Postgraduate Courses

This course explores the fundamental issues in business research, including the purpose of business research, the role business research plays in helping managers in decision making, the process involved in the scientific inquiry applied to business including identifying interesting and practically significant research questions, deducing testable hypotheses, conducting systematic research using appropriate methodology, drawing conclusions, and making theoretical and practical contributions. Practical and ethical issues involved in conducting business research will also be discussed.

The course introduces various applications of statistics in business, in particular, regression analysis and its applications. The main topics to be covered include data exploration methods, inference, and regression.

This course will focus on research methods and data analysis relevant for business research. The contents of the course will be useful for researchers in the fields of Marketing, Management, and Information Systems. The emphasis will be on the applications of these methods.

Qualitative research is critical in inducting novel theory, and elaborating existing theory with frame-breaking insights. It is particularly suited to answer the "how" question, enabling students to understand the process underlying the phenomenon and hence develop better insights into the mechanisms. This course will cover when and how to conduct inductive multiple case research, focusing on specific skills such as how to identify a research question that fits multiple case research, craft a rigorous research design, use theoretical sampling, gain access to companies, collect data and write research cases, conduct within- and cross- case comparisons, and finally induce generalizable insights that make a genuine theoretical contribution.

This course introduces students to accounting research. It covers the frontier accounting research topics such as financial accounting, international accounting, accounting for corporate governance and auditing.

This course introduces students to frontier topics in economics research relevant for business, including topics such as innovation, globalization (trade and FDI), personnel management, industrial organization, competition, and digital economy.

This course introduces major finance research areas to students: asset pricing and investment theories and practice, corporate finance issues, microstructure studies, and financial derivatives pricing and strategies. For each area, the basic issues and currently prevalent views will be presented.

This course introduces students to information systems research in terms of the intersection between technology, society, organization, people, and policy. It analyzes frontier IS research topics such as online social media, digital platforms and competitions, and network strategy and economics.

This course surveys the current operations management research topics that are of interest to senior business executives. The topics may change every year.

This introductory course exposes students to the latest research and trends in management research (e.g., organizational behavior, human resources management, strategic management, international business, entrepreneurship, and business ethics). Students will read and critique latest research papers from selected topics and participate in class discussion. Students are expected to understand management issues of current and future concerns, identify an interesting and practically important frontier research question in a management topic of choice, and write an executable research proposal to address the question.

This course introduces students to the latest research topics in marketing and covers recent marketing research findings from several different research paradigms.

This course introduces students to the use of research methods in economics, finance, and statistics to examine important financial accounting issues.

This course involves discussion of research in managerial accounting, corporate governance and executive compensation. Use of research tools in economics, finance and statistics to examine important accounting issues in the above areas will be covered.

This course uses economic analysis to examine a selection of topics of importance to business management. Topics may include demand analysis, pricing strategies, game theory and applications, asymmetric information, agency theory and applications, organization economics, and mergers and acquisitions.

This course teaches empirical approaches and methods commonly used in applied economic research, including discussion of actual applications to business problems. Topics include identification strategies, regression specification, panel data methods, event studies, program evaluation, and instrumental variables.

This course begins with the central idea of asset pricing theory regarding risk-return trade-off and continues with asset allocation decisions and modern portfolio theories. Using primary asset markets of stocks and bonds as the battle field, it presents concepts and methodologies of identifying market-wide factors and factor betas as measures of risks and risk exposures. It also discusses popular trading strategies of capturing alphas associated with firm-specific attributes.

This course focuses on fixed income markets and presents strategies dealing with interest rate risk and credit risk. For the former, arbitrage based and equilibrium based theoretical models will be briefed and empirical models using key yields and macroeconomic factors will be discussed at length. For the latter, structural models and reduced-form models will be taught, the popular strategies used by firms and institutions will be explained, and lessons learned from recent financial crises will be discussed.

This course provides a comprehensive overview of how financial derivatives are priced and used in hedging, speculation and arbitrage. The discussion on derivatives pricing begins with no-arbitrage based pricing theories, continues with equilibrium based pricing theories, and ends with empirical evidence on these models, with special emphasis on the informational roles of derivatives.

