Betriebs­wirtschafts­lehre - Bachelor (englisch)

Learning outcomes:
Financial reports are a key source of reliable and
relevant information about the financial
position, profitability, and risk of an enterprise, on which investors and creditors depend in
making resource allocation decisions. This course is designed to enable students to under-
stand financial reports and the
underlying reporting process and develop skills necessary in
various decision-making situations. During this course, students would also have the oppor-
tunities to organize themselves into groups, meet regularly and work together on case-study
assignments, and finally present their work before other students. In this process, they are
expected to acquire the important group communication skills and build teamwork and lead-
ership that are vital for the future business environment.

Contents:
•Introduction to business activities, overview of financial statements and reporting
process
•Record keeping basics and financial statement preparation: Balance Sheet
•Record keeping basics and financial statement preparation: Income Statement
•Balance Sheet: Presenting and analyzing resources and financing
•Income Statement: Reporting the results of operating activities
•Statement of Cash Flows
•Revenue recognition, receivables, and customer advances
•Working capital
•Long-lived tangible and intangible assets
•Notes, bonds, income taxes, and other liabilities
•Shareholders’ equity: capital contributions and distributions

Learning outcomes:
Financial reports are a key source of reliable and
relevant information about the financial
position, profitability, and risk of an enterprise, on which investors and creditors depend in
making resource allocation decisions. This course is designed to enable students to under-
stand financial reports and the
underlying reporting process and develop skills necessary in
various decision-making situations. During this course, students would also have the oppor-
tunities to organize themselves into groups, meet regularly and work together on case-study
assignments, and finally present their work before other students. In this process, they are
expected to acquire the important group communication skills and build teamwork and lead-
ership that are vital for the future business environment.

Contents:
•Introduction to business activities, overview of financial statements and reporting
process
•Record keeping basics and financial statement preparation: Balance Sheet
•Record keeping basics and financial statement preparation: Income Statement
•Balance Sheet: Presenting and analyzing resources and financing
•Income Statement: Reporting the results of operating activities
•Statement of Cash Flows
•Revenue recognition, receivables, and customer advances
•Working capital
•Long-lived tangible and intangible assets
•Notes, bonds, income taxes, and other liabilities
•Shareholders’ equity: capital contributions and distributions

Learning outcomes:
Financial reports are a key source of reliable and
relevant information about the financial
position, profitability, and risk of an enterprise, on which investors and creditors depend in
making resource allocation decisions. This course is designed to enable students to under-
stand financial reports and the
underlying reporting process and develop skills necessary in
various decision-making situations. During this course, students would also have the oppor-
tunities to organize themselves into groups, meet regularly and work together on case-study
assignments, and finally present their work before other students. In this process, they are
expected to acquire the important group communication skills and build teamwork and lead-
ership that are vital for the future business environment.

Contents:
•Introduction to business activities, overview of financial statements and reporting
process
•Record keeping basics and financial statement preparation: Balance Sheet
•Record keeping basics and financial statement preparation: Income Statement
•Balance Sheet: Presenting and analyzing resources and financing
•Income Statement: Reporting the results of operating activities
•Statement of Cash Flows
•Revenue recognition, receivables, and customer advances
•Working capital
•Long-lived tangible and intangible assets
•Notes, bonds, income taxes, and other liabilities
•Shareholders’ equity: capital contributions and distributions

Learning outcomes:
Financial reports are a key source of reliable and
relevant information about the financial
position, profitability, and risk of an enterprise, on which investors and creditors depend in
making resource allocation decisions. This course is designed to enable students to under-
stand financial reports and the
underlying reporting process and develop skills necessary in
various decision-making situations. During this course, students would also have the oppor-
tunities to organize themselves into groups, meet regularly and work together on case-study
assignments, and finally present their work before other students. In this process, they are
expected to acquire the important group communication skills and build teamwork and lead-
ership that are vital for the future business environment.

Contents:
•Introduction to business activities, overview of financial statements and reporting
process
•Record keeping basics and financial statement preparation: Balance Sheet
•Record keeping basics and financial statement preparation: Income Statement
•Balance Sheet: Presenting and analyzing resources and financing
•Income Statement: Reporting the results of operating activities
•Statement of Cash Flows
•Revenue recognition, receivables, and customer advances
•Working capital
•Long-lived tangible and intangible assets
•Notes, bonds, income taxes, and other liabilities
•Shareholders’ equity: capital contributions and distributions

Content:
In response to the globalisation of the world’s capital markets the language of communicating financial information to these capital markets is experiencing a similar globalisation: Almost 160 countries across the world either require or permit the use of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Thus, the world may not be far away from realising the vision of a global set of accounting standards. In such an environment being knowledgeable about IFRS is nearly as important for a business professionals as English language skills.
This course introduces you to the framework, concepts, and processes associated with international financial reporting. You will learn how IFRS are developed and used around the world. You will also examine fundamental IFRS requirements and will exercise their application in practice. Thus, the course shall enable you to understand financial statements prepared under IFRS and apply IFRS accounting and disclosure requirements to a wide range of scenarios.

