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Courses Offered 2016/2017 | 4th Trimester | Exchange Students

4th Trimester

Brand Management

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A
The purpose of this course is to teach you how to build, manage, and leverage world‐class brands. The
broad learning of this course are: 1) to increase your understanding of the important issues in planning
and evaluating brand strategies; 2) to present relevant theories, conceptual models, and other tools and
principles to make more effective branding decisions; and 3) to provide a forum for you to apply these
principles. Particular emphasis is placed in the course on understanding psychological principles at the
consumer level that will improve managerial decision‐making with respect to brands. Another aim of
the course is to make these concepts relevant for any type of organization (public or private, large or
small, etc.) Throughout the class we will cover qualitative and quantitative research methods necessary
for managing brands.

Banking and Regulation

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: Advanced Microeconomics at MSc level, or intermediate level of Microeconomics with General Economic Analysis at Undergraduate level

This is a class on the economics of financial intermediation and banking. The course will present some of the models used to study the organization and roles of financial intermediaries in the economy, to understand its consequences for economic outcomes, and to evaluate the desirability of economic policies such as central bank intervention and regulation.

 

Business Analytics

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

This highly popular among our Lisbon MBA students course focuses on business experimentation and ‘big data’ analysis to improve decision-making. Working hands-on with state-of-the-art data analysis software, the students will learn and apply fundamental principles and techniques of predictive modeling data analysis, and tools for causal inference.

Competition Policy

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

 

The purpose of a competition policy is to ensure that there are no restrictions to competition in the marketplace that are harmful to social welfare. This course provides students with an understanding of the economics of competition policy by applying elementary game theory and simple oligopoly models to analyse the effects of several profitable practices that may reduce welfare. The course is structured around twelve sessions (one hour and a half) that include both theory and problem solving. 

Corporate Governance and Control: an international perspective

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

 

Corporate Governance and Control – An International Perspective aims at giving the student a clear vision of how important it is in business to ensure that shareholders’ and stakeholders’ rights and expectations are protected from management deviation or abuse. It also shows how trust must be built in corporate behaviour so that sound and efficient markets for capital allocation are developed and sustained. After introducing the main structural concepts and principles of Corporate Governance, the course covers practices and regulations across geographic areas such as Europe, North America, Brazil, China and Japan. Its methodology is based on class presentations and discussion of case-studies.

Economics of Business and Markets

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

In this course we will explore the economics of key dimensions of firms activities in imperfectly competitive markets.
 

eContent 

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

You’ve carefully conceptualized your marketing strategy and ready to rip its benefits  Success? Not just yet… Even the best laid plans and carefully devised brand strategy can crumbles at the execution stage and in content creation. Success hinges on implementation details, small shifts behind the Facebook algorithm, a few seconds of video content that suddenly drain its viral potential, taking your great strategy with it.  In this hands-on course you will be able to better understand what makes good content… good.  From being exposed to best practices to learning by doing, in this this project based course you will develop skills to evaluate the circumstances and context that make it work for your company and the strategy of your brand.  These skills serve as a foundation for an effective brief for an agency or a designer, critically viewing content and providing constructive and actionable feedback, benchmarking competitive content and analyzing it from target consumer’s perspective.  Put simply, without these skills a manager is not ready to guide and take part in creation of compelling content that implements your brand strategy.  The course is primarily set within the digital ecosystem and web-enabled marketing tools and media – that’s where your consumers are having daily conversations, a part of which a contemporary brand manager needs to be.

Economic Globalization

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

Facts of globalization. Globalization and Macro in Open Economies. Competitiveness and Productivity. The distribution of the gains of globalization. Policies for/against globalization.

Financial Innovation and Hedge Funds

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: Financial Derivatives and Financial Investments

The course provides an overview hedge funds and structured products. The course is divided into two major parts. The first one deals with hedge funds, their typical trading strategies, risk and return, historical performance, and portfolio decisions involving hedge funds. The second part of the course covers the basics of structured products and securitization. The focus in this part will be on the role of structured products in the recent financial crisis. Case studies and exercises are used to apply these concepts and methods to practical problems.  

Fixed Income Strategies

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: Financial Derivatives and Financial Investments

 

 

The aim of the course is to provide a general overview of the new products available for fixed income investors, mainly at the credit front via securitization. Most of them allow investors to reap the benefits of yield pick-up and diversification versus the traditional market offers. The understanding of the economics behind ABS/CMBS will be crucial to analyze more complex securities like CDOs/CLOs.

Impact Investing

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

The focus of this course is to introduce participants to the growing global phenomenon of Impact Investment, broadly defined as the purposeful allocation of financial resources into specific projects or ventures to generate sustainable impact. 

International Negotiation

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

This course focuses on negotiation in a global business environment. This course is relevant to anyone who anticipates forming a business relationship across national boundaries and is designed to complement the technical and diagnostic skills learned in other courses at Católica-Lisbon. A basic premise of the course is that while a manager needs analytic skills (strategic, financial, marketing, or management) to diagnose solutions, a broad array of negotiation skills is needed to get solutions accepted and implemented. Moreover, negotiation skills may teach managers how to develop more innovative and optimal resolutions.