Many careful observational studies of actual behavior – and at least three recent Nobel Prizes – suggest that the standard economic paradigm of rational investors in an efficient market does not adequately describe real-world behavior. Behavioral finance combines findings in cognitive psychology with conventional economic logic to provide alternative explanations of such observed behavior. We will examine how psychology of decision making under uncertainty affects the traditional paradigm, while paying attention to practical applications for portfolio and investment management.

Green finance is the use of financial tools to improve environmental outcomes. The course begins with the valuation of financial assets with non-pecuniary preference, continues on various approaches to addressing the issues in green finance, and examines development in financial instruments such as green bonds and carbon credits.

This course surveys state-of-the-art information systems research related to business analysis, design, and practice. The course will provide students with a broad coverage of how research into IS and technology management uncovers new insights and drives innovative business practices.

This course reviews information systems (IS) theories and their applications in businesses and the society. The course will provide students with fundamental knowledge and insights on exemplary IS theories applied to various topics, such as technology adoption, knowledge management, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, digital platforms, electronic commerce, user-generated content, social media analytics, information privacy, IT security, etc.

This course will provide students with fundamental knowledge in operations management and supply chain management, focusing on topics related to the management of business process that produce and deliver goods or services in a global business environment. Topics include process analysis and improvement, inventory and revenue management, supply chain strategies, supply chain integration and coordination, and other important issues.

This course will provide methodology training for students to conduct research in the Operations Management and Supply Chain Management areas. Major topics include deterministic optimization models, applied probability models, simulation, and empirical methods.

This course exposes students to major theories and research topics in organizational behavior and human resource management with the aim of promoting individual, team and organizational effectiveness. Sample topics include individual differences (e.g., personality, attitudes, and moods), judgement and decision making, creativity and innovation, negotiation, team effectiveness, conflict management, leadership, organizational culture, recruitment, selection, performance management, training and development, and compensation. Students will read and critique selected research papers from selected topics and participate in class discussion. At the end of the course, students are expected to develop a good and comprehensive understanding of organizational behavior and human resource management research, identify an interesting and practically important research question in a topic of choice, and write an executable research proposal to address the question.

This course exposes students to major theoretical foundations and topics in strategic management and organization theory with the aim of promoting effective strategic decision making, execution, and organizations that promote firm performance and interests of various stakeholders. Students are expected to develop a good and comprehensive understanding of strategy research, identify an interesting and practically important research question in a topic of choice, and write an executable research proposal to address the question.

The share of executives, board members, and investment managers who consider governance, climate risk, and other ESG issues as well as stakeholders’ opinions of the firm to be material to their business decisions has risen dramatically. This course exposes students to major theoretical foundations and topics in corporate governance and social responsibility with the aim of promoting effective strategic decision-making, execution, and organizations that consider the interests of various stakeholders. Students are expected to develop a good and comprehensive understanding of corporate governance and social responsibility research, identify an interesting and practically important research question in a topic of choice, and write an executable research proposal to address the question.

This course provides an overview of topics in psychology and consumer behavior research. An information processing approach is used to help students get familiar with a range of diverse topics such as attitude formation and change, culture, information processing, motivation and goals, emotion, and consumer decision making. Practical applications of these topics as related to marketing issues and the implications for marketing managers will also be discussed.

This course is designed to familiarize students with a wide variety of issues related to consumer and managerial judgment and decision making. Given the emphasis of the course on behavioral decision making, the topics covered pertain mainly to descriptive rather than normative aspects of decision making. The contents will be useful for researchers in many fields of business such as marketing, economics, finance, and management.

Study of selected business issues under the supervision of a faculty member. The course may be repeated for credit to satisfy the program requirements of the DBA Program. (Special permission from the Academic Director is required for students to take this course.)

This course will help students to get familiar with literature in the chosen research area, identify appropriate topics for thesis research, and prepare detailed thesis proposals through independent study under the supervision of faculty members. Maybe graded PP.

Students will conduct research under the supervision of their faculty advisors. Students need to be on campus for at least two days for research activities in each regular term. In addition, there should be at least 10 contact hours with the advisors during the term. Graded P or F.

Original and independent DBA research. A successful defense of the thesis leads to the grade Pass. Graded PP, P or F.