key L&D theories and models. To be specific, this course will take the students through the L&D process that includes strategic L&D, learning needs analysis, L&D design, L&D implementation and L&D evaluation.
One’s professional success in today’s complex organisations depends not only on technical, functional, and professional skills, but also on the ability to navigate the people side of organisations: to successfully work with and through others to achieve individual, group, and organisational objectives. Professionals will therefore benefit from a deeper understanding of, and an ability to apply, a range of concepts and frameworks for managing people and organisations. This course aims to provide such understanding and ability.
This course examines rewards management in an organisational and international context with a view on how to plan, implement, and evaluate policies and practices. We will review the foundations of pay and benefits management and consider strategic designs for special areas such as sales incentives, executive compensation, and long-term reward strategies. We will explore the theoretical debates informing reward management and develop mechanisms to evaluate the needs based on labour markets and firm constraints.
Talent is critical to the creation of organisational human capital. We focus on talent activities including recruitment, selection, assessment, retention, and dismissal of employees. In addition, we go beyond these core activities to evaluate the trade-offs of short-term and long-term strategies that improve organisational performance, morale, and diversity. Areas such as employer branding, diversity, and work-life balance also are explored. We will take an evidence-based and experiential approach to explore these talent management activities, reflecting and drawing on the recent evidence and on real-world case studies from around Asia and beyond. Readings (reflecting a selection of classics as well as cutting edge ideas) are assigned before each of the first four course sessions. The course will also consist of a business game in which one experiences first hand the short-term and long-term implications of strategic talent decisions on key deliverables such as productivity, morale, diversity, and turnover. Taken together, the concepts, frameworks, and approaches resulting from the readings and case studies together with the applied and experiential experience of the business game will provide you with key and invaluable leverage for resourcing and building a talent rich organisation.
Professional success is largely dependent on one’s success in managing differences and fostering collaboration among people and organizations. However, in today’s highly dynamic and complex managerial environment, which is marked by increasing interdependence and often by conflicts of interest, it can be extremely challenging to bring together the relevant “players” – internal and external stakeholders who have different interests, perceptions, attitudes, behaviours, or values – to forge efficient, profitable, and lasting agreements. HR professionals who understand the science and practice of negotiation are much better equipped to navigate these differences and create agreements that advance their own interests, and also the interests of the other parties involved. After taking this course, HR professionals will understand and be able to put into practice the central frameworks, concepts, and skills in negotiation, gain negotiation experience, skills, and confidence, and obtain the skills and insights needed to learn on an ongoing basis from their own future negotiations.
This course introduces students to the theoretical concepts and analytical tools required for formulating and implementing appropriate strategies that affect the enduring success of the entire organisation. Topics covered include external and internal environmental analyses, business-level strategies, corporate-level strategies, strategy process and implementation, and special topics such as competitive dynamics and competition in high tech industries. This course emphasises the application of theory to a number of real world strategic issues. Students are encouraged to synthesise knowledge from other business courses into a comprehensive understanding of firms’ competitive advantages.
In this day and age, it is no longer sufficient for managers and leaders in organizations to be simply transactional or simply transformational. They also need to be fair, just, ethical, moral and responsible. The same might be said for organizations themselves. It is not enough for organizations to be profitable they must also behave responsibly and sustainably. This course is divided into two sections that cover (1) what it means be ethical in an organizational setting and (2) the importance of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its role in business and society. The Ethics portion of the course is designed to explore, inform, and stimulate thinking on issues related to behavioural ethics and responsibility as encountered in the corporate world. To create this intellectual exchange, this course will focus on how individual and organizational behaviour is shaped by context as well as by biases, why these factors make it difficult for managers to be responsible leaders, and what can be done about the influence of these factors. It is important to emphasize that the goal of this course is not the ethical or moral transformation of students but to develop a set of tools and frameworks (where possible) that allow us to manage effectively in a world increasingly characterized by stakeholders with competing needs and responsibilities. In the CSR portion of this course we explore the idea that businesses bear a responsibility to society and a broader set of stakeholders beyond their shareholders. An idea that has gained currency since the 1970s. The question remains however whether corporations have a responsibility towards and within society that goes beyond merely being well run companies? Through this course, we will engage in a critical evaluation and discussion of different views on the meaning of CSR and the “proper” role of CSR in business and society. We will also discuss contemporary research and organizational practices that inform the integration of CSR within a firm’s core business strategy and operations. We will understand that through strategically managed CSR, including ways to create shared value and apply sustainable business strategies, business corporations can potentially identify business opportunities that help address the world’s most pressing challenges and manage relationships with important stakeholders who affect the firm’s sustained success.
Finance is about the allocation of capital for productive use in the economy. In this course we examine how financial assets are priced (asset pricing) and how firms raise capital (corporate finance). In the asset pricing portion in the first half, we will learn about the importance of finance in society. We will get familiar with tools that are necessary in finance such as the time value of money and apply these tools to the pricing of bonds and stocks. Finally, we will learn about fundamentals concepts of risk and return, portfolio theory, and how these relate to investing. The segment on Corporate finance (the second half) is about financial decision making in a firm with an objective of maximizing the firm’s value. The key corporate finance decisions can be grouped into three types: investment decisions, financing decisions, and dividends decisions. This segment aims to provide students with fundamentally important ideas about what to look for in making good and decisions from a corporate manager’s perspective.
Effectively develop and present a workable solution to solve your human capital challenge. This course provides an opportunity for each student to demonstrate their ability to diagnose and investigate a live business issue, research the current literature, collect and analyse data, and develop conclusions.