Contents:

Businesses operating within and across the borders in Europe or other regions are confronted with heterogeneous tax systems despite EU-wide tax harmonization efforts. Therefore businesses have to adapt their organisation, finance and channels of distribution to the range of tax conditions in different countries and aim to optimise their tax situation by considering other business objectives. 
The guidelines regarding the taxation of businesses in the European Union and in the Asian Pacific region are presented. The topics vary from the basic principles of the dual system of business taxation, the taxation of corporations and their shareholders and the taxation of partnerships to the impact of different corporation tax systems on financing decisions. Furthermore, the guiding principles of international taxation regarding inbound and outbound investments are discussed. Finally, based on this, several tax planning strategies for cross-border investments are introduced by various case studies (e.g. cross-border financing and implementation of holding companies). 

Learning outcomes:

Understand and evaluate the consequences of taxation when undertaking national transactions and decisions; 
Understand and evaluate the consequences of taxation when undertaking international transactions and decisions;
Understand and identify the key tax issues that affect international business transactions.
Prerequisites: None

Course Description:
Much of modern financial economics works with models in which agents are rational and
arbitrageurs can fix any mis-pricing. Behavioral Financial Economics is the area of finance
which relaxes both of these assumptions. Behavioral models usually have two building
blocks: limits to arbitrage, which make it difficult for rational traders to undo the dislocations
caused by less rational traders; and psychology, which catalogs the kinds of deviations from
full rationality we might expect to see. We discuss these two topics, and then consider a
number of applications such as asset pricing (the aggregate stock market and the crosssection of average returns) or individual investor portfolio choice and trading behavior.
Learning outcomes / expertise: By the end of the course students will learn about types of
limits to arbitrage; psychological aspects of decision-making relevant to Finance; common
puzzles in financial markets and the behavioral approach to explaining those puzzles.
Requirement for participation: Students should have taken introductory courses in Finance
and Economic. Students should be familiar with such concepts as Fundamental Value, the
Efficient Market Hypothesis and basic regression analysis. Knowledge of pricing models such
as CAPM is not required but is highly recommended. Grading and Exam: 100% of the grade
will be determined by the final exam. The exam is written and will consists of several (usually
six or seven) open-ended questions.

Reading:
Barberis, Nicholas, and Richard Thaler (2003), „A Survey of Behavioral Finance,“ in George
Constantinides, Milton Harris, Rene Stulz (eds.),
Handbook of the Economics of Finance, North Holland.
The book, or rather the relevant part of it, is available at the author's website:
http://faculty.som.yale.edu/nicholasbarberis/ch18_6.pdf

Course Outline and Reading:
Class 1: Limits to arbitrage (BT, Chapter 2).
Class 2: Psychology (BT, Chapter 3)
Class 3: Individual Investor Behavior (BT, Chapter 7)
Class 4: Cross-Sectional Puzzles (BT, Chapter 5)
Class 5: Behavioral Corporate Finance (BT, Chapter 8)
Class 6: Final exam

Contents:
This course gives an introduction to the field of household finance, which covers financial decision making and the use of financial products by private households. Topics include investment and credit decisions, and their relations­hip with factors such as gender, financial literacy, socioeconomic status etc. Another focus will be on the role of the pension, tax and transfer systems and their influence on long-term saving and annuity choice. We will cover basic theoretical models on household behaviour and empirical results.

Learning outcomes:
The course aims at giving students an overview of the research field of household finance both with regards to current research topics and the methodology used. Reference to current policy debates will be given.

Prerequisites:
Formal: None.
Recommended: Participation requires a basic knowledge of finance or economics, e.g. from an introductory course on corporate finance, a good command of English and knowledge of basic statistical and econometric techniques.

Learning outcomes:
Participants of this partial module learn to assess and analyze the decision making problems
of a finance department. They will be able to understand the effects of the fiscal system on
financial decisions and to correctly calculate the capital costs for a corporation. Students will
be made familiar with the essential instruments and decision making processes inherent to
the financing of listed corporations (stocks, bonds, loans, convertible bonds and other struc-
tured products). They also learn to apply and rate complex instruments, such
as e.g. unconditional futures and swaps, and options for the change of chance
-risk positions

Contents:
- A fundamental introduction to the modern theory of business financing
- An introduction to business valuation and capital costs calculus
- An introduction to the most important derivatives (futures, swaps, options)
- An introduction to corporate risk management

Learning outcomes:
Participants of this partial module learn to assess and analyze the decision making problems
of a finance department. They will be able to understand the effects of the fiscal system on
financial decisions and to correctly calculate the capital costs for a corporation. Students will
be made familiar with the essential instruments and decision making processes inherent to
the financing of listed corporations (stocks, bonds, loans, convertible bonds and other struc-
tured products). They also learn to apply and rate complex instruments, such
as e.g. unconditional futures and swaps, and options for the change of chance
-risk positions

