Learning Goals

Business Administration Learning Goals

  • Critical thinking/analysis goals:
    • View social and business problems from multiple perspectives. (circumspection)
    • Model and simplify problems to facilitate understanding and solution. (modeling)
    • Use graphs and numbers to describe and clarify business problems. (numeracy-expository)
    • Interpret numerical data and statistical information and explain their managerial implications. (numeracy-interpretive)
    • Develop hypotheses about business problems and issues and conduct systematic and discriminating research to test those hypotheses. (systematic research)
    • Employ ethical reasoning when engaging in decision-making (ethical reasoning)
    • Develop the ability to recognize information needs and to locate, evaluate and effectively use information. (information literacy)
  •  Communication/writing goals:
    • Writing
      • Mobilize and organize evidence and logical arguments to persuasively support a position or recommendation. (ideas and arguments)
      • Write clearly organized papers with coherent, well developed paragraphs, logical transitions and little redundancy. (rhetorical control)
      • Construct persuasive, grammatically correct sentences which are easily understood by the target audience. (language control)Critically review and edit the written work of colleagues. (editing)
    • Oral Presentation
      • Make concise, persuasive presentations to critical audiences. (presentation)
      • Engage thoughtful extemporaneous dialog.  This requires both active listening and "thinking on your feet". (active listening/dialog)
  • Business Theory and Practice
    • Understand information presented in corporate financial statements, prospectuses, investment surveys, business plans, and the financial press. (financial information)
    • Apply principles of economic analysis to model and solve management problems. (Economic principles)
    • Use quantitative methods to model management problems: inferential statistics, optimization, constrained optimization. (quantitative methods)
    • Apply social and behavioral theories to understand the management of individuals and organizations. (social/behavioral theories)
    • Understand the management and measurement of value creation processes within the organization and allocation of the created value across owners, other investors, and stakeholders. (value creation)
    • Appreciate how owners, customers, employees, competitors and governments are stakeholders in an organization's success, and how such stakeholders influence business decisions across national boundaries. (stakeholder perspective)