Leadership Residency

The Leadership Residency introduces students to fundamentals of business and of effective leadership practice. While the residency has an integrated and seamless flow among topics, issues, activities, and instructors, students are actually completing two different academic courses. Team and Community Building introduces students to the fundamentals of collaborative team work and to basic concepts and material in the program’s leadership curriculum, while fostering the strong relationships among participants and program faculty that facilitate and accelerate learning. Financial Decisions and Societal Goals provides an overview of approaches to business strategy rooted in financial modeling and analysis. The focus is on identifying and developing strategic sensibilities that executives confront in the face of complexity and uncertainty.

Semester One

• Financial Reporting Systems introduces accounting principles, concepts, and understandings along with the preparation and analysis of financial statements.
• Leadership and Organizations focuses on how organizations work and how leaders can set direction, marshal resources, and build support to move initiatives forward. The course provides tools and tactics for assessing organizational needs and constraints through multiple lenses, for assessing one’s own leadership strengths and weaknesses, and for developing the skills and versatility needed to align leadership strategy with organization needs.
• Managerial Economics studies the relationships between the economic theory and system as a whole and the ways in which their functioning is affected by the behavior of the interdependent sectors of which they are composed. Students will explore the major factors and determinants of economic prospects relevant to profit-maximizing production and pricing decisions for the firm.
• Marketing Management examines the role of marketing in driving profitable revenue growth in companies. Focus is placed on tools and approaches to analyze and understand customer needs—including the roles of market research and brand equity—and to develop integrated marketing plans that deliver to these needs.

Semester Two

• Organizational Finance gives students a thorough introduction to financial management that blends appropriate amounts of relevant theory with practical application. Topics include discounting techniques and applications, evaluating capital expenditures, estimating cost of capital, and valuing stocks and bonds.
• Influence, Persuasion and Change presents ideas, strategies and tools for leading change in complex organizations. The course challenges students to think through the execution of change strategies and to assess the organizational power dynamics and influence styles needed for achieving results. Emphasis is placed on analyzing the attributes and skills most critical for building influence; fostering change; and defining an ethical approach to leading, influencing, and persuading others.
• Public Policy Context for Business Decisions provides intensive exposure to the forces, practices, and personalities in Washington that shape America's business policy. EMBA students learn to understand and anticipate the impact of public policy on their organizations and to become more effective participants in national-level decision-making.

The Washington D.C. Residency concurrent with this course serves as an exceptional tool to enhance this learning and to expand student understandings of the role of social leadership in the development of business policies, practices and processes.

• Applied Statistical Methods investigates the use of detailed sample data for purposes of estimating, predicting, forecasting, and explaining correlations among varied observations. Students will apply the concepts of probability theory, central tendency, sampling, inference, modeling, and forecasting to help solve managerial problems and to support decision processes.