Contents:
- A fundamental introduction to the modern theory of business financing
- An introduction to business valuation and capital costs calculus
- An introduction to the most important derivatives (futures, swaps, options)
- An introduction to corporate risk management

Contents:
This course first outlines the basics of data and business process modelling based on wide spread approaches such as entity relations­hip diagrams, event driven process chains (EPC), and business process model and notation (BPMN). The remainder of the course then focuses
on the use and purpose of integrated information systems across different functional areas in industrial companies. Finally, basics of management support systems such as business intel-
ligence systems are addressed.
Outline:
- Business Process Modelling
- Application Systems in
o Research and Development
o Marketing and Sales
o Procurement and Warehousing
o Production
o Shipping and Customer Service
o Finance, Accounting, HR
- Planning and Control Systems

Content:
During the last decades we witnessed a growing importance of
Information Systems (IS) in the business world along with faster
and faster innovation cycles. A case in point is the growing IS-
related expenditure of corporations, forecasted to total EUR 2.63
trillion in 2012 a 4.7% growth over 2011 (Gartner 2013). Rang-
ing from the enrichment of routine working tasks (i.e., employee
portals to integrate disparate applications, data, and processes
(Daniel and White 2005)) to the enabled integration of entire
business eco-systems (e.g., platform-based integration of supply
chains (e.g., Kroenke 2010)), IS have become a vital backbone of
businesses.
Consequently, the ability to use IS in a way supporting the overall
value proposition of a corporation has become a central success
determinant for many firms. Accordingly, the “Development and
Management of Information Systems” course is designed to intro-
duce students to the nature, role, and potentials of IS in corpora-
tions and enable them to serve as a meaningful interface between technology and business.
Once filling this role in a business context, the future IS profes-
sionals are likely to be facing two major trends: the increasing
industrialization of IS (Brenner et al. 2007; Daberkow and Radtke
2008; Walter et al. 2007) and a shift towards service-
orientation in IT organizations and processes (Hochstein et al. 2005; Roewekamp 2007). This brings about challenges such as, among oth-
ers, managing the trade-off between efficient execution and effective offering or recognizing and mitigating conflicting expec-
tations and goals among the many entities (i.e., software produc-
ers, consultants, corporate users, customers) and roles (i.e., busi-
ness professionals, technical staff, corporate management) in-
volved in an IS.

Contents:
In the lecture MAN 301, basic theories, research results and current topics from the fields of
strategic and international management will be mediated. An understanding of basic functions of management will be developed and
the necessary steps/instruments of a strategy development process are presented to the students.
Furthermore, topics like corporate social
responsibility, internationalization strategies as well as fundamental aspects of global value chain management will be treated.

Learning outcomes:
Students will develop a fundamental understanding of the challenges and complexity of problems related to strategic management issues. They also will learn about potential solutions to strategic corporate problems.
Students will get introduced to central challenges related to global value chain management
Students will develop an understanding and get to apply central con
cepts/instruments of strategic and international management.

The lecture includes the following topics on human resource management:
· Human Resource Environment
· Job Analysis & Job Design
· HR Planning & Recruiting
· Selection
· Training
· Performance Management
· Employee Development
· Separation & Retention
· Compensation
· Incentives + International HRM
· High-Performance Organizations
Learning outcomes / expertise:
The students
...understand the role of human resource management in organizations
...learn to evaluate methods of personnel selection and development
...understand the basics of job design
…understand advantages and disadvantages of different forms of pay and benefit
…become acquainted with current issues in human resource management
Besides the lecture, teaching assistants offer a bi-weekly 90 minutes exercise class. The exercise classes' goal is the repetition and expansion of the knowledge students acquire in the lecture. To reach that goal the exercise class will offer a mixture of additional knowledge, exercises, and an interactive element, which will improve the ability of knowledge exchange and self-dependent work in small groups. The lecture includes the following topics on human resource management:
· Human Resource Environment
· Job Analysis & Job Design
· HR Planning & Recruiting
· Selection
· Training
· Performance Management
· Employee Development
· Separation & Retention
· Compensation
· Incentives + International HRM
· High-Performance Organizations
Learning outcomes / expertise:
The students
...understand the role of human resource management in organizations
...learn to evaluate methods of personnel selection and development

This course investigates marketing from a managerial perspective, focusing on the planning and development of strategic marketing programs. Marketing concepts will be discussed and students will learn how to design the marketing mix.
This course has two specific learning objectives:
1. Develop an appreciation for the inherently strategic nature of marketing function and for the role marketing decisions play in corporate and business strategy.
2. Strengthen your ability to justify and support your marketing decisions through relevant information acquisition and analysis.

The contents of the course are broken down into five modules:
1. Establishing Value-Based Marketing Principles – Methods to Compete (Part 1 and Part 2)
2. Organising the Market – Which Markets to Compete in
3. Organising the Market – Which Segments to Compete in
4. Managing the Market – How to Compete with Brand, Product and Price (Part 1 and Part 2)
5. Managing the Market – How to Compete with Placement and Promotion (Part 1 and Part 2)