Leading Complex Organizations

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

The purpose of this module is to give you a deeper understanding of leadership with the long-term goal of increasing your ability to be a successful business leader.

Macrodynamics

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: Advanced Macroeconomics.

In this course we focus on business cycles driven by self fulfilling expectations (endogenous cycles). Some concepts and mathematical tools relevant for these issues are developed. Market imperfections and alternative models to the standard neoclassical macro model are considered.

Market Regulation

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

The course provides a broad approach to economic regulation theory and evaluation of  mainstream economic models. The regulatory frameworks of specific industries is analysed, with a critical evaluation of legal and economic concepts and models used in practice in the regulation of several industries in the EU. A new focus will be put on risk analysis, as one important recent area of regulation. Finally different models to perform regulatory impact analysis will be presented and their use in regulatory practice will be discussed.

Managing People

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

MP is designed to provide you with a better understanding of how interpersonal and team processes affect the behavior of individuals in organizations, and influence personal and organizational performance. The course focuses on how you, as an organizational member and manager, can experience, understand, and manage yourself, other individuals, and teams in organizations.

Marketing for Tech-Based Startups*

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

Having an idea is just the first step in the entrepreneurial journey. Most startups fail — usually due to lack of product-market fit, not product development problems. Startups are more likely to succeed when they rapidly and iteratively test assumptions about the business model. The opportunity becomes a business when customer and stakeholders’ feedback is turned into a valued product. The iterative process means that an unmet need is identified; capabilities and resources adjusted to meet that need and a product or service is created to be delivered to a specified market generating value to all stakeholders. New ventures that follow this approach are lean startups. “Lean startup practices are being pursued by firms in Silicon Valley and beyond. These practices have gained special traction in the information technology sector.

Operations Management

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

Operations Management (OM) is concerned with the management of resources and activities that produce and deliver goods and services to customers. The major activities of OM are planning, operating, controlling and improving processes within organizations. Efficient and effective operations can provide an organization with major competitive advantages since the ability to respond to customer and market requirements quickly, at a low cost, and with high quality, is vital to attaining profitability and growth through increased market share.

Organization Dynamics

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

Over the past decade, managers have greatly expanded their use of teams to accomplish a wide variety of organizational objectives. Teams have emerged as a favorite work arrangement for such ongoing activities as developing new products, providing professional services, and starting new businesses. Temporary groups are frequently assembled for a multitude of purposes, such as making difficult decisions, solving cross-functional problems, generating ideas, or performing unique tasks. Indeed, groups and teams can be found at every level of the organization, from production crews on the shop floor to top management teams in the executive suite. Moreover, advances in communication technology have created the potential for people who are dispersed across the globe to collaborate virtually, creating many new opportunities and challenges for leaders of such teams. Teams are not a panacea, however. Even as they become a way of life in many organizations, widespread myths and misconceptions about teams often stand in the way of effective teamwork. At their worst, teams sometimes create more problems than they solve.

Private Equity

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: Financial Decision Making in a Business Context or Advanced Corporate Finance

Introduction to the basic concepts of private equity using the lifecycle of an investment as a framework: starting with analysis and execution, looking at the structuring alternatives and finishing with due diligence, portfolio management and exit. The course will analyse different types of private equity deals from growth stage minority investments all the way to large Leveraged Buy-Outs.

Retailing

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

This course presents the main concepts linked to the theory and practice of retailing. It is designed to prepare students for careers on both sides of the retail field: merchandise buying and store management. It is also useful to those who will be involved as product sales representatives or other distribution positions. Our focus will be on managerial decisions, both strategic and tactical, that impact the retail operation.

Risk Management

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: Financial Derivatives and Financial Investments.

This course will cover measurement techniques for different types of financial risks and instruments, with a special emphasis on market risk and credit risk.

Strategic Change & Dynamic Capabilities

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

This course is positioned at the intersection of Strategy and Entrepreneurship. It aims to study how firms can create value in changing environments. And such endeavor requires inquiring into processes of opportunity formation and exploitation. Past dominant theories in the Strategy field were particularly concerned about explaining how firms can achieve sustainable competitive advantage. However, a number of recent studies began to show that sustainable competitive advantage is rare and declining in its duration. As the environment become more dynamic, unpredictable, uncertain, and ambiguous (that is, when exogenous and endogenous shocks are more common), firms struggle not only to achieve a competitive advantage but often just to survive. Thus, a challenging question arises: How can firms successfully address such an environment? 

Strategic Management Consulting

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

The course introduces students to the fundamentals of Strategic Management Consulting. Students learn about the basics necessary for internal and career consulting and to be good consumers of consulting services. The objective of this course is to equip students with knowledge and a reference binder on management consulting.

Social Doctrine of the Church

ECTS: 3,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

The present course attempts a presentation of the doctrine of the Catholic Church on social issues, with special attention to the economic topics, describing themes, documents and proposals.

Time Series Econometrics

ECTS: 4,5

Pre-requisites: N/A

The course analyzes the specificities of the linear regression model with time series data and it introduces univariate statistical models aimed at describing and forecasting time series. It deals with highly persistent series and long-run relations between such series and it introduces spectral analysis. 

*Students should not enroll for Marketing for Tech-Based New Ventures (2nd Term).

All courses are lectured in English.

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