Ross' core course curriculum was designed by our faculty to help students develop a foundation for efficient and effective leadership and decision making; giving students tools they will use throughout their careers. These courses, offered in the first two terms of the program, establish a basic understanding of the functional responsibilities of an organization. Descriptions for each of the core courses follow.

WRITTEN MANAGERIAL COMMUNICATIONS (LHC 594, 1.5 CREDITS)
Written Managerial Communication stresses fundamental theories and strategies needed for effective written communication in diverse management situations. The course perspective is that of a manager in a multi-national organization; the course focus is on the impact of written messages on receivers both internal and external to the organization; the course context is communication in the global marketplace, bearing in mind that although English is used extensively in doing business in the world, communication is always influenced by culture. During this course, students write and speak a variety of management messages and learn to evaluate these messages using holistic and analytic tools. At its conclusion, students will have the ability to make strategic communication choices, write under time constraints, and increase their English language skills. In addition, students will understand the differences in various message channels and how to maximize effectiveness by considering the impact of oral, written, and electronic communication choices.

COMMUNICATION MANAGEMENT (LHC 595, 1.5 CREDITS)
This course provides decision-making frameworks and tools that managers can use to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their workplace communications. These frameworks and tools cover linguistic and rhetorical alternatives for structuring and delivering content to achieve management goals as well as methods for information management, media selection, and targeting. constituencies.

PRINCIPLES OF FINANCIAL ACCOUNTING (ACC 591, 2.25 CREDITS)
This course introduces the basic concepts and methods used in corporate financial statements for the information of investors and other interested external parties. The course also emphasizes analysis of cases and actual financial reports and concerns the applications of the basic concepts and methods of financial accounting to issues such as long-term assets, inventory, sales, receivables, debt securities, corporate ownership, international operations, and analysis of financial statements.

APPLIED MICROECONOMICS (BE 591, 2.25 CREDITS)
This course provides students with the foundations of microeconomic analysis. It is designed to develop in students an ability to apply the analysis to business decision-making and public policy evaluation. In this course, students also apply microeconomic analysis to more advanced aspects of business decision-making and public policy evaluation.

MARKETING MANAGEMENT (MKT 591, 2.25 CREDITS)
Marketing management is concerned with understanding customers and competitors—both existing and potential—as basis for developing, pricing, promoting, and distributing goods and services that satisfy customer and organizational objectives. The course is primarily case-oriented, but also relies on lectures, readings, and a simulation exercise to provide an appropriate mix of theory and hands-on problem-solving that is intended to offer a variety of perspectives on marketing management issues.

CORPORATE STRATEGY (STRATEGY 591, 2.25 CREDITS)
This course deals with the economic and political forces challenging business in today’s global environment. The focus is on theories and concepts that are crucial to understanding the global location of industries and firms, the politics of global business, and the determinants of exchange rates and other sources of risk in an often volatile world economy.

PRINCIPLES OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT (FIN 591, 2.25 CREDITS)
This course is the introductory course in Financial Management in the MBA program. The purpose of this course is to equip you with the basic tools and techniques necessary to be a successful financial manager or a general manager with a good understanding of the basic principles of finance. The first half of the course focuses on valuation techniques, the relation between risk and return and the workings of U.S. capital markets. The second half of the course covers the major areas of the financing decisions of firms and international finance.

MANAGEMENT ACCOUNTING (ACC 593, 2.25 CREDITS)
This course deals with decision-making in organizations, where the decisions involve the generation, analysis, or use of financial information. The major topics in this course include the use of accounting in making alternative choice decisions, the development and use of product cost information, and the use of accounting information for managerial planning and control. Throughout the course, a managerial viewpoint is stressed. Cases are used.

HUMAN BEHAVIOR AND ORGANIZATION (MO 593, 2.25 CREDITS)
This course focuses on three primary areas: 1) current behavioral and organizational theory and techniques; 2) fundamentals that will be applied in other core courses; and 3) basics for advanced course in personnel administration. The course covers multiple roles of the manager, the personnel function, and the constraints on personnel decisions.

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT (OMS 593, 2.25 CREDITS)
This course focuses on managerial tools for understanding both the physical and information processes that are required for developing and manufacturing products and delivering them to the customers, and prepares managers to use the results of analysis to constantly improve the firm’s operational performance. The objectives of this course are to: 1) provide students with taxonomy of process types to examine the various ways in which production systems can be categorized and understood; 2) emphasize the importance of tying the process design closely with the product design; 3) develop the student-problem solving skills with respect to the ongoing management of operations; and 4) provide a framework and tools for improving operations.

APPLIED BUSINESS STATISTICS (OMS 595, 2.25 CREDITS)
This course covers descriptive statistics and graphical description of data; probability; sampling distributions; confidence intervals and sample size determination for estimating population means and proportions; fundamentals of hypothesis testing; one and two sample tests for population means and proportions; correlation; simple and multiple regression; forecasting with regression; and statistical process control.